After downloading Steam to my computer and purchasing Portal, I wasn’t sure what to think. The adventure of playing a game on my laptop was foreign to me. I loved playing mobile games on my phone and board games with people gathered around a table, but using the keys W,A,S,D, to control going forward, backward and left and right took me a second to get used too.

Summarization of my game:

As I spun myself around for a few seconds, getting used to the keys, an orange portal in the chamber opened up. Entering the orange portal I was brought into a new set of rooms. An aspect of Portal that I initially struggled with was my lack of focus. It took me about 2 minutes to finally realize the rooms in the second chamber changed as the portal opened and closed. A theme throughout my experience in Portal was testing out different strategies and seeing what works. As I finally learned how to pick up the storage cube and drop it, I started to succeed in the game. But not for long! Being the impatient person I am, I was confused about how the door in the second room wasn’t opening and started getting frustrated when I realized I couldn’t do anything about it. Gaining the Portal Gun was eventually a significant accomplishment for me. It wasn’t that the chambers were that difficult, but since it was my first time playing Portal, the fundamental skills were taking me more time then they should. The ledges that appeared in chamber 3 were another challenge that I had to face. Thankfully, for my portal gun, that problem was easy to solve. Chamber 4 was additionally solved with the help of the portal gun. I enjoyed Chamber 5 because these levels tested our ability to use the skills we previously learned in more advanced settings. Chamber 6 was definitely a shock upon first starting. The high energy pellets were a scary addition that suddenly made the game a lot more real. With the goals of chapter 7 also being to get the high energy pellet into the receptor above, I began to return back to my struggling stage. Also, the addition of the moving platform only led to more portals being created. Chamber 8 had similar concepts as chamber 6 and 7 with trial an error on where to place the portal in order for it to reach the receptor. Chamber 9 was again adding complexity by having an area in the chamber that reset the position of the storage cube.

As I’ve taken you through the battles of my experience during Portal, I think you can conclude how I feel about the game. I thought the idea behind the game was interesting and passing through chambers surely required effortful thought. Having that said, I still prefer playing games on my mobile device or around a table.

Feel free to comment tips/advice on how to thrive in this game!