Set in the Portal universe, the player controls a character that has to complete several tests involving hand and finger gestures while being guided by personality cores.

He declares the experiment either a success or failure depending on the player's choice and places the cores in sleep mode as the test concludes.

[3][4] When Valve invited Cloudhead Games to attend their SteamVR reveal summit in late 2014, the company's staff decided that the use of roomscale was the best way to see VR's future.

[9] Aperture Hand Lab was developed to showcase the features and controls of Valve Index VR headset,[10][11] particularly concentrating on finger tracking.

[10] Valve provided the development studio with Portal materials,[12] letting them use the assets as inspiration and a point of reference to make sure the right world-building atmosphere was created.

[2] After being shown the game's original plot and personality cores, Valve hired Erik Wolpaw and Jay Pinkerton to rewrite the story.

[18] Moore, however, wrote that the finger tracking technique of Valve Index rather felt like a proof of concept than an innovative transformation of the gameplay.

[14] Andy Chalk of PC Gamer said that the HTC Vive compatibility feels like "a wasted effort" considering that the headset does not support Valve Index controllers.