About Portal and introducing new mechanics

I think Portal may be the best example of pacing in any game I have ever played.

I will assume that everyone played or have at least heard about Portal, so I will describe the game only very briefly.

It’s actually quite simple:
You have a gun that can create Red and Blue portals on any supported surface and connects them.
So if you throw something into one, it will come from the other one.

I would like to talk about how beautiful that mechanic is in itself and how just this simple setup leads to one of the simplest to understand, but most fun to play puzzle games ever created.
It’s a beauty in systemic and emergent game design.

Let’s leave a deep-dive into it for some other time tho… still I wanted to mention it, because the simplicity of mechanics play a role in how well Valve managed to introduce first few levels.

So let me start by saying, that Portal has no “official” tutorial, the whole game is actually a tutorial.
It starts from simplest possible levels and fluently transitions into the most difficult puzzles towards the end of the game.

Just few examples of how it goes:

First level is just waking up, looking around and walking.
That’s it.
It’s not done in a hand holding way, where developer treats you like a child. It’s nicely packaged with the story and as soon as you know how to press buttons you can move on.

Right away you are introduced to the concept of portals. You can’t quite control them. In fact, you don’t even know you will be able to.
(Well, the name Portal is pretty dead giveaway…) but, you get familiar with the concept.

After you learn to walk, you are introduced to your lovely cube and the fact, that you can pick it up and take it for a walk.
One pressure plate later and you finished your first level!

Even the baby could have done that, but in these first 5 masterfully crafted minutes, you got yourself familiar with most important mechanics of the game and you didn’t even need to do anything for it.

Second chamber (level) teaches you about portals being connected, and in the third one you finally see Portal Gun.
At that point you already know what it does, how portals work and why you want it.

How is that for a tutorial?

I think everyone should rewatch and replay first few chambers of Portal whenever you are introducing new mechanic to the player.
It’s truly a masterclass in how to teach player important concepts elegantly enough, so that player doesn’t even feel being lectured.

I can try to summarize it, but you should really just play Portal again.

1. Show player the concept you want him/her to be familiar with.
2. Let player use this concept to accomplish the simplest possible task
3. Go back to step two and make it simpler -_-
4. Show it in different context
5. Let player figure out how he could use this mechanic to solve new problem
6. Slowly scale difficulty, just few tiny steps at a time

Yeah…
You should have really gone to play Portal.

Well…

Told ya.

Bye

Steam link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/400/Portal/