Portal Stories: Mel is a fan-made mod for the ever-so-great Portal 2 made by Valve. It is a prequel to the original game, and for the most part, it is lore friendly and actually feels like a portal game made by Valve. It starts by putting the player in an underground research laboratory named Aperture Science once run by the great Cave Johnson. This facility was always looking into the future and trying to make the newest and best discoveries in the 70s. Now it’s the 21^st century and Cave Johnson is long gone but the facility still runs. Actually, the only things left in the facility are the robots and a select few test subjects that remain in cryogenic sleep. The game starts the player in a train heading towards the facility. She is the only one, and the only thing to guide her is the pre-recorded voice clips from Cave Johnson. As the player makes her way through the sign up to be a test subject, she soon finds herself being sent to a cryogenic sleep waking 30 years later only to be put to work by the robots she meets. A small robot, called a core, used for keeping the facility running well has fallen from one of the rails that allows it to move throughout the facility. The player has to help it get back on the rail and the robot agrees to help the player break out of the facility. All seems good until the main control bot tries to stop the player and that is where the story sets in. From that point on, the player and core have to shut down the controller named Agus.

For a fan-made game, I wouldn’t expect much, but when it has puzzles that make the player think about them for weeks and a story that can actually be compared to the game it’s based on in quality and story, it deserves a high praise and approval.