Critical Play — Puzzles

Spoiler alert. Obviously.

Portal — specifically, Portal 1, was the first game to capture what I think is a really captivating emotion: “escaping” from the confines of a game. Portal introduces you with very straightforward mechanics. You get a gun, you place portals, this is a simple puzzle game. The simple numbering of test chambers establishes a set of rules, it gets the player to think, “This is a game with twenty levels, and then it ends.”

When you’re tossed into the fire at the end of the game, I initially thought that was it. “I beat the game, and you die in the end.” But it turned out, this wasn’t the end. You could actually escape from the fire. You could walk around the outside of the testing facility, behind the walls, places that you really felt like you weren’t supposed to be as the player. Of course, this is all part of the grand design of the game, and the puzzles you encounter outside of the testing facilities are similar to those that you encounter inside. But this method of tricking the player into thinking the game has a certain scope, and then broadening that scope to their surprise, is an amazing way to get them interested and invested in the game.