PUNT: Rebirth

**PUNT: Rebirth** was a single-player Portal-like puzzle mod being developed by Corrupted Studios somewhere between early 2015 to early 2016. Development on the PUNT: Rebirth 'stopped' when the mod had a soft reboot in the form of PUNT (2016). It is a continuation of Reepblue's PUNT.

## Description

*PUNT: Rebirth is a single player, first person puzzle game in the vein of the Portal series and Quantum Conundrum. In game, you're equipped with the Enhanced Cylindrical Handling Operating Device, otherwise known as the E.C.H.O. This device, also known as the PUNT Gun, gives you the ability to launch yourself, as well as other objects, through the air, manipulate basic physics, and interact with various machinery.* - PUNT: Rebirth Greenlight Page

## Plot

**PUNT: Rebirth** is set within the testing facility for Harmonics Laboratories, the industry leader in home appliances, medicine and technology, who is conducting dozens of experiments to reach their goal to eliminate all crime, disease and achieve world peace within the next 10 years. You play as a subject who has no previous memory of who they are, and are tasked with testing Harmonics' various experimental technology using your **Enhanced Cyclical Handling Operating Device** (or E.C.H.O, for short.). Despite this, the subject will secretly try to escape the facility and reach the outside world.

## Development

### Early 2015

Initially, the game had a very different plot. It was actually set in Aperture Science, with Aperture setting up a 'virtual testing initiative' to massively reduce test production costs. This iteration used the original PUNT's simplistic style, but it lasted a very short time using it as it was very quickly criticized for being extremely unpleasing to look at. This iteration also semed like it was going to have a GLaDOS-equivalent known as **D.E.L.T.A**, but not much information was revealed about it.

### Mid 2015 - Late 2015

This iteration seemed to finally decouple itself from the Half-Life/Portal universe, but aside from that the story hadn't changed much. In this version of the plot, you played as a clone of an Harmonics Laboratories inside a simulation set up and controlled by D.E.L.T.A. You were put in a simulation to go through a various series of tests using the PUNT Gun, a theoretical weapon capable of distorting gravity around it to manipulate matter. The clone is property of this Harmonics Laboratories and is not intended to be released, but the clone is regardless still motivated to escape the simulation and reach the outside world. However, later in the development of this iteration, the idea of the tests being part of a simulation and D.E.L.T.A were scrapped. This iteration of punt seemed to use a heavily modified variation of the retrofuturistic artstyle in the original PUNT (See: Retrofuturism (PUNT: Rebirth)). Development on this iteration didn't seem to be fully organized yet, with maps being developed at random and a demo being in production despite the mod not being in a very developed state.

### Early 2016

In this iteration, the style of the game seemed to switch to the futuristic style to make it resemble Reepblue's PUNT more. Reepblue began to contribute to Rebirth in this iteration, allowing the developers to make direct use of the assets from the original PUNT. Previously, all of the elements in the game were made out of hammer logic, as the source branch they were in didn't allow them to make code changes, however, since the project had moved to Source SDK 2013 in late 2015, a lot of the mechanics that were previously made out of hammer logic were turned into entities, such as the cubes. The developers also stated that they wanted to focus more on moddability. The mod created a greenlight page somewhere in April and the team had created a demo to gain enough aproval to become Greenlit. The demo was distributed to youtubers and the team had released an official gameplay video as the last one they had uploaded was extremely out of date. The plan seemed to have succeeded, with Rebirth becoming greenlit on the 28th.

### Late 2016

**Main Article: PUNT (2016)**

In this iteration, PUNT had returned to the retrofuturistic style once again, this time definitively. The game had also changed it's name from **PUNT: Rebirth** into **PUNT**, with approval from Reepblue. The developers had managed to show off a demo at Steam Dev Days, whose gameplay footage did not become public until 2017. This iteration seemed to collapse due team infighting, but not much is known as to why this iteration actually collapsed.

### 2018 - Present

**Main Article: PUNT (2019)**

A year or so shortly after PUNT (2016)'s collapse, Tristan decided to revive the project once again, this time as a single developer. Unlike other iterations, this one was initially focused on gameplay, probably so that the game could be completed faster. This continued to be the case until a team seemed to properly organize somewhere in 2019. This iteration is currently still active.

## Gallery

A section of a chamber in the 2015 retrofuturistic styleA chamber in the 2015 retrofuturistic styleA chamber in the 2015 retrofuturistic styleA chamber in the 2016 futuristic styleA chamber in the 2016 futuristic style
## References

1. ↑ -0

https://web.archive.org/web/20160408010238/https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=394046362
2. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20150225052134/http://www.moddb.com/mods/punt-rebirth
3. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20150630023824/http://www.moddb.com/mods/punt-rebirth
4. ↑ https://www.moddb.com/mods/punt-rebirth/news/punt-development-as-of-112615
5. ↑ https://www.moddb.com/mods/punt-rebirth/news/punt-rebirth-has-been-greenlit-dev-as-of-42816