The game I chose for this week was “Portal” — it is a series of first person puzzles. It was designed by Stabyourself and Kim Swift and developed by Valve Corporation. It is available on a variety of platforms – Windows, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch etc.. The game (as much as I played) does not include any content that would be inappropriate for certain age groups. That said, the puzzles can be a little complex and maybe not as engaging for a younger audience. Given this, I believe it is well suited for those who enjoy puzzles and are perhaps 10+ years of age.
The main goal of the game was to solve a series of puzzles (19) one at a time. Once you solved a puzzle, a door opened and that door would take you to an elevator sort of thing that would take you to the next puzzle. This mechanic of having puzzles at the core leads to the dynamic of the players moving around, exploring the world for clues and ideas, creating portals, picking up things, analysing what leads to the door for the next puzzle being opened and work backwards from that. The player strategises to be able to achieve their goal (opening the door for the next puzzle). This contributes to the aesthetic of Discovery, Challenge, and Fantasy.
I believe the types of fun achieved their goals well.
Fantasy did it best. Being able to open portals from anywhere (almost)? Does not get any cooler than that. The reddish portal opening from wherever you created a portal from your gun is so clever and I believe that this game was so ahead of its time (first released in 2007)
Discovery also did a great job by allowing the player to move in any direction and view the world from any angle — the feeling of being able to freely explore the world made the game very cool.
I think the game could be made more challenging by adding a time component — at the moment, there is no time component at all and I feel that can lead to the player losing motivation at time. A timed game provides great intrinsic motivation for the player to keep going and not give up. It also helps provide a general idea of how much time each puzzle should take and as a player, that helps me feel like I have more control over the game.
At some points in the game, I felt a little lost and would have greatly benefited from some kind of hints to guide me through the game. This is another thing that I would consider adding to improve the game.
I really appreciate the game having captions because the accent of the audio was a little tough to fully understand at times. This also made the game playable for individuals who are hard of hearing, thereby making it more inclusive.
I feel a success was when I was able to figure out a particularly tricky puzzle (I think puzzle 7 or 8), by creating multiple portals fast enough for the orb to pass between all of them. Timing was key here and I was so proud of myself.
I think a fail was getting super demotivated at puzzle 9 (or 10) because the game commentary said this puzzle was basically impossible to solve. I would get rid of such demotivating commentary as it can have a negative effect on some players.
