Of all of the phenomenal titles released by Steam, Portal is one of the best. Released in 2007, it is a puzzle-platform game that won over gamers instantly. Besides the amazing physics engine, it has sterile aesthetics and great sound effects. Portal captured players with its originality. Most FPS titles involve killing a bunch of enemies with some lethal weapon that rips enemies to shreds. In Portal, there are not really any enemies. Seeing the success of Portal, Valve released Portal 2 which, like its successor, won over the audience. The dark sense of humor of GLaDOS, Wheatley with his innocence, the puzzles, the story, and the multiplayer Co-op made it a cult classic.

After Portal 2, the fans had been longing for a new sequel. But as we know Steam’s relationship with the number ‘3’, that is far from being possible till now. It is unknown if Valve would release another sequel for this series, so a modder took this matter in their own hands.

Portal 2 has just turned ten years old, and what better way to celebrate than by adding another dimension and puzzles that will make rack your brain? Portal Reloaded is a Portal 2 mod that adds 25 new puzzles and a brand-new type of portal. This new, green portal is the 4^th Dimension – Time, which lets players travel 20 years in the future and solve Aperture Science rooms across both space and time.

This mod was only created by Jannis Brinkmann, a German national who started work on this project in 2014. At first, Brinkmann stated he had no intention of releasing it as a complete mod for release, but at last it has been released at the Steam Store for free. Despite the heavy modding present, it has been stated that Portal 2’s source code was not altered and that everything new encountered in the mod is done through scripting.

“Awoken from stasis by an automated AI, you are expected to complete a very special test course. Within the depths of Aperture Science, secluded from the rest of the facility, lies a previously unknown and long-forgotten testing track,” says Portal Reloaded’s creator. “This mod is targeted at portal veterans, who are familiar with the gameplay of the main series and want to expand their horizons.”

After watching the trailer for Portal Reloaded, I can assure you and warn you too, that it takes Portal 2 to the next level of racking your brain even if you are a veteran portaler.    

The mod’s focus is the addition of a third portal allowing players to navigate the fourth dimension- time. The triple portal gun will have its classic connecting blue and yellow portals used in the original game, but with this mod, a third, rectangular portal can be fired that allows players to travel in time. This will be incredibly exciting even for veteran Portal fans, as time is not only difficult for humans to comprehend but cannot be navigated in real life. Physicists often describe this dimension as any space that is perpendicular to a cube, using a tesseract to visualize it for a better explanation.

Gameplay footage elaborated on the complexity of the game, just how mind-bending it is to add time travel, with a player transferring a cube from the past and that same cube magically appearing later in the future version of the test room. However, moving the future cube does not affect the past cube but can be brought into the test room’s past version.

Do not worry if this all sounds confusing; it is. Some of the brightest minds in the world have difficulty researching and understanding the fourth dimension. Time manipulation has always been a challenge to use as a feature or mechanic in games, so there have been very few titles that tried and with variable results, gaming titles such as TimeShift, Braid, and Singularity.

Reloaded has a different story from the main events of the series, with an unknown test subject that must make their way through a restricted section of the facility. It also contains roughly 100 custom voice lines recorded by Brinkmann. The mod has 25 puzzle areas for players to solve, which all have both present/pristine and future/dilapidated versions of test chambers.

If you really get stuck on a level, there is a full walkthrough of all the puzzles to assist. If you need a bit of info on how time-traveling objects work, Portal Reloaded’s creator made some videos to introduce the concepts visually.

It is quite an impressive mod considering it was made by just one person.

To play this mod, gamers will need a copy of Portal 2 for its assets. Portal Reloaded can be downloaded for free from the Steam. If you think you are up for the challenge, you can download the mod now on Steam. Let us know your opinion about this fresh take on the world of Portal.