F-Stop would have been the prequel to Portal. Now, we can get a bit of insight into the project that never came to be.

In around 2008 (after the launch of The Orange Box, containing Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, and Portal), Valve started their Directed Design Experiments project, with which Gabe Newell, the head of Valve, wanted to reignite creativity within the studio. One of them, according to the Half-Life Wiki, was F-Stop, which became such a success within Valve that it was tapped to be as a prequel to Portal (it was the original pitch for Portal 2!), which was never completed for unknown reasons, and outside some Reddit topics, the project is no longer brought up.

Why? The answer is simple: Valve doesn’t talk about it. (We already got used to them not liking three – just think of Half-Life, Team Fortress, Portal, or Dota…) LuncHouse Software and their upcoming YouTube series enter the picture at this point. Exposure will not only explain how F-Stop was supposed to work, but we will also get gameplay of the never-finished Portal prequel.

„The mechanics are not based on speculation or hearsay. Instead, Exposure uses the original, official code from Valve’s own F-STOP, or (as it was properly named) Aperture Camera. [Valve gave] explicit permission to continue with our project using their original code,” the video’s description reads. Going by it, it looks similar to Superliminal (see embedded Twitter video), a first-person puzzle game that bends our perspective. And LunchHouse has so much to show and say that they plan five, or even six videos, according to Tristan Halcomb from the studio, who told it to USGamer.

Quoting LunchHouse, they have yet to „discuss the future of the project a bit more with Valve to see what opportunities we may have going forward before committing to a follow-up, so we’re working based on their schedule to some extent.” Follow the project on its website, as there’s no release date set yet.

Source: PCGamer

Size is ruled by perspective in the bizarre dreamworld of Superliminal https://t.co/yQKOIPgIxc pic.twitter.com/Os0y7emLtT

— PC Gamer (@pcgamer) October 23, 2019

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