Level designer Dario Casali has started a YouTube series called Half-Life 25 Year Developer Commentary, in which he plays through the original game sharing stories on how it was made.
The gameplay is accompanied by items from Casali’s collection, including old diary entries, screenshots, photos and documents from the time of the game’s development.
Early into the first episode, Casali shares a document listing potential names for the game. According to Casali, when he joined Valve the game was already codenamed Quiver, but the studio was trying to think of another title for the game.
At the time of the document’s publication, the most popular potential titles for the game were Bent, Dirt, Lead, Pressure, Pressure Chamber, Pressure Pit or Screwed.
A secondary list of titles that were “still in the running” was also provided, and Half-Life was part of this list.
However, also in the list are Fallout, Free Radical and variations on Crysis (including Cry.Sys, Crisis, CrYsis and Krisis).