After Portal 2 was released in 2011, I decided to take a break from CryENGINE development and build my first level in Hammer. I wanted to not only learn how to construct levels in Valve's toolset,
but push myself to develop and iterate on puzzle design as this is something I hadn't had a lot of opportunity to do professionally. I had a few aims for the level:
I wanted to create a puzzle that would offer some challenge to players who'd completed the game, but wouldn't be something steeped in complexity that would be overly daunting.
I wanted to use a combination of mechanics that hadn't yet been used in Valve's story levels, providing a new twist for veteran players.
I wanted to spend some time iterating on the level based on community feedback in order to iron out kinks and
I recorded the playthrough of the map shown below in January 2016.
Aided by terrible memory, I had the interesting experience of completely forgetting the solution to my own puzzle and re-solving it as I went.
