potato-sack posts

With the Portal 2 ARG event now completed, some of the Potato Sack indie game developers involved in the unique marketing event for Valve's puzzle-shooter are taking about their involvement. Two Tribes, who had two games in the the ARG (Toki Tori and RUSH) posted up an article on their web site that talks about putting the Portal 2 themed content into their games over the length of the ARG.

Othe developers like Gaijin Games (Bit.Trip Beat) and Hidden Path Entertainment (Defense Grid The Awakening) also talk about their work on the ARG which started out with Valve inviting all the developers last December to work on the project. The result was a ton of extra free content for all 13 games (levels, puzzles, and more). Much of it will remain in the game after the ARG is finished.

Portal 2's PC release time on Steam has been cut down by several hours thanks thanks to efforts of gamers who have been playing the 13 Potato Sack indie games with Portal 2 content. A few minutes ago, the ninth game completed its computations in the GLaDOS@Home web site. As a result the release of Portal 2 is now set at the moment for 2:10 am Eastern time.

But there are still four more games (Defense Grid: The Awakening, Killing Floor, Super Meat Boy and Amnesia: The Dark Descent) still left to unlock and at the moment it's debatable if player efforts will be enough to shave off any more time. It looks like community efforts are concentrating on one game at a time (Killing Floor is the main focus) but we will see if that will be enough to unlock Portal 2 earlier than 2:10 am.

Valve has just revealed that the PC version of Portal 2, its puzzle-shooter sequel game, will be made available to play via Steam early if enough people purchase the Potato Sack bundle of 13 indie games and then play those games. A special web site has been launched to track how much time players are playing the 13 games in the indie bundle. This special deal will hopefully make the full version of Portal 2 available to play to the public much earlier than its previously announced release date of April 19.

If you have yet to purchase the Potato Sack bundle or Portal 2, Valve has launched a new bundle combining both into one bundle for $78.71.

Update: It looks like if you find the hidden potatos in each of the indie games in the Potato Sack it will boost your CPU power and thus boost our chances of playing Portal 2 early.

We though that this week's Portal 2-related updates to the various indie games in the Potato Sack sale bundle might be the end of the massive alternate reality game that Valve is apparently in charge of to promote its upcoming puzzle shooter sequel. But now it looks like the ARG may have broken out of the indie games and started to infect Steam community members.

PC Gamer (via the extensive Valve ARG Wiki) shows that online chats with normally human Steam community members have now turned ... strange. Furthermore, those chats have turned into conversations with the still mysterious being known as the Console. Even the fan-run Steamcast podcast has apparently become part of the ARG. Fans who decided to create a spectrogram of the latest podcast have found a hidden message as well. Where and when will this all end?

Portal 2 is now less than a week ago and now people who purchase the PC version of Valve's puzzle-shooter game via Steam can now go ahead and start pre-loading the game, allowing gamers to get a head start on the game's download before it goes live on April 19.

If you have bought the game and also bought the Potato Sack bundle of 13 indie games (all of which now have some kind of Portal 2 related content) you will also unlock an exclusive Portal 2 co-op robot skin to use in the game. That's in addition to the previously announced potato hat for Team Fortress 2. The Potato Sack bundle ends when Portal 2 is released next week.

That is if it is released next week. Kotaku speculates that clues in the ARG are leading some to speculate that the game could be released a few days earlier on Friday, April 15.

Valve's big Portal 2 ARG, also known as the Potato Sack, continues to expand. Today more updates for some of the indie games involved in the sale-ARG went live today. One of them was The Ball, the puzzle-action game that has some comparisons to the Portal series.

The new update added a new level to The Ball, Aperture, that adds about an hour of extra gameplay. More than that, the new level has you combating Portal turrets. Another Portal-themed level has been added to the zombie shooter Killing Floor. It's by far the most blatant cross over between the Portal series and the Potato Sack indie games yet. By the way all of those games are still on sale. We wonder why.

Update: Audiosurf's update today included some Portal themed levels and artwork. Yes, Audiosurf. You can check out an image from the game after the jump:

We were wondering what was going on at Valve this week when it didn't have any major sales on the Steam download service but late today Steam finally showed its hand. The service has cut the price of 13 indie games under the new Potato Sack bundle.

This new bundle has the following games on sale for 50 percent off their already low prices:

1... 2... 3... KICK IT!
AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
AudioSurf
BIT.TRIP BEAT
Cogs
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Killing Floor
RUSH
Super Meat Boy
The Ball
The Wonderful End of the World
Toki Tori

If you buy all 13 games at once you will be able to get them all for just $38.72, a 75 percent price cut from their normal prices if sold separately. There's no word on when this sale will end.