Valve, creators of games such as Half Life and Portal, have announced that new downloadable content (DLC) for the award-winning Portal 2 will be released on May 8th. The DLC is titled the “Perpetual Testing Initiative” and will be available for both Mac and PC.

The DLC contains a “puzzle maker”, which will allow Portal 2 players to easily create puzzles utilizing aspects of the game, such as buttons, movement gels, or companion cubes. The puzzle maker will also allow players to publish their created maps to the Steam Workshop, where puzzles can be browsed, voted on, and downloaded for play. Valve said selected puzzles would be automatically downloaded and installed inside Portal 2.

Valve has already released Portal 2 Authoring Tools that allow users to create Portal 2 maps and puzzles, but the “Perpetual Testing Initiative” will simplify the process and allow less technically sophisticated puzzle-makers to create their Portal 2 puzzles.

The photo above was posted in the official Portal 2 blog back in October 2011, but probably doesn’t represent what the DLC actually contains. That blog entry was the first announcement that a simplified puzzle creator would be released. Many of the features announced today for the “Perpetual Testing Initiative” were mentioned back then, including the community sharing and map rating.

And if you can’t wait two weeks for more Portal goodness, check out this Skyrim mod created by Valve. It mods The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim so that the “space” core from Portal 2 will follow your character around in Skyrim. I’m sure that will be enjoyable for around 10 minutes before you start whacking it around with your mace due to annoyance.