Valve Announces "The Lab" - A Compilation of VR Experiments Set in Aperture Science

[-smash-]

Valve has announced today a new set of VR experiments called The Lab. Featured in the Aperture Science universe, these experiments offer "multiple ways to enjoy room-scale VR." The Lab will be free of charge on Steam and is slated to release this spring. More information about The Lab will be given during next week's GDC.

Here's Valve's official announcement of The Lab:

VALVE ANNOUNCES THE LAB

March 7, 2016 -- Valve has announced plans to debut "The Lab," a compilation of new VR experiments, at next week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA. Set in a pocket universe of Aperture Science, "The Lab" offers multiple ways to enjoy room-scale VR. It will be offered free of charge via Steam this spring. More information will be made available next week at GDC.

 

[Ennui]

Expected something like this and looking forward to hearing more details. I'm getting really damn excited about the Vive.

 

[User With No Name]

Exciting! I had a hunch Valve was crafting a VR game of their own, but I didn't expect to see it so soon. So what's this "pocket universe of Aperture Science" that the game will be set in? Is it the universe Bendy is from?

 

[-smash-]

I'm not sure this is a "game." Sounds like similar demos to Robot Repair all rolled into one package.

I took "pocket universe" to mean a "little relevance to the world at large."

 

[Omnomnick]

I'm not sure this is a "game." Sounds like similar demos to Robot Repair all rolled into one package.

I took "pocket universe" to mean a "little relevance to the world at large."

Portal 2's final DLC introduced the multi-verse, which featured an infinite number of pocket universes. While it was never used much in Portal 2, it gives Valve the narrative freedom to do just about whatever they want with Aperture and the universe without messing up the main "canonical" storylines of Portal and Half-Life.

The Lab clearly takes place across numerous several of these universes, with one of the server cabs in Robot Repair even mentioning this directly (including in builds that are well over a year old).