The Game that Became Portal

Narbacular Drop was developed as a student project at DigiPen by a team of developers called Nuclear Monkey Software. This game was noticed by Valve which eventually hired those students, and later went on to fully develop this game's core concepts as a commercial product now known the world over as Portal (teaser trailer).

You can download Narbacular Drop for free at the website. This game is much shorter than Portal, and can probably be finished in less than an hour. Noticable differences are that the character cannot jump, there is a turtle that you must steer over the liquid, and the player can also shoot portals through portals (this is important because some levels require this action in order to continue). There isn't as much hand-holding here either, the difficultly isn't as simple at the beginning as Portal's was. However, this game is JUST as fun as Portal, so check it out. Don't be a game snob just because it is Windows only or just because you've already played Portal.

Be sure to check out a few of the documents on the website too, including the Postmortem (c'mon, Spiffy McGee! Pull it together man!), the technical document, and whatever else you like. Since DigiPen is the college for training the world's next great game developers, these contain valuable insight as to how to bring a game together. They outline milestones, achievements, and specifications that must be met. None of this have I done for any of the games I've worked on in Pezad. No wait, I did some of this for Entrippy, I just forget to use it.

What other goodies did I find in the docs? Some of Narbacular Drop's "Product Competition" include The Adventures of Lolo, Stretch Panic, Ico, and The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker (woo!) (Game design document, page 4). Personally, based on the videos, I don't see it.