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111-406: Portal is a 2007 puzzle platformer video game developed and published by Valve . It was released in a bundle , The Orange Box , for Windows , Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 , and has been since ported to other systems, including Mac OS X , Linux , Android (via Nvidia Shield ), and Nintendo Switch . Portal consists primarily of a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting

222-527: A Weighted Companion Cube in an incinerator , after Chell uses it for assistance. After Chell completes the final test chamber, GLaDOS maneuvers Chell into an incinerator in an attempt to kill her. Chell escapes with the portal gun and makes her way through the maintenance areas within the Enrichment Center. GLaDOS panics and insists that she was pretending to kill Chell as part of testing, while it becomes clear that GLaDOS had previously killed all

333-401: A knockout . Yie Ar Kung-Fu established health meters as a standard feature in fighting games. Kung-Fu Master (1984), an arcade beat 'em up developed by Irem , uses a health meter to represent player health, with the bar depleting when taking damage. In addition to the player character having a health meter, the bosses also have health meters, which leads to the game temporarily becoming

444-472: A remaster intended to show off the functionality of the company's GeForce 40 series graphics cards with real-time path tracing , for release as a free DLC, initially planned for November 2022. It was released on December 8, 2022. Portal received critical acclaim, often earning more praise than either Half-Life 2: Episode Two or Team Fortress 2 , two titles also included in The Orange Box . It

555-580: A character with an attack; it can also indicate damage reduction to a character's health. AC is typically a representation of a character's physical defenses such as their ability to dodge attacks and their protective equipment. Armor class is a mechanic that can be used as part of health and combat game balancing . AC "is roughly equivalent to defensive dodging in war games". The health indicator can be represented in various ways. The most basic forms are fractions and health bars, as well as various icons such as hearts or shields. More recent games can use

666-418: A common maneuver is to place a portal some distance below the player on the floor, jump down through it, gaining speed in freefall, and emerge through the other portal on a wall, flying over a gap or another obstacle. This process of gaining speed and then redirecting that speed towards another area of a puzzle allows the player to launch objects or Chell over great distances both vertically and horizontally. This

777-467: A former employee of Aperture Science, moved Chell to the top of the test queue. Portal takes place in the Half-Life universe and inside of Aperture Science Laboratories Computer-Aided Enrichment Center , a research facility responsible for the creation of the portal gun. Information about Aperture Science, developed by Valve for creating the setting of the game, is revealed during the game and via

888-479: A health meter) are restored when the character does not move. Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) is credited with popularizing the use of regeneration in first-person shooters . However, according to GamesRadar+ 's Jeff Dunn, regeneration in its current form was introduced in The Getaway (2002), as Halo: Combat Evolved only used shield regeneration. Arneson is also credited for the term "armor class" which

999-533: A large chamber where her hardware hangs overhead. A sphere soon falls from GLaDOS and Chell drops it in an incinerator. GLaDOS reveals that the sphere was the morality core of her conscience, one of multiple personality cores that Aperture Science employees installed after she flooded the center with neurotoxin gas; with the core removed, she can access its emitters again. A six-minute countdown starts as Chell dislodges and incinerates more of GLaDOS' personality cores, while GLaDOS mocks and attacks her. After Chell destroys

1110-452: A leg is injured, the character can get a fracture , which will reduce their movement speed, and if their arm is injured, the character can drop their weapon. Health can also serve as a plot element. In Assassin's Creed , if the protagonist takes too much damage, thus departing from the "correct" route, the game ends and returns the player to the nearest checkpoint. In some games such as The Legend of Zelda and Monster Hunter , only

1221-412: A long level called Box Marathon; we wanted players to bring this box with them from the beginning to the end. But people would forget about the box, so we added dialogue, applied the heart to the cube, and continued to up the ante until people became attached to the box. Later on, we added the incineration idea. The artistic expression grew from the gameplay." Wolpaw further noted that the need to incinerate

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1332-460: A necessary feature to draw children into learning. This was tied to Digital Promise , a United States Department of Education initiative to help develop new digital tools for education, and which Valve is part of. Portal: Still Alive was announced as an exclusive Xbox Live Arcade game at the 2008 E3 convention, and was released on October 22, 2008. It features the original game, 14 new challenges, and new achievements. The additional content

1443-461: A new portal in an offset position. Creating a portal end instantly fizzles an existing portal end of the same color. Moving objects, glass, non-white surfaces, liquids, or areas that are too small will not be able to anchor portals. Chell is often provided with cubes that she can pick up and use to climb on or to place on large buttons that open doors or activate mechanisms. Particle fields, known as "Emancipation Grills", occasionally called "Fizzlers" in

1554-485: A nonlinear health bar, where earlier hits take off more damage than later ones, in order to make the game appear more exciting. The indicator can be combined with other elements of the game interface. Doom uses a character portrait located at the bottom of the screen as such an indicator, in addition to a numerical health percentage display. If the hero takes damage, his face will appear increasingly pained and blood-covered. The health point indicator can also be part of

1665-476: A number of games do without such an indicator. In the Super Mario series, the player character initially only has one health point, and the character's appearance is used to signify the number of health points; if the character collects a Super Mushroom , they grow in size and gain an additional health point. In a number of first-person shooters , such as Call of Duty or Halo , the numerical value of

1776-519: A one-on-one fighting game during boss battles. Kung-Fu Master established health meters as a standard feature in side-scrolling action games such as beat 'em ups. Health meters also began being used to represent hit points in role-playing video games , starting with The Black Onyx (1984), developed by Bullet-Proof Software . This inspired the use of a health bar in Hydlide (1984), an action role-playing game by T&E Soft , which took it

1887-589: A player is closer to losing their life". As examples of visualizing health loss, Rogers cited Arthur of Ghosts 'n Goblins , who loses a piece of armor with each sustained hit, as well as the cars in the Grand Theft Auto series, in which smoke begins to flow from the hood after the car takes a significant amount of damage. The use of health points simplifies the game development process (since developers do not need to create complex damage systems), allows computers to simplify calculations associated with

1998-611: A portal through an existing portal, unlike in Narbacular Drop . The original setting, of a princess trying to escape a dungeon, was dropped in favor of the Aperture Science approach. Portal took approximately two years and four months to complete after the DigiPen team was brought into Valve, and no more than ten people were involved with its development. For the first year of development, the team focused mostly on

2109-463: A result, the setting was minimized to make the usable aspects of the puzzle easier to spot, using the clinical feel of the setting in the film The Island as reference. While there were plans for a third area, an office space, to be included after the test chambers and the maintenance areas, the team ran out of time to include it. They also dropped the introduction of the Rat Man, a character who left

2220-462: A reward for Chell if she completes all the test chambers. As Chell nears completion, GLaDOS's motives and behavior turn more sinister, suggesting insincerity and callous disregard for the safety and well-being of test subjects. The test chambers become increasingly dangerous as Chell proceeds, including a live-fire course designed for military androids, as well as chambers flooded with a hazardous liquid. In one chamber, GLaDOS forces Chell to " euthanize "

2331-520: A robotic arm descends and extinguishes the candle on the cake, casting the room into darkness. Over the credits, GLaDOS delivers a concluding report through the song " Still Alive ", declaring the experiment to be a success. Portal began with the 2005 freeware game Narbacular Drop , developed by students of the DigiPen Institute of Technology . Robin Walker , one of Valve's developers, saw

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2442-693: A series of chambers after the player has obtained the portal gun that gently introduce the concept of flinging without any explicit instructions. Portal was exhibited at the Smithsonian Art Exhibition in America from February 14 through September 30, 2012. Portal won the "Action" section for the platform "Modern Windows". Since its release Portal is still considered one of the best video games of all time , having been included on several cumulative "Top Games of All Time" lists through 2018. Portal won several awards: The popularity of

2553-502: A series of creatures walk into deadly situations, and a player assigns jobs to specific lemmings to guide the swarm to a safe destination. The 1994 MS-DOS game Shariki , by Eugene Alemzhin, introduced the mechanic of swapping adjacent elements to tile matching games. It was little known at the time, but later had a major influence on the genre. Interest in Mahjong video games from Japan began to grow in 1994. When Minesweeper

2664-428: A series of crushers that appear in certain levels. Unlike most action games at the time, there is no health indicator; Chell dies if she is dealt a certain amount of damage in a short period, but returns to full health fairly quickly. Some obstacles, such as the energy balls and crushing pistons, deal fatal damage with a single blow. Many solutions exist for completing each puzzle. Two additional modes are unlocked upon

2775-530: A shortening of the name Adrian Shephard, the protagonist of Half-Life: Opposing Force . Fans noticed this similarity before the game's release; as a result, the team placed a red herring in the game by having the letters of Adrian Shephard highlighted on keyboards found within the game. According to Kim Swift, the cake is a Black Forest cake that she thought looked the best at the nearby Regent Bakery and Cafe in Redmond , Washington, and, as an Easter egg within

2886-489: A step further with a regenerating health bar. Namco 's arcade action role-playing title Dragon Buster (1984) further popularized the use of a health bar in role-playing games. The 1982 Apple II platform game Crisis Mountain displays health as a number from 3 (full) to 0 (dead), and health gradually regenerates over time. In Hydlide (1984) and the Ys series, the character's health (represented as both hit points and

2997-468: A theater. The game was also made part of the required course material among other classical and contemporary works, including Goffman's work, for a freshman course "devoted to engaging students with fundamental questions of humanity from multiple perspectives and fostering a sense of community" for Wabash College in 2010. Portal has also been cited as a strong example of instructional scaffolding that can be adapted for more academic learning situations, as

3108-707: Is a precursor to puzzle-platform games such as Lode Runner (1983), Door Door (1983), and Doki Doki Penguin Land (1985). Blockbuster , by Alan Griesemer and Stephen Bradshaw (Atari 8-bit, 1981), is a computerized version of the Rubik's Cube puzzle. Snark Hunt (Atari 8-bit, 1982) is a single-player game of logical deduction, a clone of the 1970s Black Box board game. Elements of Konami 's tile-sliding Loco-Motion (1982) were later seen in Pipe Mania from LucasArts (1989). In Boulder Dash (1984),

3219-455: Is also available for download separately through Valve's content delivery system, Steam, and was released as a standalone retail product on April 9, 2008. In addition to Portal , the Box also included Half-Life 2 and its two add-on episodes, as well as Team Fortress 2 . Portal ' s inclusion within the Box was considered an experiment by Valve; having no idea of the success of Portal ,

3330-404: Is given by GLaDOS; the credibility of these facts, such as Chell being adopted, an orphan, and having no friends, is questionable at best, as GLaDOS is a liar by her own admission. In the "Lab Rat" comic created by Valve to bridge the gap between Portal and Portal 2 , Chell's records reveal she was ultimately rejected as a test subject for having "too much tenacity"—the main reason Doug Rattman,

3441-532: Is now "stronger than ever". IGN editor Cam Shea ranked it fifth on his top 10 list of Xbox Live Arcade games. He stated that it was debatable whether an owner of The Orange Box should purchase this, as its added levels do not add to the plot. However, he praised the quality of the new maps included in the game. The game ranked 7th in a later list of top Xbox Live Arcade titles compiled by IGN's staff in September 2010. Additionally, Portal: Still Alive got ported to

Portal (video game) - Misplaced Pages Continue

3552-503: Is often represented by visual elements such as a numerical fraction, a health bar or a series of small icons, though it may also be represented acoustically, such as through a character's heartbeat. In video games, as in tabletop role-playing games, an object usually loses health as a result of being attacked. Protection points or armor help them to reduce the damage taken. Characters acting as tanks usually have more health and armor. In many games, particularly role-playing video games,

3663-474: Is referred to as 'flinging' by Valve. As GLaDOS puts it, "In layman's terms: speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out." If portal ends are not on parallel planes, the character passing through is reoriented to be upright with respect to gravity after leaving a portal end. Chell and all other objects in the game that can fit into the portal ends will pass through the portal. However, a portal shot cannot pass through an open portal; it will simply fizzle or create

3774-408: Is specifically an entrance or exit; all objects that travel through one portal will exit through the other. An important aspect of the game's physics is momentum redirection and conservation. As moving objects pass through portals, they come through the exit portal at the same direction that the exit portal is facing and with the same speed with which they passed through the entrance portal. For example,

3885-435: Is that the player must experiment with mechanisms in each level before they can solve them. Exploration games include Myst , Limbo , and The Dig . Escape room games such as The Room involve detailed exploration of a single location. Sokoban games, such as its namesake title, or block-pushing puzzle games, involve pushing or pulling blocks on a grid-like space to move them into designated positions without blocking

3996-554: The Box provided it a "safety net" via means of these other games. Portal was kept to a modest length in case the game did not go over well with players. In January 2008, Valve released a special demo version titled Portal: The First Slice , free for any Steam user using Nvidia graphics hardware as part of a collaboration between the two companies. It also comes packaged with Half-Life 2: Deathmatch , Peggle Extreme , and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast . The demo includes test chambers 00 to 10 (eleven in total). Valve has since made

4107-807: The Take-A-Wish Foundation (a program to give the wishes of terminally ill children to adults in need of dreams), were commercial failures and led to an investigation of the company by the U.S. Senate . However, when the investigative committee heard of the success of the third tier—a person-sized, ad hoc quantum tunnel through physical space, with a possible application as a shower curtain—it recessed permanently and gave Aperture Science an open-ended contract to continue its research. The development of GLaDOS, an artificially intelligent research assistant and disk-operating system, began in 1986 in response to Black Mesa 's work on similar portal technology. A presentation seen during gameplay reveals that GLaDOS

4218-521: The iPhone using the Unity game engine was created but only consisted of a single room from the game. Mari0 is a fan-made four-player coop mashup of the original Super Mario Bros. and Portal . An unofficial port for the Nintendo 64 console titled Portal 64 was under development. By September 2023, the programmer had a working copy but still had ways to go to be completely finished. The project

4329-430: The tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons with Gary Gygax based on the latter's previous game Chainmail , Arneson felt that it was more interesting for players to manage small squads than a large army. This also allowed them to act out the role of each squad member. However, this approach had one drawback: according to the rules of Chainmail , the player rolls the dice during each battle, and depending on

4440-640: The Enrichment Center that Chell explores suggest that it is part of a massive research installation. At the time of events depicted in Portal , the facility seems to be long-deserted, although most of its equipment remains operational without human control. The game begins with Chell waking up from a stasis bed and hearing instructions from GLaDOS , an artificial intelligence , about upcoming tests. Chell enters into sequential distinct chambers that introduce her to varying challenges to solve using her portal gun, with GLaDOS as her only interaction. GLaDOS promises cake as

4551-505: The Mac client's launch. Within the first week of this offer, over 1.5 million copies of the game were downloaded through Steam. A similar promotion was held in September 2011, near the start of a traditional school year, encouraging the use of the game as an educational tool for science and mathematics. Valve wrote that they felt that Portal "makes physics, math, logic, spatial reasoning, probability, and problem-solving interesting, cool, and fun",

Portal (video game) - Misplaced Pages Continue

4662-658: The Nintendo Switch as a part of The Companion Collection. During 2014 GPU Technology Conference on March 25, 2014, Nvidia announced a port of Portal to the Nvidia Shield , their Android handheld; the port was released on May 12, 2014. Alongside Portal 2 , Portal was released on the Nintendo Switch on June 28, 2022, as part of Portal: Companion Collection , developed by Valve and Nvidia Lightspeed Studios. Nvidia announced Portal With RTX ,

4773-682: The Rope , as well as projectile collision games such as Angry Birds , Peggle , Monster Strike , and Crush the Castle . Programming games require writing code, either as text or using a visual system, to solve puzzles. Examples include Rocky's Boots (1982), Robot Odyssey (1984), SpaceChem (2011), and Infinifactory (2015). This sub-genre includes point-and-click games that often overlap with adventure games and walking simulators . Unlike logical puzzle games, these games generally require inductive reasoning to solve. The defining trait

4884-696: The Weighted Companion Cube came as a result of the final boss battle design; they recognized they had not introduced the idea of incineration necessary to complete the boss battle, and by training the player to do it with the Weighted Companion Cube, found the narrative "way stronger" with its "death". Swift noted that any similarities to psychological situations in the Milgram experiment or 2001: A Space Odyssey are entirely coincidental. The portal gun's full name, Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, can be abbreviated as ASHPD, which resembles

4995-482: The Weighted Companion Cube were nominated for the Best New Character Award on G4, with GLaDOS winning the award for "having lines that will be quoted by gamers for years to come." Ben Croshaw of Zero Punctuation praised the game as "absolutely sublime from start to finish ... I went in expecting a slew of interesting portal-based puzzles and that's exactly what I got, but what I wasn't expecting

5106-525: The addition of more obstacles and hazards. The game features two characters: the player-controlled silent protagonist named Chell , and GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System ), a computer artificial intelligence that monitors and directs the player. In the English-language version, GLaDOS is voiced by Ellen McLain , though her voice has been altered to sound more artificial. The only background information presented about Chell

5217-428: The arcade DECO Cassette System , a scrolling action game based on the manga and anime series Astro Boy (1952–1968), has an energy bar that gradually depletes over time and some of which can be sacrificed for temporary invincibility. Punch-Out!! (1983), an arcade boxing game developed by Nintendo , has a stamina meter that replenishes every time the player successfully strikes the opponent and decreases if

5328-415: The big screen. Puzzle video game Puzzle video games owe their origins to brain teasers and puzzles throughout human history. The mathematical strategy game Nim , and other traditional thinking games such as Hangman and Bulls and Cows (commercialized as Mastermind ), were popular targets for computer implementation. Universal Entertainment 's Space Panic , released in arcades in 1980,

5439-412: The board such as Zuma . Puzzle games based on Tetris include tile-matching games where the matching criterion is to place a given number of tiles of the same type so that they adjoin each other. That number is often three, and the corresponding subset of tile-matching games is referred to as match-three games. Health (gaming) Health is a video game or tabletop game quality that determines

5550-715: The cake . A standalone version with extra puzzles, Portal: Still Alive , was also published by Valve on the Xbox Live Arcade service in October 2008 exclusively for Xbox 360. A sequel, Portal 2 , was released in 2011, which expanded on the storyline, added several gameplay mechanics, and included a cooperative multiplayer mode. A port for the Nintendo Switch was released as part of the Portal: Companion Collection in June 2022. In Portal ,

5661-669: The character to survive several hits from an enemy. Some of the first home computer games to use hit points are Rogue (1980), in which health is represented by a fraction, and Dungeons of Daggorath (1982), which includes an audible heartbeat influenced by the player character 's condition. Action games also began moving away from one-hit deaths to health systems allowing players to take multiple hits, such as SNK 's arcade shoot 'em up game Ozma Wars (1979) numerically representing an energy supply that depletes when taking hits and Mattel 's Intellivision game Tron: Deadly Discs (1982) allowing players to take multiple hits at

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5772-410: The character's health after a difficult battle. This system may allow the player to safely run through dangerous parts of the game without consequence. Tag team games often regenerate part of the health of a resting character. In some role-playing games, armor class (abbreviated AC ; also known as defense ) is a derived statistic that indicates how difficult it is to land a successful blow on

5883-463: The character's health points is hidden from the player. However, when the player character receives a large amount of damage, the game screen (or the part of the screen to which damage was dealt) is painted red, often including drops of blood, which simulates the effect of real-life injury. As health is restored, these effects gradually disappear. The term "hit points" was coined by Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Dave Arneson . While developing

5994-442: The character. In Dead Space , it is located on the main character's costume. In Trespasser , it is represented as a tattoo on the main character's chest. In Half-Life: Alyx , a VR game, the indicator is located on the back of the player's non-dominant hand, requiring the player to physically look at their tracked hand to check their health. The character's condition can be conveyed through sound. In Dungeons of Daggorath ,

6105-539: The community's reactions, saying, "We're still playing it by ear at this point, figuring out if we want to do multiplayer next, or Portal 2 , or release map packs." Some rumors regarding a sequel arose due to casting calls for voice actors. On March 10, 2010, Portal 2 was officially announced for a release late in that year; the announcement was preceded by an alternate reality game based on unexpected patches made to Portal that contained cryptic messages in relation to Portal 2 ' s announcement, including an update to

6216-483: The completion of the game that challenge the player to work out alternative methods of solving each test chamber. Challenge chambers are unlocked near the halfway point and Advanced Chambers are unlocked when the game is completed. In Challenge chambers, levels are revisited with the added goal of completing the test chamber either with as little time, with the fewest portals, or with the fewest footsteps possible. In Advanced chambers, certain levels are made more complex with

6327-469: The cost of reducing maneuverability. Before the introduction of health meters, action video games typically used a lives system in which the player could only take damage once, but could continue the game at the expense of a life. The introduction of health meters granted players the right to make mistakes and allowed game developers to influence a game's difficulty by adjusting the damage an enemy character inflicts. Data East 's Flash Boy (1981) for

6438-403: The creation of Portal , making it a spiritual successor to the game. Portal was acclaimed as one of the most original games of 2007, despite some criticism for its short duration. It received praise for its originality, unique gameplay and a dark story and sense of comedy . GLaDOS, voiced by Ellen McLain in the English-language version, received acclaim for her unique characterization, and

6549-519: The creation of the GLaDOS character. GLaDOS was central to the plot. Wolpaw said: "We designed the game to have a very clear beginning, middle, and end, and we wanted GLaDOS to go through a personality shift at each of these points." Wolpaw described the idea of using cake as the reward came about as "at the beginning of the Portal development process, we sat down as a group to decide what philosopher or school of philosophy our game would be based on. That

6660-538: The demo available to all Steam users. Portal is the first Valve-developed game to be added to the OS X-compatible list of games available on the launch of the Steam client for Mac on May 12, 2010, supporting Steam Play, in which buying the game on Macintosh or Windows computer makes it playable on both. As part of the promotion, Portal was offered as a free game for any Steam user during the two weeks following

6771-543: The developer commentary, exist at the end of all and within some test chambers; when passed through, they will deactivate (fizzle) any active portals and disintegrate any object carried through. These fields also block attempts to fire portals through them. Although Chell is equipped with mechanized heel springs to prevent damage from falling, she can be killed by various other hazards in the test chambers, such as turrets, bouncing balls of energy, and toxic liquid. She can also be killed by objects hitting her at high speeds, and by

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6882-407: The dialogue during the battle. Chell's face and body are modeled after Alésia Glidewell , an American freelance actress and voice-over artist, selected by Valve from a local modeling agency for her face and body structure. Ellen McLain provided the voice of the antagonist GLaDOS. Erik Wolpaw noted, "When we were still fishing around for the turret voice, Ellen did a sultry version. It didn't work for

6993-437: The end credits song " Still Alive ", written by Jonathan Coulton for the game, was praised for its original composition and humor. Portal is often cited as one of the greatest video games ever made . Excluding Steam download sales, over four million copies of the game have been sold since its release, spawning official merchandise from Valve including a model portal gun and plush Companion Cubes , as well as fan recreations of

7104-493: The enemy. Players can often restore a character's health by using various items such as potions, food or first-aid kits. In role-playing video games, the player often can also restore a character's health by visiting a doctor or resting at an inn . A number of games incorporate a mechanic known as "life steal" or "life leech", which allows a character to restore health by siphoning it from an enemy. Methods for replenishing health differ from each other and are dependent on

7215-523: The frequency of the player character's audible heartbeat is dependent on how much damage has been received. Silent Hill uses a similar system, but transmits the heartbeat via vibrations from the DualShock controller. The player character's health point indicator often occupies a significant position in the game's heads-up display . In The Legend of Zelda , it occupies one third of the HUD. However,

7326-496: The game and its characters led Valve to develop merchandise for Portal made available through its online Valve physical merchandise store. Some of the more popular items were the Weighted Companion Cube plush toys and fuzzy dice . When first released, both were sold out in under 24 hours. Other products available through the Valve store include T-shirts and Aperture Science coffee mugs and parking stickers, and merchandise relating to

7437-435: The game at the DigiPen's career fair. Impressed, he contacted the team with advice and offered to show their game at Valve's offices. After their presentation, Valve's president Gabe Newell offered the team jobs at Valve to develop the game further. Newell said he was impressed with the team as "they had actually carried the concept through", already having included the interaction between portals and physics, completing most of

7548-417: The game's genre. In more dynamic action games , it is important to quickly restore a character's health, while role-playing games feature slower-paced methods of health restoration to achieve realism. A number of games incorporate a regeneration system that automatically replenishes health if the character does not take damage. This makes the game easier to play by giving the player the opportunity to restore

7659-427: The game, and makes it easier for the player to understand the game. However, more complex and realistic damage systems are used in a number of games. In Dwarf Fortress , instead of health points, dwarves have separate body parts, each of which can be damaged. The Fallout games use health points, but allow characters to inflict damage to different parts of the enemy's body, which affects gameplay. For example, if

7770-639: The game, creating a different ending for the fate of Chell. The original game left her in a deserted parking lot after destroying GLaDOS, but the update involved Chell being dragged back into the facility by a "Party Escort Bot". Though Portal 2 was originally announced for a Q4 2010 release, the game was released on April 19, 2011. A modding community has developed around Portal , with users creating their own test chambers and other in-game modifications. The group "We Create Stuff" created an Adobe Flash version of Portal , titled Portal: The Flash Version , just before release of The Orange Box . This flash version

7881-426: The game, its recipe is scattered among various screens showing lines of binary code. The Regent Bakery has stated that since the release of the game, its Black Forest cake has been one of its more popular items. Most of the soundtrack is non-lyrical ambient music composed by Kelly Bailey and Mike Morasky , somewhat dark and mysterious to match the mood of the environments. The closing credits song, " Still Alive ",

7992-455: The game. Fans have created plush and papercraft versions of the cube and the various turrets, as well as PC case mods and models of the Portal cake and portal gun. Jeep Barnett, a programmer for Portal , noted that players have told Valve that they had found it more emotional to incinerate the Weighted Companion Cube than to harm one of the "Little Sisters" from BioShock . Both GLaDOS and

8103-427: The game. The concept of a computer AI guiding the player through experimental facilities to test the portal gun was arrived at early in the writing process. They drafted early lines for the yet-named "polite" AI with humorous situations, such as requesting the player's character to "assume the party escort submission position", and found this style of approach to be well-suited to the game they wanted to create, leading to

8214-455: The gameplay without narrative structure. Playtesters found the game fun but asked about what these test chambers were leading towards. This prompted the team to come up with a narrative for Portal . The team worked with Marc Laidlaw , the writer of the Valve's Half-Life series, to fit Portal into the Half-Life universe. This was done in part because of the project's limited art resources; instead of creating new art assets for Portal ,

8325-504: The goal is to collect diamonds while avoiding or exploiting rocks that fall when the dirt beneath them is removed. Chain Shot! (1985) introduced removing groups of the same color tiles on a grid, causing the remaining tiles to fall into the gap. Uncle Henry's Nuclear Waste Dump (1986) involves dropping colored shapes into a pit, but the goal is to keep the same color tiles from touching. Tetris (1985) revolutionized and popularized

8436-417: The inhabitants of the center. Chell travels further through the maintenance areas, discovering dilapidated backstage areas covered in graffiti that includes statements such as " the cake is a lie ", and pastiches of quotes from famous poets such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Emily Brontë . Despite GLaDOS's attempts to dissuade her with lies and threats, Chell proceeds and eventually confronts GLaDOS in

8547-467: The last personality core, a malfunction tears the room apart and transports everything to the surface. Chell lies outside the facility's gates amid the remains of GLaDOS, but is promptly dragged away by an unseen robotic entity. The final scene, viewed within the bowels of the facility, shows a candlelit Black Forest cake , and a Weighted Companion Cube, surrounded by shelves containing dozens of inactive personality cores. The cores begin to light up, before

8658-480: The maximum amount of damage or fatigue something takes before leaving the main game. In role-playing games , this typically takes the form of hit points ( HP ), a numerical attribute representing the health of a character or object. The game character can be a player character , a boss , or a mob . Health can also be attributed to destructible elements of the game environment or inanimate objects such as vehicles and their individual parts. In video games, health

8769-405: The messages in the maintenance areas, to avoid creating too much narrative for the game, though the character was developed further in a tie-in comic "Lab Rat", that ties Portal and Portal 2 ' s story together. According to project lead Kim Swift, the final battle with GLaDOS went through many iterations, including having the player chased by James Bond lasers , which was partially applied to

8880-399: The movement of other blocks. Similar games include Baba is You and Patrick's Parabox . A hidden object game, sometimes called hidden picture or hidden object puzzle adventure (HOPA), is a genre of puzzle video game in which the player must find items from a list that are hidden within a scene. Hidden object games are a popular trend in casual gaming . In tile-matching video games,

8991-484: The number rolled, the character either kills the enemy or is killed. Because players did not want to lose the characters they had become accustomed to, Arneson created a "hit point" system based on similar mechanics previously used in the wargames Don't Give Up the Ship and Ironclads . According to this system, each character has a certain number of hit points, which decreases with each blow dealt to them. This allows

9102-409: The perfect sensibility to write a song for GLaDOS." The use of the song over the closing credits was based on a similar concept from the game God Hand , one of Wolpaw's favorite titles. The song was released as a free downloadable song for the music video game Rock Band on April 1, 2008. The soundtrack for Portal was released as a part of The Orange Box Original Soundtrack . The soundtrack

9213-402: The phrase "the cake is a lie", which has become an internet meme . Wolpaw noted they did not expect certain elements of the game to be as popular as they were, while other elements they had expected to become fads were ignored, such as a giant hoop that rolls on-screen during the final scene of the game that the team had named Hoopy. Swift stated that future Portal developments would depend on

9324-567: The player controls the protagonist, Chell , from a first-person perspective as she is challenged to navigate through a series of test chambers using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, or portal gun, under the supervision of the artificial intelligence GLaDOS . The portal gun can create two distinct portal ends, orange and blue. The portals create a visual and physical connection between two different locations in three-dimensional space . Neither end

9435-416: The player fails to dodge the opponent's blow; if the meter is fully depleted, the player character loses consciousness. Yie Ar Kung-Fu (1984), an arcade fighting game developed by Konami , replaced the point-scoring system of Karate Champ (1984) with a health meter system. Each fighter has a health meter, which depletes as they take hits; once a fighter's health meter is fully depleted, it leads to

9546-431: The player manipulates tiles in order to make them disappear according to a matching criterion. The genre began with 1985's Chain Shot! and has similarities to falling-block games such as Tetris. This genre includes games that require pieces to be swapped such as Bejeweled or Candy Crush Saga , games that adapt the classic tile-based game Mahjong such as Mahjong Trails , and games in which pieces are shot on

9657-496: The player starts with a small number of health and defense points, but can increase them by gaining the required number of experience points and raising the character's level. In game design , it is considered important to clearly show that the player's character (or other object that they control) is losing health. In his book Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design , game designer Scott Rogers wrote that "health should deplete in an obvious manner, because with every hit,

9768-519: The player's character and simple objects using "the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device", also referred to as the "portal gun", a device that can create intra-spatial portals between two flat planes. The player-character, Chell , is challenged and taunted by an artificial intelligence named GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System ) to complete each puzzle in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center using

9879-498: The player's health points are visible. This is done so that the player does not know how many blows still need to be delivered, which makes the game less predictable. Contrariwise, other games such as the Street Fighter series have both the player's and the opponent's health meters clearly visible, which allows the player to understand how successful their combat strategy is and how many remaining blows need to be inflicted on

9990-400: The player, through careful design of levels by Valve, is first hand-held in solving simple puzzles with many hints at the correct solution, but this support is slowly removed as the player progresses in the game, and completely removed when the player reaches the second half of the game. Rock, Paper, Shotgun 's Hamish Todd considered Portal as an exemplary means of game design by demonstrating

10101-462: The portal gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed. The Source Engine 's physics system allows kinetic energy to be retained through portals, requiring creative use of portals to maneuver through the test chambers. This gameplay element is based on a similar concept from the game Narbacular Drop ; many of the team members from the DigiPen Institute of Technology who worked on Narbacular Drop were hired by Valve for

10212-480: The puzzle game genre. The game was created by Soviet game designer Alexey Pajitnov for the Electronika 60 . Pajitnov was inspired by a traditional puzzle game named Pentominos in which players arrange blocks into lines without any gaps. The game was released by Spectrum Holobyte for MS-DOS in 1987, Atari Games in arcades in 1988, and sold 30 million copies for Game Boy . In Lemmings (1991),

10323-544: The real-world promotional website. According to the Aperture Science website, Cave Johnson founded the company in 1943 for the sole purpose of making shower curtains for the U.S. military. However, after becoming mentally unstable from "moon rock poisoning" in 1978, Johnson created a three-tier research and development plan to make his organization successful. The first two tiers, the Counter-Heimlich Maneuver (a maneuver designed to ensure choking) and

10434-555: The standalone PC version of Portal gave the game a 90/100 through 28 reviews on Metacritic . In 2011, Valve stated that Portal had sold more than four million copies through the retail versions, including the standalone game and The Orange Box , and from the Xbox Live Arcade version. The game generated a fan following for the Weighted Companion Cube—even though the cube itself does not talk or act in

10545-408: The team reused the Half-Life 2 assets. Laidlaw opposed the crossover, feeling it "made both universes smaller", and said later: "I just had to react as gracefully as I could to the fact that it was going there without me. It didn't make any sense except from a resource-restricted point of view." Valve hired Erik Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek to write Portal. Wolpaw felt that the constraints improved

10656-464: The turrets, Portal Kombat where the player would have needed to redirect rockets while avoiding turret fire, and a chase sequence following a fleeing GLaDOS. Eventually, they found that playtesters enjoyed a rather simple puzzle with a countdown timer near the end; Swift noted, "Time pressure makes people think something is a lot more complicated than it really is", and Wolpaw admitted, "It was really cheap to make [the neurotoxin gas]" in order to simplify

10767-401: The turrets, but we liked it a lot, and so a slightly modified version of that became the model for GLaDOS's final incarnation." The Weighted Companion Cube inspiration was from project lead Kim Swift with additional input from Wolpaw from reading some "declassified government interrogation thing" whereby "isolation leads subjects to begin to attach to inanimate objects"; Swift commented, "We had

10878-412: The work that Valve would have had to commit on their own. To test the effectiveness of the portal mechanic, the team made a prototype in an in-house 2D game engine that is used in DigiPen. Certain elements were retained from Narbacular Drop , such as the system of identifying the two unique portal endpoints with the colors orange and blue. A key difference is that Portal ' s portal gun cannot create

10989-458: Was also included in a proposed bid for de-icing fuel lines, incorporated as a fully functional disk-operation system that is arguably alive, unlike Black Mesa's proposal, which inhibits ice, nothing more. Roughly thirteen years later, work on GLaDOS was completed and the untested AI was activated during the company's bring-your-daughter-to-work day in May 2000. Immediately after activation, the facility

11100-445: Was based on levels from the map pack Portal: The Flash Version created by We Create Stuff and contains no additional story-related levels. According to Valve spokesman Doug Lombardi, Microsoft had previously rejected Portal on the platform due to its large size. Portal: Still Alive was well received by reviewers. 1UP.com 's Andrew Hayward stated that, with the easier access and lower cost than paying for The Orange Box , Portal

11211-529: Was flooded with deadly neurotoxin by the AI. Events of the first Half-Life game occur shortly after that, presumably leaving the facility forgotten by the outside world due to apocalyptic happenings. Wolpaw, in describing the ending of Portal 2 , affirmed that the Combine invasion, chronologically taking place after Half-Life and before Half-Life 2 , had occurred before Portal 2 ' s events. The areas of

11322-405: Was followed by about 15 minutes of silence and then someone mentioned that a lot of people like cake." The cake element, along with additional messages given to the player in the behind-the-scenes areas, were written and drawn by Kim Swift . The austere settings in the game came about because testers spent too much time trying to complete the puzzles using decorative but non-functional elements. As

11433-558: Was followed by other physics-based puzzle games. A physics game is a type of logical puzzle video game wherein the player must use the game's physics and environment to complete each puzzle. Physics games use consistent physics to make games more challenging. The genre is popular in online flash games and mobile games . Educators have used these games to demonstrate principles of physics. Physics-based logic puzzle games include The Incredible Machine , Portal , The Talos Principle , Braid , Fez , World of Goo , and Cut

11544-449: Was praised for its unique gameplay and dark , deadpan humor. Eurogamer cited that "the way the game progresses from being a simple set of perfunctory tasks to a full-on part of the Half-Life story is absolute genius", while GameSpy noted, "What Portal lacks in length, it more than makes up for in exhilaration." The game was criticized for sparse environments, and both criticized and praised for its short length. Aggregate reviews for

11655-466: Was released in a four-disc retail bundle, Portal 2: Songs To Test By (Collector's Edition) , on October 30, 2012, featuring music from both games. The soundtrack was released via Steam Music on September 24, 2014. Portal was first released as part of The Orange Box for Windows and Xbox 360 on October 10, 2007, and for the PlayStation 3 on December 11, 2007. The Windows version of the game

11766-520: Was released with Windows 95 , players began using a mouse to play puzzle games. In 2000, PopCap Games released Bejeweled , a direct clone of the 1994 tile-matching game Shariki with improved visuals. It sparked interest in the match-three mechanic which became the foundation for other popular games, including Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (2007), Candy Crush Saga (2012), and Puzzle & Dragons (2012). Portal (2007)

11877-463: Was some of the funniest pitch black humor I've ever heard in a game". He felt the short length was ideal as it did not outstay its welcome. Writing for GameSetWatch in 2009, columnist Daniel Johnson pointed out similarities between Portal and Erving Goffman 's essay on dramaturgy , The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , which equates one's persona to the front and backstage areas of

11988-503: Was taken down in January 2024 due to a request by Valve; according to the main developer, the port's reliance on "Nintendo's proprietary libraries" was the reason. A film adaptation has been in development hell since 2013, and it was reported in May 25, 2021 that the project is still in development by J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot and the script has been written. As of 2022, J.J. Abrams continued to express interest in bringing Portal to

12099-548: Was used in Chainmail and then Dungeons & Dragons ; "although armor class might have been inspired by the rules in Don't Give Up the Ship! , there is not an explicit attribute with that name in the game's rules. [...] It seems more likely that Arneson's house rules for armor class never made it into the final published version of the wargame". However, many role-playing games that followed Dungeons & Dragons moved away from

12210-434: Was well received by the community and the group has since converted it to a map pack for the published game. Another mod, Portal: Prelude , is an unofficial prequel developed by an independent team of three that focuses on the pre-GLaDOS era of Aperture Science, and contains nineteen additional "crafty and challenging" test chambers. An ASCII version of Portal was created by Joe Larson. An unofficial port of Portal to

12321-454: Was written by Jonathan Coulton and sung by Ellen McLain (a classically-trained operatic soprano ) as the GLaDOS character. A brief instrumental version of "Still Alive" is played in an uptempo Latin style over radios in-game. Wolpaw notes that Coulton was invited to Valve a year before the release of Portal , though it was not yet clear where Coulton would contribute. "Once Kim [Swift] and I met with him, it quickly became apparent that he had

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