General knowledge · Film, TV & games
Released 10 October 2007
Video games — Valve's first-person puzzle game and its student-project origin
A first-person puzzle game released by Valve on 10 October 2007 as part of The Orange Box, alongside Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Team Fortress 2. It grew directly out of Narbacular Drop, a 2005 senior project by students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology near Valve's offices: when the team showed the game at a DigiPen career day and then at Valve's headquarters, Gabe Newell — sitting unannounced in the audience — offered to hire the whole team on the spot. The result, barely three hours long, is often cited as one of the most tightly designed games ever made.
Narbacular Drop, a DigiPen student project of 2005 whose entire team Gabe Newell hired on the spot (2005)
Eight students working as Nuclear Monkey Software; the game starred Princess 'No-Knees' in a sentient dungeon, and won an Independent Games Festival student award
Released in October 2007 in a bundle with Team Fortress 2 and a Half-Life episode (2007)
The Orange Box, which also contained Half-Life 2 and Episode One
GLaDOS — Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System — voiced by a trained opera singer (2007)
Ellen McLain, who also sang the closing song; the voice was processed to sound synthetic
'The cake is a lie', scratched on the wall of a hidden den behind the test chambers (2007)
One of the most quoted lines in gaming, though it appears only in graffiti
A crate stencilled with pink hearts that the player is required to incinerate (2007)
The Weighted Companion Cube, introduced in test chamber 17
'Still Alive', an end-credits song written by Jonathan Coulton (2007)
Sung in character by Ellen McLain over ASCII-art credits
Stephen Merchant voicing a spherical personality core in the 2011 sequel (2011)
Wheatley, in Portal 2, which also cast J. K. Simmons as Aperture's founder Cave Johnson
Used in American schools from 2012 to teach physics, under a free educational licence (2012)
Valve's 'Teach with Portals' initiative distributed the level editor to teachers