Psychological Instability mod for Portal

Portal: RTX released late last year, giving a Valve classic a new lick of paint and bringing it into the modern era. Just this week, NVIDIA announced an effort to remaster one of Portal's most famous mods, Portal: Prelude, in the same way. With modders leading the way, here's five Portal mods to challenge your Portal knowledge before it's time to dig back into the realm of RTX!

Portal: Crumbs Of Truth

By richyricky

Crumbs of Truth is a recently released mod which makes use of the standard test chamber elements introduced in the mainline game, but in novel ways, creating new challenges for players to solve. New elements are also introduced which change-up the usual puzzle-solving rubric, giving modern Portal players a little bit of classic and fresh mechanics to dig their teeth into.

Deep Chambers - Episode One

By Compile Bros.

Deep Chambers' first episode kicks off in the original Portal with a set of new mind-bending challenges for the player to complete, utilising new and old mechanics alike right off the bat. As well as this, the player will get the chance to dig through some good old fashioned behind-the-scenes areas, but this time, at a new facility altogether. The second episode for this mod transitioned to Portal 2, but this one's an interesting study in a mod that begin development after Portal 2 was announced, but before it hit the shelves.

Psychological Instability

By jack5db

"WARNING" is at the top of this mod's ModDB page for having hard-as-nails puzzles that are not for the faint of heart - newcomers to Portal, beware! But if you're an experienced Portal fan, Psychological Instability will bend your mind and warp your reality with a set of new puzzles challenging you to the very limit of what's possible with a Portal gun. An original soundtrack adds even more flair to this already noteworthy project.

Portal: Project Beta Revived

By CapitalLiz

Portal, like the game it shares an engine with, had a varied development history. Some of its earliest concepts placed it even more firmly in Half-Life's universe, whilst others went for a dingier but recognisable Aperture Science. This mod aims to provide a chronology of Portal's development, with fixed up maps and assets so that if you ever wanted to see what almost became of Valve's seminal puzzler, it's right there for the solving. One for the cut-content fans out there!

Portal: Prelude

By Portal: Prelude Team

It just wouldn't make sense to not direct you, whilst you're here, to the OG this article is all about - Portal: Prelude, one of the most noteworthy mods on the site and one of the most famous Portal mods of all time. Digging into Aperture Science before GLADOS was switched on, Portal: Prelude fleshes out some of the build-up to the lonely misery we see in Portal's test chambers whilst challenging experienced players with new mechanics and new puzzles to solve.

Thinking With Raytracing

Portal with RTX released on December 8th last year, pushing graphics cards and computers to their limit in demonstrating a gorgeous, fully ray-traced environment. It was also a demo for an upcoming tool we wrote about last year - NVIDIA's RTX Remix - which is designed to make it as straightforward as possible for modders to jump into the classic titles of yesteryear and give them a fresh coat of PBR/RTX-coloured paint. Portal with RTX is not where this venture leaves off, though, and on January 3rd a remaster of the famous Portal: Prelude, enhanced with this tool, was announced.

A Prelude To Something Big

Portal: Prelude RTX made its debut at NVIDIA's CES address and featured around ten seconds of footage, featuring some of the chambers unique to the mod as well as a particularly gnarly action setpiece. Two modders from the community - including Portal Prelude's original creator, Nicolas Grevet/NykO18, and also David Driver-Gomm/Kralich (that's me! sorry, back to editorial mode) - have been given early access to RTX Remix. A release date has yet to be given for the mod, though more information will surely come out as development continues.