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Frits de Laat
Level designer
About the Portal maps
To work on improving my puzzle building skills and working with different engines I decided to create some maps for Portal 2. When deciding which engine to use I chose to use the default Portal editor in game with the BEE2 add-on for more variety and options in the tools I had at hand.
The Gutter
Level Breakdown
For the gutter I tried multiple approaches to how I wanted to set up the puzzle and finally came up with the current iteration after a few reworks. The main idea of the puzzle is that there is a lot of setup that needs to be done, and then the solutions follows smoothly after. This means that the main puzzle part is in the preparation, where the player needs to collect the cube, put it in the right position and place themselves and the portals in very specific positions to open up the portal barriers and reach the final part of the puzzle. At the end the player has to use a button reset for the cube to land it in the blue transporter to activate the laser and open the exit door.
Reflection
This level was a hard one to get right but a lot of fun to work on. There were a lot of bugs initially that broke the map, but I also did not want to remove any portable walls, as I wanted to give the player some freedom to play around and not just immediately find the solution. Playtesting showed that this final iteration did just that, and players commented that they had a lot of fun finding the solutions throughout the entire level.
I usually work backwards when working on portal maps, meaning that I start with a solution and then try to find ways to make getting to that solution interesting. This technique worked very well for what I had in mind for this map, as the initial solution was just opening a door with a button reset.
Raydiance
Level Breakdown
For Raydiance I wanted to try something new; to create 3 small puzzles in one map, each building on a piece of knowledge of the last puzzle. The first puzzle focuses around portal barriers and how to work around them through smart portal use. The second puzzle build on that mechanic, expanding on how to use the lasers while playing around the portal barriers, but now with an added laser cube. The third puzzle combines the knowledge of both puzzles with a twist, as now the laser blocker has to be used as a blocker instead of a bridge.
Reflection
The initial idea of this level was to create a level with lasers and portal barriers that would gradually become more difficult. Tweaking the puzzles to fit that idea was a hard challenge but playtesting showed that players had fun while also feeling like they actually did learn part of the mechanic of the next room from the last one.
While this type of level does not really exist in the main portal games, it kind of functions as a series of levels but then on a smaller scale, letting me play around with progression and how to teach the player certain mechanics. It was a great exercise for me to practise pacing and teaching the player mechanics in a methodical way without holding them by their hands.
Sidetracked
Level Breakdown
This was the first level I created with the portal editor and was mainly for me to figure out how the tools works and what it was capable of. The level is a very streamlined experience, but open enough to leave the players wondering how exactly they want to approach the level. The main idea behind the puzzle revolves around the cube, acquiring it, getting it to both of the buttons and using the other ingredients to reach the exit. Playtesters found it a simple but fun level, which could be used as one of the earlier levels in a portal game as a final introductory level.
Reflection
Making this level taught me a lot about how I approach puzzle design and how to improve in my process. As stated before, I start with a simple solution, and work my way backwards from there. This helps me stay focused on this one solution without bloating the entire level with extra mechanics that don't really add anything other than fluff. This process does require a lot of testing though, which means that I also did lots of playtesting to get the feel of the level right and make sure there aren't any bugs.
Frits de Laat
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