Recent TikTok posts have been nothing short of bizarre, including a very early prototype of the original version of Half-Life, courtesy of level designer Brett Johnson.

Discovered on Twitter earlier today by The Tax Collector Man, Johnson has recently released some early development of Valve's debut shooter. As noted, this appears to be long before Half-Life established its visual identity, and the concrete hallways are more reminiscent of Quake than the more down-to-earth facilities of the final game.

Johnson's TikTok feed, which he joined shortly after Valve's founding in 1996, shows occasional short clips of cut content about his work on the genre-defining FPS and answers questions about the game's design (Half-Life's infamous Xen (including two parts on chapters).

Today's post is the most in-depth delve into unpublished content he has done to date. In the comments, he notes that this clip is from a time when he was still "exploring styles" and using the very first photo-referenced textures. The segment was intended to represent an industrial park hidden just behind the lab, and it employs a more abstract architectural style typical of Id's shooters.

Johnson states that more of this level was discarded than was used in the final game. However, even if these halls did not appear in the main story of Black Mesa, they are a fascinating reminder that "Half-Life" did not spontaneously emerge from nothing. It will be interesting to see if Johnson posts more such prototypes in the future.