Aperture Desk Job is a video game created by Valve Software and released in March 1st, 2022, serving as the Tech-Demo Game for the Steam Deck handheld console, though it could also be played on PC with a controller. Taking place at (an alternate) Aperture Science in its early years, the player is placed in the seat of a "product inspector" whose job is to test the company's products for defects while being instructed by Grady, a friendly personality core.
Aperture Desk Job contains examples of:
- And I Must Scream: As it turns out, in this universe Cave Johnson was able to survive his fatal moon-rock poisoning by uploading his mind into a computer. In a fit of panic, he killed the scientists who uploaded him and threatened to kill anyone else who came close, leading him to being isolated as an immobile robot encased in a giant head-sculpture of his own likeness for several years. He's remarkably well-adjusted given his usual personality and length of isolation, but he does wish for death. This expands even further in the credits due to being powered by the mantis colony's super reactor as his head can no longer run out of power, so he is damned to the bowels of Aperture along with the toilet drones.
- Anti-Frustration Features: If you are playing on a PC using a controller, the controls are adapted to the controller, even if they aren't labeled as such. On a Playstation 4 Controller, for instance, the trackballs can be controlled with each half of the touchpad and the desk's rocket buttons are assigned to the four shoulder buttons when able to be used.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Grady's Mark II turret toilet is covered in extraneous weapons, such as missile launchers and a machine gun, but they're not fully integrated into the design, being hastily glued to the sides of the toilet. As such, it takes only a few seconds of the player testing it before it completely destroys itself, bringing a whole warehouse worth of products down with it.
- Bait-and-Switch: The game starts with the player hearing an uplifting speech from Cave Johnson, looking forward to the genius they'll come up with. Then Grady shows up, says that's the wrong tape, and switches to that. This tape? Cave curtly telling the player to get to work or they're fired.
- Brick Joke:
- After the player gets out of jail, Grady notes the player's tattoo on their neck, and imagines getting a tattoo on himself of a robot arm. He gets said tattoo in the epilogue while in his Witness Protection disguise.
- The praying mantis colony develops a super reactor to power their miniature futuristic city. After Cave's head crashes through the floor to the bottom of Aperture, the reactor falls in along with him, powering him despite his longing for death.
- Call-Forward: Grady gets the idea for the turret toilet when an accident causes lots of ammunition to get dumped into a toilet's tank. This is exactly how bullets are put inside the bodies of Aperture Science turrets in the main games, as seen in Cave Johnson's video explanation in Portal 2.
- Cave Johnson being put into a computer and subsequently killing a few people in his resulting panic seems to foreshadow how his assistant Caroline became the basis for GLaDOS, the Aperture AI that went nuts and killed everyone in the Enrichment Center in the main Portal games.
- Chekhov's Gun: In the beginning of the game as you are introduced to your desk, among the buttons shown are the L3-L5 buttons, which aren't really used until you have to press all of them at once to activate the desk's emergency rockets during the Housewares ambush.
- Company Cross References: At the start of the game, the player passes some Half-Life-style ammunition crates.
- Correspondence Course: During the 18-month time skip, Grady took a mail course to become, and get certified as, a probation agent.
- Credits Gag: The cast list has Grady's voice actor credited twice, once as Grady and once as his witness protection persona "Gary". It also credits you (via either the name you put in during the game or your Steam username) as the player character.
- Cut the Juice: How the player finally turns off Cave Johnson's computer head. It works... aaaaaand then the backup power comes online.
- Dangerous Workplace: Sitting at a desk and inspecting if toilets work should ordinarily be a perfectly safe work environment. But since this is Aperture, the player nearly gets killed several times over by the end of the game.
- Developer's Foresight: Should you shoot the proto-turret in the middle of Cave's speech, Cave will stop and briefly chastise you before resuming. The voice lines even vary depending on when you shoot.
- Easter Egg: A few!
- While most of the game doesn't use the Deck's touchscreen, you can touch the bell call on the reception desk in the menu to ring it, and bop bobble heads that are secreted about in scenes.
- There are many additional lines of dialogue that can be heard simply by waiting around at every input in the game, including Grady coaxing the player to use the newly activated button when they only press the already-presented controller buttons. Oftentimes, Grady can go on for minutes.
- Grady's clipboard during his introduction is fully rendered with legible text. Hilariously, Grady pretty much screws up everything on both the Do list (he didn't ensure the correct Cave Johnson greeting was playing, and did not get confirmation from the player that they understand the "concept of firing light") and the Do Not list (he tells the player his name, engages in small talk, and "shares intimate personal details" with the player).
- Conversely, Grady's clipboard at the end has big checks indicating that he's followed procedures. It also includes sketches of his new tattoo.
- Behind the toilet testboard are two QR codes that require noclip-ing to see. One says "bad coffee" and the other says "Hello :)"
- When Grady asks you to take a screenshot of him with the Mark Two, pressing certain buttons actually makes him change his pose.
- After the player character gets out of prison, lowering the camera lets you see that they etched out counting lines on their desk. Similarly, checking the lower edge after being put in witness protection shows there's a sticky note with "Remember your name is CHARLIE" scribbled on it.
- After testing out the Mark Four, the mantis colony will have been advanced enough to build a city with a UFO. During the shootout with Housewares, you can shoot this UFO if you're fast enough!
- The warning screen that appears in Cave Johnson's office notes that the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States classifies Aperture Laboratories as an "experimental research facility".
- Floating Limbs: Grady's arm is a separate component from his body, giving this impression.
- Funny Background Event: On the descent to the desk, the player can see a few rooms in the distance. One of them is a classroom for cores, who are looking at a projected slide of captcha images.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: After being released from jail, the player is given the opportunity to type their name, draw their signature and, hilariously, say it to a microphone. The name you type in is then used to credit you during the credits!
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: Cave Johnson longs for death, and since he can't die on his own or kill himself in his robot body, he asks you to do it for him.
- Immune to Bullets: Cave's robot head. Once the outer clay shell is broken off, shooting the head deflects bullets all around the room.
- Improbable Weapon User: The "weapon" the player uses throughout the game is a toilet modified into a turret gun, which is controlled by the player's product inspection desk.
- Loose Canon: Writer Erik Wolpaw admitted
in an email to a fan that this game isn't actually canon to the main Portal games, and that it and other spin-offs are simply "what-ifs?" in the expanded universe.- Even with this confirmation, there are already a couple of inconsistencies in-game from the main Portal universe, such as the existence of the personality cores in 1970/80s-era Aperture and the successful uploading of Johnson into a robot body – Caroline would not have been forced into GLaDOS had this effort worked.note Also, there's no mention of Caroline.
- Mouse World: A colony of praying mantises develop a civilization in the gaps between floors that grows in complexity as the game progresses. It's destroyed when the giant Cave Johnson head falls through the floor.
- Mythology Gag: The giant chicken seen in the background during the introductory portion of the game is a reference to the original "F-STOP" version of Portal 2, where a giant chicken was planned as a boss at one point.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In developing his Mark III turret, Grady steals several appliances from the Housewares department for the player to use as target practice. Doing so leads to the Housewares finding out about Grady's invention and trying to get ahead of it, culminating in a firefight on the production line.
- In a meta sense, Grady and the product inspector are the reason the Aperture Science Turrets in the Portal games exist in the first place. Maybe.
- The Oner: The entire half-hour of gameplay is in the perspective of one long, uncut shot from the player's perspective, with transitions between chapters depicted as elevator shots going up and down.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Grady wears a fake mustache and a tattoo as part of his "Gary" persona granted by the Witness Protection Program.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Averted. Grady is nothing but pleasant and patient with the player character, and does nothing to betray you throughout the course of the short (If you don't count letting you take the fall for the destruction of the warehouse).
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: You and Grady are right back where you started with fake identities and none the richer, testing toilets in the bowels of the facility that Aperture stopped really caring about upkeep on, and Cave Johnson's release from this mortal coil was not only a failure, but he's stuck with a bunch of Grady's turrets and the super generator the mantises made, keeping him alive forever until whenever he's found again by something, anything.
- Soul-Crushing Desk Job: It's even in the game title. Your job is to inspect toilets. Hundreds of thousands of them. Lampshaded by Grady in the image quote.
- Stealing the Credit: The Housewares department finds out about Grady's turret invention and tries to get ahead of him in creating and presenting their own turrets to Cave.
- Stealth Pun: The robot Cave Johnson falls through several floors and ends up in what amounts to a cave surrounded by johns (toilets). What's more, he ends up down there because the floor caved in beneath him. Even the player isn't safe from this: the only way to progress in this section is to cave under pressure and shoot Cave as asked.
- Tech-Demo Game: This game was released to demonstrate the controls of the Steam Deck. It also shows off two useful system shortcuts for taking screenshots and bringing up the on-screen keyboard. In fact, the player's inspection desk actually has the Steam Deck logo etched into its surface.
- Time Skip: Time progresses between chapters, with some taking months or years after the other.
- Tattooed Crook: The player character gets a tattoo of a dragon holding a knife during their 18-month prison sentence.
