Valve has released a new game out of nowhere to showcase the capabilities of its new Steam Deck console; much in the same way it did with The Lab and Half-Life Alyx, with the launch of SteamVR and the Valve Index headset. Set in the same universe as Portal and Half-Life, Aperure Desk Job will be free for anyone to download starting March 1.
Aperture Desk Job will task you with inspecting a range of different items and objects using the variety of Steam Deck controls to manipulate and validate them as necessary. In many ways it's a playable short movie, but it looks fun, in a sort of, Paper's Please kind of way. With the typical Valve humour and AI spheres.
Although the game is designed to work best with the Steam Deck, it should be playable on a standard PC with standard controls too -- it's jut not quite clear how that would work just yet.
Valve does make clear though, that this game isn't Portal 3. And that you should temper your expectations to that.
"Lower your expectations: This is not a sequel to Portal," Valve says on the Steam page. "Now get ready to raise them slightly, because it is in the expanded universe of those games. Desk Job puts you squarely in the driver’s seat at Aperture Science. Then quickly removes the driving part and adds a desk in front of the seat."
If you want to wishlist the game now, you can, with everyone getting the ability to download and play it starting tomorrow, March 1, entirely for free.