The genre of puzzle games seems to be fading away. As in full-on high production values puzzle games, this doesn’t include flash games. There were hundreds of miniature arcade games, but nothing really special. Then came The Orange Box — a collection of 5 games from Valve. One of them was Portal. Valve actually hired a bunch of graduates for this game 2 years ago. And they’ve developed something totally new and unique.

Play the flash version of Portal here.

In Portal, you use two guns as your weapons. One make the entrance portal, the other makes the exit portal - or vice-versa, doesn’t really matter. And the way the level design is built around the portal concept is just amazing. It might seem really simple at first, but when you start realizing that stuff like gravity, momentum and speed play a huge part in the game, it starts to become a real challenge. It’s just amazing.

Although the game isn’t really that long, my superior mind could handle it at around 1 hour and 20-something minutes. Casual players can get stuck in Portal for 2-3 hours or so. It’s more like a tech demo for more things to come. You’re this test subject in a weird lab that has references to Black Mesa. Seems that the researchers there were trying to beat Black Mesa or something. You wake up in your cell, and are given tasks. And a computer voice walks you through most of them, but you quickly learn that something is wrong. And the story actually is really nice and gives you the Half-Life1-like experience “wow” experience.

It’s not really about the graphics - as it’s still the Source engine, that’s pretty dated - it’s all about the puzzles. And there are many of them. You really have to put real life physics and logic to use in this game, and the physics react exactly how you’d expect them to. There’s also a good portion of humor (hence the Love Cube). And you can find a reference to Lost - Valve is selling out?

Overall Portal can’t really be described, the concept of bending space literally screws with your mind, and you will have to rethink the way games are played.

Can’t wait for a full-on game with this concept — and multiplayer!