Yeah. I had occasion to do a lot of shower-thinking about this topic after the Talos debate, and while I like ella’s 1 Clever Mechanic designation I really can’t think of a better way to identify these games than Portal-likes. They have a whole series of common factors:
- Yes, the clever mechanic. It’s important that this mechanic is about bending or manipulating space in a simple but non-intuitive way, as it achieves depth in later puzzle iterations by exploiting that gap in our intuition.
- A diegetic setup that the player is, at first, running through a series of explicit test chambers or areas that are designed on purpose to be puzzles
- The space-bending mechanic suggests ways to fray the edges of the bounded spaces of the test chambers, and eventually the player “breaks out” of the diegetically bounded area by exploiting the mechanic, now using it to traverse space not diegetically “intended”
- Commenting one way or the other on this newfound “freedom” is always the thematic premise of the game
- These games are always in first-person, to emphasize the player’s subjectivity and to underline the way in which the puzzle mechanic is perspective-based
I really can’t think of any game that fits this mold until Portal (but I would love to know of any!!), and there are tons that came after: The Witness, Talos Principle, Supraliminal, Viewfinder, Quantum Conundrum, Relicta, The Spectrum Retreat, and so on. I’d say even the Stanley Parable belongs here, barely.
I think third-person games that avoid all traditional writing and instead impart a purely mechanical narrative (meaning, instead of investigation of the mechanics imparting some weight to a traditionally written story, the investigation of the mechanics IS the story) are, even if they are profound, more traditional puzzle games. They have a different emotional weight and effect. Stephen’s Sausage Roll has more in common with like, Baba Is You and Toki Tori 2 than Portal.
