A fully functional version of F-Stop, the puzzle game that Valve developed as a prequel to its well-known Portal series but then cancelled, has appeared online. Enthusiasts managed to assemble it after several data leaks.
Most of the game's files, so-called assets, became available back in August as a result of a major leak of 12 terabytes. However, launching the game was impossible without the source code and level map data. The missing pieces surfaced this week in the Valve Cut Content community on Discord, which made it possible to assemble an almost complete version of the game.
Although some dialogue and elements from F-Stop were later used in Portal 2, its core mechanic differs considerably. Instead of a portal gun, the player uses a camera. After photographing an object, the player receives a snapshot resembling a Polaroid card, and then uses that snapshot to place the object somewhere else, sometimes changing its size to solve puzzles.
The game takes less than an hour to complete. F-Stop was created in 2007 as part of an internal Valve project called "Experiments in Guided Design." At the time, the company's employees were divided into five teams and given three months to come up with and develop new game concepts.
As Rock Paper Shotgun reports, the early version of the game did not perform well in testing, although Valve head Gabe Newell liked it. According to moderators of the Valve Cut Content community, the person who had the level maps initially asked for a thousand dollars for them, but ultimately handed the data over for free.
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