Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game

Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game is a Portal board game released by Cryptozoic and Valve.

The official box art for Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game.

The publisher description is as follows: ^[1]

With a grinding of gears and some uneasy rumbling, Aperture Laboratories has resumed testing! Your team of test subjects has entered the Lab and is ready to perform all sorts of important, dignified, and dangerous testing procedures...all in the pursuit of cake! It's a fun and funny fast-paced fight to the finish — and by finish, we mean your team probably died.

The Lab is an ever-changing conveyor belt of death and dismemberment. But SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS must be at the forefront of the mind of every good test subject. In Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game, a game of constantly shifting area control and cardplay by the creators of the Portal and Portal 2 video games, players move and Portal their test subjects to various chambers in the lab. At the end of each player's turn, one of the chambers on the end of the lab gives way, plunging all test subjects on it into oblivion. But should your test subjects have numbered greater than all others in the falling chamber, they earn you some wonderful parting gifts, which can include cake.

Yet these moist slices of industrial-grade cake must be stored in the lab where they are at risk of falling into said oblivion. Not to mention that your jealous opponents can pick up your cake and move it closer to that precipice. He who has acquired the most cake when a team has lost its last test subject wins. Do you risk gathering cake early for a quick win? Or do you bide your time and wait until you can protect it better? Win the game and prove the cake was no lie.

Gameplay

Gameplay begins by connecting 15 "test chamber" cardboard pieces with each other. Each player places 4 "test subjects" onto the "new side" (left) of the board. Rounds consist of playing an "Aperture Card" (card with benefits such as incinerating cake), moving one or more test subjects, activating a test chamber on the "old side" (right) of the board by placing the GLaDOS token on it, and deactivating it by removing it, flipping it, and putting it on the new side of the board. Any test subjects get the respective rewards on the cardboard test chamber when it is flipped, and when deactivated, all test subjects die.

The gameplay manual can be found is available online.^[2]

Contents and Game Pieces

A showcase of the Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game contents

The game contents include:

1 Manual
1 Resource Board
18 Test Chamber Panels
20 Aperture Cards/Characters
4 Oversized Portal Gun Cards
1 Turret Miniature
1 Companion Cube Miniature
2 Portal Tokens
1 GLaDOS Token
32 Test Subject Miniatures
32 Cake Slice Miniatures
1 Free Portal 2 Steam Activation Code

Game pieces

Test Subject miniature game pieces. The pieces are visually similar to Bendy and exist in the four player colours of yellow, purple, blue, and red.

Turret miniature game piece

Companion cube miniature game piece

GLaDOS token game piece. Unlike the companion cube and turret, which are made of plastic, this game piece is printed cardboard held up on a plastic stand.