Valve's Portal Gets Narbacularly Dropped
Something you may have seen spread more or less all over the Interweb is this very neat trailer for Valve's 'Portal' game (YouTube link), which will be bundled with Half-Life 2: Episode 2 when it ships next year, and adds fiendish spatial portal puzzles to the Source Engine.
But it's also worth pointing out that this is a great 'rags to riches' story (OK, maybe mild wealth!), since, as we mentioned in our Gamasutra report: the "spatial portal dropping concept, using a gun for placement... is based on IGF Student Showcase winning title Narbacular Drop (FilePlanet download link, the official site is down), which was previously reported to be in the process of being re-imagined in the Source Engine, with the help of its original creators."
We also ran a Q&A with the DigiPen student developers on Gama earlier this year, and it's great to see an originally indie-created title like this causing more buzz than all the other games at the Electronic Arts Press Day - doesn't that say something for small teams and originality? [Oh yeah - also, Team Fortress 2 - awesome art style.]
Comments
The character designs for Team Fortress 2 are absolutely AMAZING. For the first time in ages I'm looking forward to an FPS!
Posted by: mathew | July 19, 2006 7:39 PM
Narbacular Drop is a lot of fun to play, but it's got a steep learning curve. It's such a huge change in dynamics from the standard fps gamestyle that you really have to think about what you're doing, at least at first. Eventually it will become second nature, and you'll be able to fly through a game with relative ease, but it takes some patience to get to that point. I see it as an evolutionary step in gameplay in general, one that will take a while for the average gamer to really master. After everyone has a handle on it, though, it's going to be sweet for Multiplayer.
Posted by: Joel | July 20, 2006 9:28 PM