The Lab is a 2016 virtual reality game created by
Valve Software. The game is set in an
Aperture Science pocket universe and includes several mini-games.
The Lab contains examples of:
- Artillery Game:
- Slingshot involves launching personality cores at piles of boxes and explosives.
- Longbow is an archery game where the player tries to stop a horde of Bendies from raiding your castle.
- Auction: The Auction Core tries to auction off a bag of garbage.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Pushing the button on the Xortex arcade machine makes it display Valve's logo and the game's credits.
Announcer: Analyzing... Fourth wall destroyed. Please note that these walls are very expensive. They will be deducted from your pay.
- Bullet Hell: Xortex involves maneuvering your ship to avoid lots of bullets and lasers.
- Confetti Drop: Pulling the VR alarm in Valve Demo Room 2, an Easter Egg in Postcards, causes a bunch of balloons to drop from the ceiling, which the player can pop to scatter confetti.
- Evil Brit: Invoked by the Supervillain Core, who uses a British accent. However, it turns out he's actually Canadian.
- Evil Laugh: The Ghost Story Core gives one after informing the player he lied about working for the post office.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: The Calibration Core. It explains that its only function is to be calibrated, which is ostensibly what you've been doing to the cores. After needlessly elaborating on this point for a while, we get to this dialogue:
Calibration Core: Once the Calibration Core has been calibrated, the Calibration Core will have no purpose. Calibration of the Calibration Core may result in an existential crisis for the Calibration Core. [pause] Once calibrated, the Calibration Core will descend into a deep, deep, deep, deep, deep depression.note At this point it starts asking you to calibrate it incorrectly, then not to calibrate it at all.
- Game Within a Game:
- Xortex is a futuristic arcade game in Pocket Universe 08.
- In addition, the arcade machine for Xortex can be played to shoot at the credits and defeat Tracer Core.
- Postcards has an Easter Egg where, when the player puts the plug in the valve it transports the player to a Valve Demo Room, which has a VR headset which can be put on
- Genre Shift: Secret Shop takes the player to the fantasy item shop from Dota 2.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: The Core That Goes By The Book says, "I'll see you in heaven" when launched.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The Climate Change Awareness Core's job is to cause climate change so that it can raise awareness of it, a jab at Al Gore.
- "Not So Different" Remark: The Supervillain Core tries to recruit the player into destroying the warehouse by saying that they're both prisoners of it. He later tries to walk back this comparison when he realizes how they'll be destroying the warehouse.
- Pocket Dimension: The game is set in Pocket Universe 08, and Robot Repair features a dimension in a drawer.
- Reverse Psychology: The Reverse Psychology Core tries to use this trope to manipulate the player.
- Robot Dog: The robot slinky dog FetchBot can play fetch in Postcards.
- Sdrawkcab Speech: Xortex Core's audio is mostly reversed speech, aside from its Evil Laughter, where he taunts the player.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: The Useful Core in The Lab's minigame "Slingshot" assures you that it is not a gateway to the netherworld, and that calibrating it will not cause it to "unfold into a shrieking hellmouth from which demons will flood into your world and turn it into a wasteland."
- Tech-Demo Game: Showcases some uses of virtual reality capabilities.
- Unwinnable by Design: Robot Repair seems to be GLaDOS's way of playing with human recruits. The player is given a set of confusing instructions on how to repair the robot, but there's no way to actually complete them.
- Year X: Xortex is set in the year 26XX.
