Aperture Breakout
I love the Portal game series, but I felt as though both games feature a severe lack of pure movement inspired puzzles. I wanted to create a level wherein the player would be challenged on their skills rather than just their puzzle solving abilities.
I began by watching tutorials on how to create Portal custom levels in the Hammer editor, which the game was created in, and by experimenting with various aspects of Hammer myself to better my understanding of how it works.
I then created a 2D map of what I wanted the overall structure of the level to be so that I could recreate the map in Hammer.
After this, I planned out how I would create the platforming segment and then began creating it in Hammer.
I then gathered some playtesting feedback in order to polish the level and remove errors in the design. Once this was done, I began to work on the final segment of the game which uses the portal gun. The idea for this puzzle was that I wanted to create one large room which featured a linear design to prevent the player from getting lost and overwhelmed. Creating this segment was a lot harder than the previous one as I had to ensure that none of it was skippable because of the portal gun allowing players to teleport around the level. While this was harder, it was a very fun challenge to design around.
After this, I garnered some more playtest feedback in order to remove a few skips that players found and make a few polish tweaks. I then went on to decorate the level with props in order to make the level fit the aesthetic that I was going for. (All of the assets used were created by Valve.) I then had a finished mod and was able to publish it.
I used a taskboard when creating this project as it helped me breakdown the game into smaller completion goals that would form the complete experience. This allowed me to keep track of what I had done and what I was yet to do in order to complete the game.
