Portal puzzler 'Portarius' is now available on Linux

This looks like it will be epicly awesome and utterly infuriating in equal measure. Provided they've tuned the difficulty/frustration level to non-godlike levels, I'm pretty interested.

The last time I played something like this though, there were 10 good levels out of a hundred, then the difficulty and precision level went through the roof and I lost interest in minutes.

Looks really slick and engaging through. Fingers crossed.

Interesting, though it looks like you don't move the little guy around at all and have to rely on portals and momentum, making it a game where you can't ever really stop and consider your options. A pity. I might still check out a Let's Play and see if it still looks fun though.

Hey,

One of the devs is here ^_^

The last time I played something like this though, there were 10 good levels out of a hundred, then the difficulty and precision level went through the roof and I lost interest in minutes.

Thanks for the kind words! I have to admit - we don't have a 100 levels, and the main reason is as you wrote - it's hard to come up with a lot of well-balanced levels, but that being said we continue to develop new levels to include them in the future updates.

Interesting, though it looks like you don't move the little guy around at all and have to rely on portals and momentum, making it a game where you can't ever really stop and consider your options. A pity. I might still check out a Let's Play and see if it still looks fun though.

That's the main idea - use portals only and we tried to add movement mechanics, but it felt immediately to easy, perhaps we should try it again, but in the different way, because you're not the first one who asked us about that :)

Hey,

One of the devs is here ^_^

Interesting, though it looks like you don't move the little guy around at all and have to rely on portals and momentum, making it a game where you can't ever really stop and consider your options. A pity. I might still check out a Let's Play and see if it still looks fun though.

That's the main idea - use portals only and we tried to add movement mechanics, but it felt immediately to easy, perhaps we should try it again, but in the different way, because you're not the first one who asked us about that :)

Oh, hey! I don't think it's a bad design to have no direct control over the player character's movement—it distinguishes it from other games like the Flash 2D Portal game—I just personally prefer to be able to take breaks from action to stop and catch my breath, as it were. But watching the trailer again it doesn't seem quite as hectic as I thought the first time; it looks like you could get into a holding pattern with two portals on the floor if you needed time to think. And as a big fan of Portal the inability to move might be an interesting challenge. And the soundtrack sounds nice…y'know what, I'll give it a try. :)

Well, I tried it, and the lack of movement was not nearly as annoying as I'd expected. The levels (at least so far) take up only a single screen, it's nearly impossible to get stuck, and going through a portal gives you a little boost which means you never end up in a position where you've run out of momentum and can't progress.

What caught me off-guard more was the fact that instead of choosing which color portal you shoot (like in Portal) it instead alternates each time, which made for more of a cerebral challenge when I finally noticed it a few levels in.

It's definitely a simple and fun game (and the music is quite nice :)), hopefully I can find time to play through it fully in the future.

Sorry for the late reply, I haven't received the email notification although I explicitly subscribed to them.

What caught me off-guard more was the fact that instead of choosing which color portal you shoot (like in Portal) it instead alternates each time, which made for more of a cerebral challenge when I finally noticed it a few levels in.

Thanks for the kind words! You're definitely not the first one to comment on that, and that's is something we're looking into. It's not hard to implement, but we're afraid it'll make it too simple, that being said - stay tuned and it might come in one of the next updates!

Just out of curiosity, what distro are you using? Have you had any issues so far?


Last edited by Portarius on 23 May 2018 at 4:20 am UTC

Sorry for the late reply, I haven't received the email notification although I explicitly subscribed to them.

Thanks for the kind words! You're definitely not the first one to comment on that, and that's is something we're looking into. It's not hard to implement, but we're afraid it'll make it too simple, that being said - stay tuned and it might come in one of the next updates!

Just out of curiosity, what distro are you using? Have you had any issues so far?

No worries. I don't think it's a bad design choice, necessarily, I just wasn't expecting it and didn't realize it for a few levels; maybe having some sort of help right at the beginning explaining it would be nice, but it wasn't that difficult to figure out. And when I did I realized I need to play a bit more strategically, which was different. Though I wouldn't mind it being that way, perhaps as an option for people to choose.

I'm on Debian testing, updated every few days. Haven't had any issues so far. I thought it froze the first time I loaded it up so I force-quit it, but I think I just didn't give it enough time to get to the main menu (I wasn't expecting it to take so long to load).


Last edited by Philadelphus on 26 May 2018 at 12:33 am UTC