What started off as an independent title released by a team
of DigiPen students, resulted in a spiritual successor that is considered as
one of the most critically acclaimed titles released in the past decade or so.
The beginning of Valve’s Portal
kicks things off by presenting the player with the simple concept of movement
(even though arguably you would say at this point the WASD keys are almost
instinctual to the player), in which case it is a classic example of Instructive
Level Design. The player are encouraged to tackle the challenges ahead of them
rather than being instructed explicitly on controls and certain concepts and
mechanics like a tutorial level would. Portal has been praised for its concise level design, wherein the
developers made conscious decisions to design Portal’s levels (in the form of
separate test chambers) in a way that it is challenging, rewarding and fun
without compromising the overall complexity of its puzzles.
When Portal does introduce a new concept to the player, on
top of allowing the player to discover it by simply jumping in and
experimenting, there are symbols that are used repeatedly to signal the player
of certain mechanics present in the present chamber. For example, personally I
have failed to consider the fact that you can die when being hit by a flying
flaming projectile despite knowing that an icon presenting a person being
slammed in the face by a spherical object travelling at high speed does have
negative connotations.
Fig 1. At the beginning of each test chamber there are icons to hint the player as to the types of challenges that will be implemented.
These icons are still complementary to the more streamlined
design of Portal’s puzzles however, because what Portal excels in in terms of
level design is the implementation of what game designers call an antepiece. Because
when the player appears to be doing a seemingly a fairly mundane task, such as
simply picking a weighted cube up to place upon a pressure plate (button more
like) to open a door, these mundane tasks are more often than will reappear in
later chambers as part of larger and more complex tasks.
In conjunction to the application of antepiece however, one of
the key concepts presented by Portal is repetition, not in the sense of
presenting the same puzzle element in a boring ‘same thing over and over’ sort
of manner, but as a method that Valve developers have dubbed as “mechanical
reminders”. Where antepiece serves as a means for the game to expose the player
to new concepts which will then be useful at a later time, a mechanical
reminder serves to simply remind.
To sum up, a great example shown in the demo of Portal is
test chamber number 10. Here the player who should already be familiar with the
concept of how the portals work, is introduced to the idea of ‘flinging’. This
concept in itself is in itself quite clever due to the fact that there is that
added layer of simple common sense and a basic understanding of physics (in an
arguably physics defying game yes) to solve this multi-layered puzzle chamber.
Fig 2. Here is the first portion of Test Chamber 10, which introduces the player to the basic concept of 'flinging' by utilizing a stationary orange exit portal.
The chamber is divided in a couple of sections, the first
being a simple action of creating a portal entry portal (as the player is only
able to manipulate blue at this stage) so that they are introduced to the
concept of flinging themselves further than they could previously to reach the
next portion of the chamber. By then the player will most probably figure out
that the speed in which they reach upon entering the portal affects the
trajectory and speed upon leaving the orange portal. Therein now lies the
question upon approaching the next portion of the chamber, if I were to just
pop a blue portal all the way down there, and drop from this distance, will it
be fast enough to propel me over to the other side of the room?
Fig 3 & 4. The next couple of portions in the test chamber teaches the player that falling from a higher position results in the player vaulting out of the exit portals at a faster velocity.
The way Portal encourages the player to think outside of
laws constricted strictly within the presented game world is certainly one of
the main reasons why Portal had captured the attention and hearts of its
players. Its execution and design, while simple and easy to learn, presents the
sort of complexity that does present its fair bit of challenges, but the reward
is definitely sweet.
Except for the cake.
Never trust the cake.
