Portal: Alive & Kicking is Finally Available on Steam
Portal: Alive & Kicking, a game long worked on by the Rhubarb & Rhubarb team, has finally been released after years of anticipation. Reinterpreting the 2007 original Portal, the project not only updates the visuals but also revisits some aesthetic and narrative differences to create a more harmonious experience with Portal 2. Moreover, the game is offered completely free of charge.
Portal: Alive & Kicking is Free for Portal 2 Owners
To access the project, players need to own Portal 2. Because Alive & Kicking utilizes the technical infrastructure of Portal 2, it doesn’t function as a standalone game. The development team also used the source code provided by Valve to complete the project and signed various confidentiality agreements during this process.
Things got quite strange at one point. The team announced that the game was 100% complete but had to wait for a response from Valve for a long time before releasing it. Fortunately, that silence ended, and the project was finally released on Steam.
Alive & Kicking isn’t just about visual revamp. The game features improved puzzle navigation, a new dynamic music system, and completely redesigned environmental architecture. It’s also reported that Jeep Barnett, who worked on the development of Portal’s iconic Portal Gun mechanic, is positively inclined towards the project.
However, there’s a minor technical issue with the release. Some players are reporting that they can’t download the game directly. As a temporary solution, the development team suggests adding Portal: Alive & Kicking to a wishlist and downloading it from there. Also, the game needs to be installed on the same disk as Portal 2; otherwise, various problems may occur.
Initial player reviews are somewhat mixed. While the test chambers are frequently praised for their success, there are criticisms that the escape areas, and especially the final GLaDOS confrontation, don’t maintain the same level of quality. Nevertheless, after 15 years of work, Portal: Alive & Kicking, released for free, has become a very interesting alternative for those who want to replay the series.
