Gasp! What’s that, could it be…? Did someone here ask for Portal 3? Well, if so, don’t get your hopes up, because that’s not what this is. But, it still looks really cool, so don’t go scrolling away on me.
Valve has, out of nowhere, announced a new short game set in the Portal universe, which is set to release on 1 March, completely for free. Yes, you’re reading that right - that’s in three days time. This is Aperture Desk Job - and it's purpose-built to take players through the Steam Deck's features and controls, but in a fun way.
Check out the trailer for Aperture Desk Job below.
“Aperture Desk Job reimagines the been-there-done-that genre of walking simulators and puts them in the lightning-spanked, endorphin-gorged world of sitting still behind things,” the game’s Steam page reads. “You play as an entry-level nobody on their first day at work - your heart full of hope and your legs full of dreams, eager to climb that corporate ladder. But life’s got other plans, and they all involve chairs.”
Although the idea of the game is to take you through Valve’s new handheld, it sounds like you’ll be able to play it on your PC too, as long as you have a controller (it specifies that keyboard and mouse controls aren’t supported).
Advert
Also, yeah, here’s your reminder that the Steam Deck's release is very imminent. Yesterday, the first wave of emails went out to reservation holders, who have 72 hours from receiving their email to buy the console. According to Valve, the first batch of units will be sent out on the 28th, so we’ll probably start seeing them in people’s hands sometime next week. Exciting times.
Earlier this month though, thanks to efforts from tech reviewers, we found out that the battery life of the device might not be as good as we were initially promised. Originally, Valve stated that we should be able to expect 2-8 hours of juice, but two different reviewers found that it could actually go lower than an hour and a half. Yikes. To be fair, that was with the frame rate totally uncapped and VSync on, but still. We’ll just have to wait and see how they hold up for people more generally.