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The Potato Sack Reunion Tour kicks off on Steam today
Last April, Valve launched a guerrilla marketing effort for Portal 2 and promotion on select indie titles. This week Valve remembers its ARG campaign with the Potato Sack Reunion sale, which knocks half off the price of 13 individual indie titles.Games include Super Meat Boy, The Ball, Cogs, Amnesia: The Dark Descent and many more. You can either buy each individually for half-off, or grab the whole bundle for $20.
The indie origins of the Portal 2 'Potato Sack' ARG
For fans, the recent Portal 2 ARG began with the discovery of unexpected, hidden messages within the "Potato Sack" bundle of indie games. As it happens, the project's development also started with a mysterious missive -- to the developers of those games. "Dude, it was so rad," Alex Neuse, CEO of Bit.Trip Beat developer Gaijin Games told Joystiq. "[Valve] contacted a bunch of independent developers -- like a whole bunch. They contacted a bunch of us and said, 'Hey, we're thinking of doing something wacky up here at Valve, and we were wondering if you'd be interested in coming up here and talking to us about it.' And that was about it."%Gallery-121034%
Portal 2 launching slightly earlier on PC as a result of 'GLaDOS@Home'
We expected the combined time-wasting might of Portal fans to unlock Portal 2 within hours of the opening of the "GLaDOS@Home" initiative. However, at this point, it seems all the fanbase has been able to accomplish is an advance of a few hours over the normal release date of Tuesday at 10AM EST -- and, of course, a bunch of sales of some worthy indie games (the Potato Sack is sitting right under Portal 2 on the Weekly Top Sellers list). It's been really effective marketing for those games, basically! As it stands, the collective Potato Sack-playing efforts of everyone participating will unlock the game at approximately 4:30AM EST on Tuesday. However, there might be a curveball. The "Auxiliary Power" counter, which adds up new "potato" achievements found in each game, is now counting down rapidly, toward ... something! If it's a timer, it will elapse around 10PM EST this evening. Meanwhile, some fans are taking matters, and potatoes, into their own hands, organizing the mailing of actual potatoes to Valve HQ. Most of the games in the Potato Sack have hit their maximum playtime for the event, so if you want to help out by playing games, first check the GLaDOS@Home page to make sure you're playing for a purpose.
Portal 2 unlocking early -- if you play the Potato Sack games long enough
If you thought the Portal 2 countdown clock would lead to an early release of the game, you were right about the concept, but maybe your timeline was a bit off. The countdown, upon elapsing, opened a site for "GLaDOS@Home," which claims to need your computational cycles to facilitate an early release of Portal 2. Functionally, that means "the more time people spend playing the Potato Sack games, the sooner before its April 19 release date Portal 2 will come out." Don't have the Potato Sack -- a collection of 13 indie games, recently updated with Portal-themed content -- yet? Get it here for $38.65, And think of it this way -- you cleared your weekend to play Portal, so now you have time for these other 13 games.
Portal 2 now pre-loading; Portal 2 stuff unlocking in Potato Sack games
The countdown to next week's release of Portal 2 continues and, in this day of digitally delivered games, there's no better sign that it's really happening than this: the pre-load. For those of you eager to return to Aperture Science and reacquaint yourselves with GLaDOS as soon as possible, buy the game on Steam and get that client downloaded. Speaking of downloading things through Steam, if you purchased the Potato Sack bundle –remember, "13 hit indie games, 75% off"? – you can expect many of those to prompt you for an update. You see, Valve and those sneaky indie devs have been planting Portal 2 hints all over those games; today, things get a little more explicit. Bit.Trip Beat (above) has a Portal 2-themed level, GLaDOS and all; Killing Floor (gallery below) has some Portal 2-themed environments; and The Ball has seven new "test chambers" featuring the "Edgeless Artifact Cube." Also updated: Wonderful End of the World, Cogs, Defense Grid, RUSH, AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, AudioSurf, Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Toki Tori. You'll find a video of Bit.Trip Beat in action after the break. Got a video of another updated game? Share it in the comments and we'll update this post.%Gallery-121038%
Valve Potato Sack bundle hides possible Portal 2 ARG
It would appear that Valve's "potato sack" bundle is hiding something beneath the surface, much like the hidden ARG found in Portal after Valve updated it. A wiki page chronicles all of the discovered changes so far, which include some hidden glyphs and, if Razer equipment is detected, a message that reads "1...2...3...Drop That Beat (Like An Ugly Baby)." That odd phrase, of course, translates to "Secret Message." Common speculation is that this has something to do with Portal 2 (the Razer tie-in lends credence to that). Nothing has been confirmed yet, and folks are still finding stuff -- if you discover more interesting info, feel free to contact us! [Thanks, Arslan]
