There is another Portal game on the horizon… kind of.  Bridge Constructor Portal is more a marriage of the mechanics of Portal and the concept of Bridge Constructor than a true addition to the Portal pantheon. Most of us, especially PC gamers, have seen Bridge Constructor in one way or another, if it wasn’t from a Youtuber, it was from a Streamer, or it was a gif or webm from a board. It’s a silly game, one which isn’t overly complicated and can be pretty fun, and now we are getting a Portalized version.

The first thing to point out is that this is NOT a Valve game. Reddit has already savaged the new game for daring to pretend it was a Valve property, something which Jim Sterling recently covered as well. While the trailers definitely seem to embrace all things Portal, it’s difficult to say if the newest Portal-feature will have the same flair as the original Portals. After all, the writers for Portal 1 and 2 have long since left Valve, and with one company on publishing and another on development, it would be difficult if not impossible for the game to capture the humor of the original titles even if GLaDOS is back.

However, there is some street cred behind the team. The developer, Clockstone Studio, has worked on every Bridge Constructor to date, so Valve didn’t exactly outsource the project. The publisher is also Headup Games, which most PC gamers would recognize even if they couldn’t put a name to it. It’s the same team behind The Binding of Isaac, Terraria, and Limbo. The odds are that the game will be well made, but the odds of it living up to expectations are fairly low.

The actual game does look vastly better than the original iterations despite critics saying it is a simple re-skin. Looking at the pictures side by side, it’s hard to argue that they look much the same at all. Bridge Constructor Portal looks vastly more chaotic and at the same time clean than the original. It’s hard to tell if the physics engine will be more Bridge Constructor or Portal, either. On the one hand, the fun of Bridge Constructor is in the silly physics, but Valve has also made a name for themselves by quite literally inventing the physics engine that all others used, so there is certainly going to be a question of whether the game has the silliness of the original or the perfection of Portal.

That said, most of the criticisms of the title thus far are just frustrations that Valve is not releasing a new title. Valve has certainly lent out their name and brand before, so this is nothing new. Poker Night featured both the Heavy from TF2 and GLaDOS in different iterations, and TF2 has even crossed over with Monopoly and Surgeon Simulator. So any complaints about the Portal license being given to a developer are several years late.

Still, it is understandable why the masses are so angry. In a 2017 AMA, Gabe Newell did say that Valve was currently working on a single-player game, and yet no details have been revealed at all about this game, leading many fans to wonder if he meant tie-in properties like this when he touted a single-player experience. Also, because of Valve’s extremely quiet tendencies, there’s no answer if this is what Gabe meant, or if it was something more. For now, fans will just have to settle for what they can get. We’ll know in a few days if this lives up to the Portal legacy.