Portal 2is one of the most moddable games in history. With a built-in level editor, easy access to the Source engine it’s built upon, and Valve publishing some of these games on Steam, it’s easy to find entire Portal fangames.
Thanks to the dedicated fanbase, there are a bunch of mods you can download thatexpand the game’s content with new stories and new mechanics, and I’ve wanted to play through them all and rank them for a while.
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I’m only going for the mods listed on theCommunity-Made Mods page on Steam, which means no workshop or unofficial stuff, but I’ll be ranking every single one I can get my hands on at the time of writing.
There are a few other experiences out there if you want to find them, but in terms of available, big expansions to the main game that are created entirely by fans, these games are where it’s at.
I will only be looking at the mods on Portal 2’s Community-Made Mod page. If you see a mod missing, it’s eitherfor the first Portal game, unreleased at the time of writing, or is not on that page.
7Portal: Forbidden Testing Tracks
Uses Generative AI, -10 Rep
Of all the mods, Forbidden Testing Tracks is easily the absolute worst. It crashes trying to change audio settings, you may’t have subtitles, and generally it’s just super loud and incredibly unpolished, which isn’t helping things.
Rather disgustingly,instead of actually picking up voice talent for free from someone looking to get their name out there, this game just opts for AI-generated J.K. Simmons narration, and I genuinely hate it.
I will say the gateways that seem taken right out ofMinecraft’s Immersive Portals mod are neat, but that’s just about the only quality this game has, and frankly, I’ve seen better puzzles using them in Minecraft anyway.
With the random jumpscares, terrible attention to detail, stolen gimmicks, and abysmal sound design, it’s shocking to me that this thing is even allowed as an official mod. It’s not even the funny kind of bad game, it’s just depressing.
6Aperture Tag: The Paint Gun Testing Initiative
Let’s Get Messy
For some reason, Aperture Tag not only has an incredibly loaded full title, but it’s alsothe only paid game of the entire bunch. Sure, it’s only $5, but that fact alone means it’s pretty difficult to recommend, even if it were good.
The price wouldn’t matter if it justified being a paid experience, but all the new visuals are crusty and could use a second draft, the sound is whatever, the writing is pretty bad, and the voice acting is pretty cringeworthy and low quality.
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The paint gun just shoots out gel, which makes the entire game physics-based puzzles, and if you’ve played around in the Source engine for any amount of time, you’ll know that physics aren’t very keen on cooperating.
There are a few fun puzzles, but most of the time you’re trying to pilot a tank hurtling through the air, which feels incredibly sluggish and unresponsive, making every puzzle have a random component.
5The Cleaning Game
Something Else
It was pretty challenging to rank The Cleaning Game, asit is a mod of Portal 2, but it’s absolutely not a Portal game. There’s no puzzling, no testing, and no portals; instead, it’s a rather existential time.
It’s a very story-based game, where you can make some choices and explore around for different endings, all while mopping up an office of all the garbage that everyone’s strewn about the place.
I thought it was pretty neat how they’d turned Portal 2 intoPowerwash Sim, but about depression, and it made me feel quite bad for all the electronics now that they’re able to have feelings.
That said, it’s a good game, sure, but it’s not Portal. If you came here for Portal games, and still wouldn’t mind an exploration game where you press E around ten thousand times, then I’d say The Cleaning Game is worth your time.
4Thinking with Time Machine
Take it Back Now Y’all
If you’ve ever played an excellent game jam game, you’re probably familiar with the feeling of a game with such a fun concept that you don’t mind most of its shortcomings, and Thinking with Time Machine is like that feeling for me.
It’s not the most polished thing ever. In fact, it has a mountain of jank, and the main mechanic isn’t tutorialized nearly as much as it should be. But damn, the puzzles are so enjoyable that I don’t even mind.
Being able to record and play back your actions while moving alongside yourself from the past is such an engaging idea, and it makes the typical Portal puzzles far more complex than they were before, now that you’re essentially playing two games at once.
I will say, I think time travel mechanics were done in a far more intuitive way in a different game later on this list, but I don’t mind the execution here. Given it’s just a couple hours long, it still gets a strong recommendation from me.
3Portal Stories: Mel
A Step Back
In Portal 2, there was an unused character called Mel that was going to replace Chell, and we know almost nothing about her. Of course, that means Mel is the star of her fan mod from 2015.
Portal Stories: Mel takes place primarily in the parts of Aperture that weren’t explored much in Portal 2, now even more decrepit and hardly functional, andthe atmosphere of this game is off the charts.
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The environments are all so incredibly detailed that you’d never guess they weren’t official. The voice work is good, even if it’s no J.K. Simmons, but the mechanics and gameplay are where things start to falter.
The moody atmosphere can often make puzzles unclear and frustrating to see, and the physics feel very random, whereas Valve would have made them consistent. Portal Stories: Mel is pretty, but it gets a bit infuriating too often.
2Portal Reloaded
Time to Party
If you’re willing to spend five minutes making a latte during the long-as-hell intro and put up with an incredibly dry, mildly unfunny narrator with a generic robotic voice, Portal Reloaded can be fun, I swear.
The puzzles are everything I’d want out of a new Portal game.The third portal isn’t just some cheap hook, it has you traveling through time and thinking in four dimensions, which makes everything even more rewarding.
Unlike a ton of other fan games, it doesn’t assume the player is at the peak of their puzzling knowledge, instead having a normal difficulty curve that makes it feel like Valve made it, especially with how well done the future stuff is, andwith neat multiplayer levels.
My only issues with it are anything unrelated to gameplay, namely the yapping, but also the lack of a distinct visual identity. This game looks the same as Portal 2, and also stutters a ton every time you hit an autosave.
1Portal: Revolution
Retrofit Revisit
I love Portal: Revolution,it’s one of the best fangamesI’ve played, yet I also hate it, but lovingly. If you dread Portal 2’s constant need to have a character yammering on while you’re stuck in one room, this game isn’t one bit better, but it is fantastic to explore.
Each testing chamber is reminiscent of one in a previous Portal game, but decrepit enough to make you explore it from a new angle, on top of dealing with the rather insane janitor in your ear, being supplemented by really great voice work.
I love how much this game uses lesser-utilized mechanics from Portal 2. You spend way longer with a gun that only shoots blue portals, recalling cubes are used for puzzles, and bombs are funny enough to get more than one room.
I will say, though, every annoyance from the base game is here in full force, on top of the upsetting tendency to make you do the same sequence of events 2–3 times over in most chambers, not due to you messing up, but as part of the intended solution.
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