We recently covered the launch of INFRA – A new Source-based puzzle-adventure game.

Oskari Samiola, the lead developer of Infra and founder of Finnish game studio Loiste Interactive agreed to do an interview with LambdaGeneration to talk about the game and its development.

We will also be giving away 30 copies of Infra, details about this at the end of the article.

In addition, Oskari and his team have funded LambdaGeneration’s web hosting costs for the month, we gave them a shoutout in our sidebar to say thanks!

Prospekt is a single-player, stand-alone Source Engine game out now on Steam. Set in the Half-Life universe, players take on the role of corporal Adrian Shepherd, protagonist of Opposing Force. Revived from stasis, you are tasked with assisting Gordon Freeman with his trip to Nova Prospekt during the events of Half-Life 2.

Having released only last week, it is fair to say that Prospekt has already attracted a significant amount of criticism from the community. For the purposes of this review, we have chosen to take a systematic look at its strengths, and potential for improvement, in each of the key areas that apply to mods in general.

Please note, this review contains spoilers.

Whilst many of us have been waiting very patiently (or not so patiently) for news on the next Half-Life sequel, web designer Tom Bennet has been busy putting together a rather stunningly designed retrospective in celebration of Half-Life 2’s 10th anniversary.

To call Jack “Gauss” Monahan a mapper or a modeller would be doing him and his skillset a grave injustice. He’s an artist, a game designer, and I can only assume, a few others. He occasionally posts his thoughts on his blog, Gausswerks: Design Reboot (as well as the Gausswerks forums), and his very own Twitter. Back in 2009, he served as the level design lead for the time-travelling cult hit Darkest of Days, and at the moment he’s cranking away on Animal Memory, an indie shooter of his own design, built on the Unreal engine.

He’s also a Valve enthusiast. He once did an excellent dissection of Left 4 Dead and TF2’s character designs, and long ago he created a delightful little design reboot of Half-Life, titled: “Doctor Ivan Just Won’t Die”. But we’re going to take a look at something he once cooked up way back in 2005 – a gallery of artwork and game designs based on the Half-Life 2 universe. These constitute his early “Valve Portfolio”, which represented a section of a larger job application he sent to Valve.

As you can tell from the enticing feature image, it looks really good. Well, let’s take a closer look, shall we?