PORTAL
An open world experience
INTRODUCTION
This project is inspired by the Portal games and is intended to challenge the player to make use of their portals and think outside the box in order to find solutions to the puzzles they encounter.
The player is tasked with escaping from a temple inside a cave.
In order to create these puzzles I scripted a portal system using blueprints in Unreal Engine 5
PROJECT DETAILS
- Developed over 5 weeks
- Unreal Engine 5
- Puzzle design and scripting
- Portal inspired template created by me
- Meshes and materials created by me
LEVEL OVERVIEW
PROCESS
AN ITERATIVE PRACTICE
When it comes to puzzle games the first ones that come to mind for me are the Portal games. The out of the box thinking required to play them is something that heavily inspired me to create this project.
At first I wanted to use static portals to create the puzzles, however after creating a prototype I found it to be a lot more limiting than my reference game. A big part of the puzzles in Portal is the freedom the player has to try different solutions by moving portals around, as such having them be static didn’t work for my intended use case.
This first iteration of portals helped me block out some quick puzzle ideas even though they weren’t used in the final version.
Reference image taken from Elden Ring
As there are many mechanics in the Portal games I decided to cut it down to the most central of these, both because of time constraints but also to challenge myself to make fun puzzles with limited resources. The mechanics I chose to include were the portals themselves, pressure plates, weighted boxes and moving platforms.
After playing through Portal 1 again I made the observation that these are the most commonly used mechanics. With the mechanics chosen, I had to find a good way to teach them to the player.
TEACHING THROUGH KI-SHō-TEN-KETSU
KI
The player wakes up inside a cave with nothing on their person, there is only one way forward. In the next room they are introduced to the pressure plate and weighted block mechanics, showing that they can be used as a means to open doors and progress further in the level.
SHō
The player reaches the next room and is once again presented with a pressure plate, however there is no cube this time. In one corner of the room a suspicious portal can be seen and in the other corner an enticing object.
Picking up this object grants the player the ability to create a purple portal on any white surface. Placing a portal will grant the player passage to the first portal they saw and through it they can reach the first cube and bring it to the second pressure plate, expanding on the already known mechanics.
In these first to steps the player is quickly introduced to the core mechanics of the experience and they will have an idea of what kind of puzzles they will face throughout it.
TEN
As the player continues their journey they will come upon a puzzle where they must drop a cube into an area that is inside a kill zone. Players have seen that cubes can go through portals and observant players may have had the thought to put them through a portal on their own
Doing this will drop the block safely down to the spot it needs to be, showing the player that the known mechanics can be used in more ways than one.
KETSU
In the final stage of the game the player must face a more difficult puzzle compirsed of all the challenges they have faced on the journey there.
Once the puzzle is figured out and the player can finally reach the goal
After completing all the steps in the Ki-Shō-Ten-Ketsu model the player has been introduced to the mechanics (Ki), used the mechanics in a different and more complex context (Shō), been given a bigger challenge using everything they have learned (Ten), and by showing their mastery of what they have learned the player is able to reach the end of the level (Ketsu).
The first idea I had for the theme of the level was a cursed mansion which the player had to flee from using static portals. However after attempting to build a level of this kind I found that I didn’t enjoy the results in their early stages. I instead pivoted towards having the player break out of a prison and into a mansion where they had to steal a relic. This concept turned out better and I created a fully playable level with puzzles I enjoyed, but I still wasn’t fond of the setting.
My final pivot was to turn the level into a cave temple area where I updated and kept many of the puzzles as well as changed the level visually. This iterative process is something I often go through in my work and I feel like it helps me build a final product which is comprised of many different parts of the old versions while still gaining its own identity.
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DESIGN TECHNIQUES
