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Julien Couvreur's programming blog and more

First person puzzle game with portals

 

Check out the trailer video of Portal on YouTube (or a hi-def version), an upcoming mini-game from Valve. It's an innovative first-person platformer that integrates the concept of portals to extend a traditional puzzle gameplay.
The goal of the game is to escape from an experimental maze, by leveraging a device that can create two connected portals onto most surfaces (walls, floor and ceiling).

It turns out that some students made a prototype of this concept, as part of a game class project at DigiPen. The resulting game, Narbacular Drop, is available for download along with some challenging custom maps.
Apparently, Valve hired the entire team after seeing the prototype.

Narbacular Drop already demonstrates most of the cool features shown in the Portal trailer. Although playing it made me feel dizzy at moments, it's worth trying.
Portal will use the Source engine that Half-Life 2 is built on, so it will have great graphics and solid physics, as you can see in some additional in-game footage. I'm really impatient for its release (packaged with Half-Life 2: Episode 2, on PC, XBOX 360 and PS3).

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Nice concept. The half life physics engine would make it worth the $$. Any idea if it would run on PSP?

Posted by: ajitomatix (August 25, 2006 12:02 AM) ______________________________________

I haven't heard of any PSP plans.
But since Narbacular Drop is already lots of fun, even with simpler graphics, I don't see what would prevent PSP or even Xbox or PS2 versions of this concept.

Posted by: Julien Couvreur (August 25, 2006 08:22 AM) ______________________________________

I love the way this game is set up, should be interesting to see just how many levels it has to play.Really awsome trailer for the game , the marketing team should get a bonus for putting together this footage.

Posted by: kary (August 28, 2006 06:06 AM) ______________________________________

Narbacular Drop is already lots of fun, even with simpler graphics; it should be interesting to see just how many levels it has to play

Posted by: erin (September 19, 2006 07:24 AM)
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