@mark Thanks a lot for the detailed comment! Incredible work sticking with this one and solving it in the end; as you said, it is really very quite subtle and I don't think I have ever fully understood precisely why it works... but it does! Very happy to hear that you liked it :D

Initially, I liked solving this puzzle a lot, but was not HIGHLY impressed by the way the puzzle goes. It was clear to me that each panel and spot in the enter/exit room has a specific purpose you can decipher, which allowed me to solve 70% of the puzzle during the first session, including parts of the ending sequence (start - 2:08 and 3:36 - end parts of Libby's video) . But the remaining sequence was so subtle that it took two additional small sessions to understand it, and the fact that such a sequence exists on top of everything that was before makes this puzzle very beautiful to me.

Amazing work . Favorited.

I advise everyone to beat Point Symmetry first before entering this puzzle. In my opinion, it is more comfortable this way.

@SpiderLucas 15 Excellent work solving this extremely difficult puzzle!

Man, I was stuck with this one for a good while. So much so that I was about to give up and look up the solution. So glad I didn't

Well it's official ! Symmetry puzzle are not for me Favorited !
Here's my 2 part blind playthrough : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NquwBTgGpQ

Coming from "Brainfucc: THE PLAYLIST", I like it!

@Towelie Clegana I have a workshop full of puzzles; some harder than others. If you are looking for something particularly challenging, maybe try this one...

so whats next ? you got anything else ?

@Towelie Clegane Wow! That's dedication right there o_O Excellent work solving it! I can neither confirm nor deny that I am part of some highly advanced alien civilization, but I do admit that the difficulty rating of 7/10 might be a bit on the low side, especially given there's no 'hand-holding' at all in this case. Anyway, thanks a lot for playing. It means a lot to hear that you returned to this map after all that time. I hope the experience was ultimately rewarding :]

Indecision was hard too, but at least you were taken by the hand and shown the steps to the final solution with prior rooms. And the butterfly was hard too but Mirror symmetry is just on another level. the 7/10 rating is complete non sense

I finally solved your #@!$% puzzle. Took me nearly a year. I refuse to believe anyone else solved this by themselves without cheating. This is by far the most complex puzzle that can be and was obviously designed by some highly advanced alien civilization with far greater intelligence than we can comprehend

@Nalkahn Thanks a lot for playing! Excellent work solving it :D

Great map

@Lorne Malvo, I know why it's rated so low: if you can't beat 'em, downvote 'em. It is indeed an awesome puzzle.

@Lorne Malvo Thank you so much for the high praise :D Excellent work solving this one! It is definitely very complex. I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it! And thanks for the award

I don't know why this has score so low!!! This is one of best maps - i have ever played! Problem is you have think ahead, or you can mess up and than you have to do whole process again (even it is not that long here). I like it, because it forces you to think ahead and evaluate multiple possibilities. And hold some information in working memory. But is little bit annoying for players generally. So no everyone likes it.

But i think that's how true portal 2 puzzle should be. So i dropped award for this!

@kwinten Thanks a lot for playing :D I'm very happy to hear that you liked it!

really good puzzle behind the symetry, thumbs up !

it kinda helps, thanks

wow it's really been more than a year since this map came out

I meant that if you have trouble hitting a receiver, you are probably seeing it at a shallow angle. It is better to aim a tad to the far side of the receiver than to the near side

im sorry, what do you mean by "across more than in front" i dont get that

@Towelie Clegane Not so fun fact: it is actually on, but it doesn't work for the portal 1 laser cubes, sadly. My apologies for the inconvenience :| I don't think you have to preplace cubes all that much in this map specifically, but if you ever need to, be sure to aim a bit more across the receiver than in front of it. That way you are more likely to succeed

any way i can enable the imaginary line that goes out of cubes for easy placement ?

It removes to the quality of the puzzle when you have to state special rules in the description, wich was my original point. Puzzle is still great, its just not 100%.

There are ways that hammer could be used to prevent the issues, but Mikeastro is not using Hammer. This game is full of glitches that often can be used to bypass any design. The real question is whether you are either interested in actually solving the complex logical solution, or more interested in gimmicky behavior that bypasses significant logical steps in inelegant ways.
Mike stated the 'rules' in the map description and abiding by those rules is the way to get the most enjoyment from this map. It is only pathetic to 'solve' it by breaking those 'rules'.

And im not just talking about laser puzzles. any puzzle that has a skip to the intended solution, its just sad and should be built around it to prevent the exploit, in my opinion.
There are no rules, only clever (and sometimes tricky) usage of game mechanisms

"rules" yeah where are those so i can read them ?
I dont know what is possible to do in hammer, but wouldnt it be possible to edit a map so the laser doesnt reach the catcher unless the cube is set on the ground ? would fix the issue

@Libbybapa That's why I always cork my bats!!! (an American baseball thing, for all y'all's info).

Chess is easy, I just knock over my opponent's king and proclaim "I win!". It ruins the quality of the game to play by the rules. :-P

@Towelie Clegane I agree that it is unfortunate that these things are possible in the game engine, though with this particular move especially, it just can be extremely difficult to prevent. All it takes is a laser intersecting a fizzler and you have this problem. I personally do not see it as an issue that removes ''a lot'' of the quality of my, or anyone's, laser puzzles, as it is generally understood in the community that the game is more fun if you ''play by the rules'' :]

i think it removes alot to the quality of these great puzzles when something is possible but should not be used.

Note: quickly pulling or slowly dragging cubes through fizzlers is neither necessary nor intended.

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww ok then hehehe

@amir.khodayan1377 Wow! Excellent wirk solving this beast! It is definitely one of my hardest puzzles, I'm really happy to hear you enjoyed it:D And yeah some players experience an occasional crash when reloading a save in this map, no idea why. I'm sorry it happened so many times

I'm very proud of my self solving this. I had many attempts and each time some progress. But This time I cracked the whole thing! There was many times that I was like "Aha! Finally I solved it!" and then... "OK! now how to deal with this new problem?" :)

I guess solving your Talos series and Point symmetry helped a lot in this one. There were like lemmas I used in solving this one!

Also, The radio in the end was so much comforting after solving this Giant!

and lastly I believe there's some issue with quick saves in this map. The game crashed almost 10 times in this map. I'm not sure why though.

At the end, such a Great Work! I'm really happy that I solved this without any hints this time. Really enjoyed it!

@Spacekitten97 Wow, thanks for the high praise! Excellent work solving this monster! It is definitely very difficult and very abstract. Solving a very hard map without peeking at the walkthrough can induce such a triumphant moment... that's the reason we play this game :D I'm really glad you liked it!

This map is absolutely incredible. It took me a very, very long time to solve. I was stuck for a while on how to connect both rooms with portals while still having both cubes. Eventually I managed to figure it out though. But the ending part was something else. I was stuck on it for countless hours. I was ready to just give up and watch the walkthrough at several points, but I thankfully managed to keep myself from doing so and when I finally found the solution, it was one of the most satisfying moments I have ever had in this game. Well done, thanks for creating. Thumbs up and added to my favorites :)

@empleat Thanks for playing! This map is indeed quite challenging logically. That is some great advice you give there, I agree with almost all of it.

You did mention that the ''backing up with cubes'' annoyed you, but maybe you missed the line in the description saying that ''quickly pulling or slowly dragging cubes through fizzlers is neither necessary nor intended''. As surprising as it may be, the map is perfectly possible without ever doing that! Again, there's playthrough videos available to ''back up'' my claim :P

One of most hardest map in portal 2, simple design but high difficulty!
ADVICE: every map can be deduced essentially: Start from the end what do you need to get there and when you figure it out, figure how to that and than how to do next thing...

This map is difficulty too, because if you don't think ahead and make mistake you have to start over. So think it through, before you do anything, before you know all steps from start to end.. You can use exclusion method, sometimes there is nothing else, so you know you are doing right step.
name of map is kinda clue, but i didn't assumed everything will be symmetrical, because map itself is little bit different on both sides. Only thing which annoys me is backing up with cubes, you have to be so careful, but without it map wouldn't be possible i guess

It is depressing, that someone spends hundreds of hours, creating these maps and than no one plays it.

@Polux Thank you for the kind words :D Excellent work solving this one

Amazing, wonderfull, awesome, great, clever!
Good job :)

For me, the key to solving this puzzle was to keep looking back over my shoulder, and not relying on ancient brain cells to remember which portal to shoot. That alone would add at least a couple of minutes to any video I would capture.
This may not be relevant, but reloading saves only crashed when the save was made while standing on a hard light bridge (in case I shot the wrong portal and fell to a gooey death).

@Spider_Dawg Now that's called determination! Really excellent work solving one of my most difficult puzzles. This map is very complex.
And yeah this map sometimes crashes when reloading saves :[ It happens to some players occasionally. Not sure why, and republishing the map didn't fix it, so I hope it wasn't overly annoying

Wow. I thought I'd solve this yesterday, in my head while working, only to find that you were more cruel in your design of the entrance room and locations to redirect the laser than I'd remembered. Ok, requires more steps. Today I thought I had it in my head, only to find out that you were almost as cruel with the exit room, but by then I was close enough to get to the exit, on my own, no reading comments or watching videos. I think I'm walking away from Portal for a few days, until the pain in the brain wears off. Excellent map, thanks for the challenge.

BTW, this map crashed my Steam a few times when trying to load saves. Don't know if it's the map or my machine, mentioning it FYI.

Tough map, very tough map indeed. Well done Mike. Who'd have thought a(n almost symetrical map) would pose such a challenge :)

Blind Run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYuQLVMDL1o

You made the right decision

OK, this is as close to a perfect run as I am willing to get. 2:02 with constant timescale, 1.15x, 3x, and 6x. Would've liked to get it down to 2:00 (would've also liked to get a higher-quality video) but I spent way too much time in this map already.

https://youtu.be/TStKbCCSdCc

Perfect!

With a couple more attempts, I got it down to 7 seconds: https://youtu.be/VeQOW9PJ6yg

Nice!