Valve’s Portal - Alice makes her own Wonderland
As part of Valve’s summer announcement fanfare, they mentioned a game called “Portal”, a commercial update of the free student game “Narbacular Drop” by Nuclear Monkey Software. Built around the interaction of different Portals, it allows the user to weild a “Portal gun”, allowing the creation of portal entry and exit points on different surfaces. These portals allow objects (including the player) to pass between them, allowing the player to progress through each level by disabling obstacles and reaching the exit. It reminds me of Peter Molyneux’s “The Room”, which he demonstrated at GDC last year.
The trailer below definitely explains things better:
Thanks again fun-motion and Edge.
July 21st, 2006 at 5:16 am
Great stuff! I’m playing through Prey at the moment and that handles static (pre-created) portals really well, so actually wielding a portal gun should be seriously fun.
July 22nd, 2006 at 9:36 am
Ah yeah look forward to trying Prey out, got the demo downloaded on the 360 - looks SO disorientating from the videos ive seen!
October 18th, 2007 at 4:15 am
[...] I’ve just finished Valve’s Portal, and I’ve got to say wow. This was on my radar to pick up and look at (I mentioned it a while ago), but it has exceeded my expectations and then some. The trailer shows off some of the core mechanics, but its the way that they are chained together on later levels is breathtaking (the first 16 of the 18 levels are basically a tutorial, the last one is far longer but the whole game is only 3 hours long). I’ve been flitting between this and Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, and while the puzzles in Zelda make me exclaim “Aha! Great puzzle” and perhaps pat myself on the head, some of the ingenuity paraded by Portal makes me want to hold some sort of festival in Trafalgar square, with me on a big throne and pictures of the game’s designers on huge spinning billboards. Its that good. [...]