So where do I use portals in this?

Rooms with all black walls, maybe with glass or other non-portalbe surfaces.

What makes Portal different from other puzzle platformers is the use of portals to cross vast distances of space instantly.

A portal-less puzzle can be super challenging, but it also allows for less creativity from the player.

What was challenging about this?

While an all black room gives the player very little freedom, an all white room gives too much of it.

If players can portal absolutly anywhere they can bypass nearly any puzzle or obstacle you come up with. You'll be hard pressed as a puzzle designer to give a challenge if all the walls are white.

If you do use all white rooms you'll need to use emancipation grills, grates, glass, laser barriers, and turrets to provide restrictions and challenges. Oh and remember to lock the door.

There has got to be an easier way over

Players are impatient. They want to do things quickly so as to enjoy more content. Forcing a player to walk from one side of the map to the other is a time waster. There is very little point to it.

Players should be able to move around the map with ease and efficency.

There are times that a large area may be required, such as for flinging physics, turret ranges, etc. In these cases use of portable surfaces can allow players to shortcut across the wide areas.

What is in here? Pits? Slime? Gel? Cubes? Portal surfaces? I can't see to tell

Portal is a video game. And as such it uses visual clues as the main means to communicate with the players.

A room with no light reduces the experience from a skill based puzzle to just move randomly and shoot blindly, hoping to get lucky.

A thing to remember, users with graphics turned down to lower settings will see even less in low light levels. You with your high graphics may be able to see the pits to jump over in the dark, but the player with low graphics, its all solid black.

Simply add light sources like observation rooms or light strips to illuminate rooms and corridors for players. Hammer users creater light point entities.


Darkness can be used as a puzzle element in of itself if you give the player a way to compensatre for it. Water reflects things like excursion funnels. In hammer you can turn lights on and off and move lights around.

Fall in there and you aren't coming back out.

Traps are part of the portal experience. Tricks and anything behind any corner.

But a good trap either makes you have to backtrack, or it kills you. Forcing you to start over.

A bad trap makes you stuck. It doesn't kill you. But you can't get back out of it. The only way out is to forcibly load the last save point, or restart the level.

This is a particular problem in Co-Op levels. When you die in a co-op level you respawn and progress is not lost. But fall into a bad trap and all that changes. There is no way out, you can't commit suicide to respawn. You have to restart the level, forcing both players to loose progress and interupting the flow of gameplay.

Skill shots are nothing new to games. And aren't a bad thing for a puzzle element.

Skill shots become a problem when they become extraordinarily difficult. Such as the player has to make the shot, while falling past the target, with no indication on where they have to aim or they have to even make said skill shot. And if they fail, they die and have to start all over.

Most players will not be able to make a shot unless they know ahead of time where they have to aim and/or have time to find the target.

For long range or hard to make portal shots make sure you have something to clue in the player. Such as lights around the target, a blinking light, a cube. Or let them see it through glass before putting them in the tricky spot.

We really needed two people to solve this?

When playing a co-op map there are two sets of portals, two perspectives, and two minds to figure it out.

So then when designing a co-op course it shouldn't be something one player can just sit though while the other player does everything. That's a single player course with an extra person present.

A good Co-Op puzzle shouldn't be solveable with just one set or portals.

A Co-Op course should be encaging to both players. Giving them both tasks to do.

It should not invovle one player holding a button the whole, maybe occasionally getting off while the other player runs around, uses buttons, makes jumps, portal around the place.

It fine to have one player need to hold a button down. But take turns. One player holds so the other can progress. Then the second player has to hold something for the first to progress. Or you can make both players have to do things in unionon or in sequences. This keeps both players engaged in the puzzle.

When you make a puzzle, remember you are designing it. You know what every connection does, every button, every laster. You know where the walls all, the panels, the hidden turrets.

You know you have to get this laser to the redirection cube on the far side of the map and redirect it to the catcher in yet another far away place past grills, other cubes, turets, and lifts.

The player knows none of this. When you test your level, remember to look at it from a neutral viewpoint. You know to go from A to B to C to D. But try things out of order, that's what they player is going to do until the figure it out.

A puzzle should be intuitive and you give clues for what to do, or to catch player's attention for what to do. Lights in groups do this. Indicator lines, known as antlines in the puzzle maker, show a player things connect. This lets them figure out how to solve a puzzle.

Do not use your all encompassing knowledge of the test as the means for solving the puzzle.

You have finished the puzzle. You have tested it yourself. Before you send it public you send it to a friend to try it out. This is called play testing. Its where you have a person without knowing about the level try it and give you feedback.

As tempting as it is, do not tell the play tester what to do. Do not hint at it. Do not do anything to lead them on in any way. You know where the cube goes, they don't, and that's the point.

If a the playtester can't solve it without your help, then how can a regular person who doesn't have the option of your help.


The other side of this, listen to what your play testers have to say. Don't dismiss a complaint of something too challgeing as something obvious to do, cause to you its all obvious. The play tester is there to help you see your puzzle through a common person's eyes. This doesn't happen if you help them along.