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Portal's GLaDOS Invades Various Indie Games On Steam

by Phil Kollar on Apr 12, 2011 at 12:20 PM

We've already told you about the strange Portal ARG (alternate reality game) that Valve started last week, but if you thought ARGs are limited to cryptic e-mails and clues in real-world locations, Valve is happy to prove you wrong. They've clearly got something more ambitious in mind.

It seems like most of the titles that are part of Steam's 13-game "Potato Sack" indie bundle have received sudden and very strange updates, such as the image above from a new GLaDOS-themed level of Bit.Trip Beat. Other updated games include Toki Tori, Audiosurf, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and Defense Grid, although Internet detectives are still digging through these updates to see what was actually added.

The Gaijin Games blog post about the Bit.Trip Beat update hints that solving the puzzles related to these indie updates could do something crazy like allow Portal 2 to be released early on Steam. Valve themselves have not confirmed this as the outcome, but some Portal fans and ARG masters have created an extensive wiki documenting new info as they find it. Keep watching and help out if you can. Maybe we'll be playing Portal 2 before the end of the week!

Still confused? This helpful YouTube video very quickly explains what the hell is going on:

And whatever the outcome of this strange stunt, it's very cool to see Valve working together with some of Steam's best indie developers like this.

[via Bytejacker]