Reinforcing Key Concepts
Portal never asks players to apply a concept they have not yet fully grasped. For instance, the developers found that once players gained the ability to make two portals at once, many forgot the lesson they had learned about momentum. This prompted the designers to include a “refresher room” to retrain players in this skill, but with the ante slightly upped—the puzzle has to be solved with the new two-portal ability.Maintaining Challenge
Portal deliberately places simple puzzles before more difficult ones to maintain what Gee calls the regime of competence, a situation wherein “the learner gets ample opportunity to operate within, but at the outer edge of, his or her resources” (71). In other words, challenge is kept commensurate with player skill.Encouraging Creativity
Some test chambers have multiple ways of reaching the goal, and at least one can be entirely skipped. Moreover, players who finish the game are given the option of playing incredibly tough “advanced” versions of certain puzzles. To achieve success here, players must reevaluate how they think about these rooms and innovate new ways to surmount their challenges.
