Grounded: A Portal 2 Level, Part 1

I've been working on a Portal 2 level in Hammer for the past couple weeks. But before I get to the Hammer bits, let's talk about the planning for my level!

My original idea was very narrative-based. After I came up with the overall story/theme of the level, I set about thinking of ways to make the gameplay elements support the narrative. Being a student of moment-based design, I also came up with some key memorable moments that I wanted to accomplish. Here's the document I came up with:

GROUNDED: A PORTAL 2 LEVEL

Concept:
Player falls through a floorboard of a test chamber into the “bedroom” of the “surly teenager” personality core, has to find a way through the dirty, disorganized room, cleaning it up along the way.

Key Features/Moments:

• Voiced surly teenager personality core (maybe have to carry it around?)
• Allusion to a teenager’s dirty bedroom
• Use water to clean off gel “stains”, revealing important puzzle elements
• Cleaning up, then dirtying it again to get out

“Hey, what the hell? Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?? God, no one respects my privacy.”

“I was about to clean that up, I swear. Just before you got in here I was thinking about how I was about to do that.”

“What’s the point of organizing my panels? They’re just gonna get messed up again anyway!”

Puzzle Step Ideas (not necessarily in order):

• Water pipe showing through exposed wall
• player breaks it (how?)
• use water to clean floor (how?)
• somehow reveals the next step
• something written on the ground?

• The “collection” -- a “closet” full of “unopened, mint condition turrets!”

“They’re gonna be worth so much one day! ...I mean, they’re already worth, like, a lot. But they’re gonna be worth even more! ...Technology gets more expensive with age, right?”

• accidentally get knocked out of their boxes, have to get past them (to turn on the water, maybe?)
• LASER DEFENSE SYSTEM! (one laser on the ground level across the floor)

“Oh, right. Humans can jump, can’t they. Well how was I supposed to know there’d be a human down here?? It’s been really good at keeping the frankenturrets out.”

• boxes were never on the turrets, core blames frankencubes
• • • Frankencube “cockroaches”

• crawl out from behind something (a wall panel?) like pests

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Those guys. Ugh, don’t get me started. Impossible to get rid of. I mean, I tried everything. Well, I tried one thing. We have an arrangement now. They can live in my room as long as they DON’T TOUCH MY STUFF! I’m lookin’ at you, Jeff. Yeah, that’s right. Hobble away. They know who’s boss.”

“I called the exterminator core to come take care of them, but since the neurotoxin dried up, it’s come to light that using neurotoxin was pretty much the only thing he was good at."

• Have to use them to block the turrets in the closet?
• • “Painting the walls” with gel

• White or blue? Leaning toward blue

“Yeah, my room needed a paint job anyway. Blue is perfect. It’s like, the color of my soul. ...Which is blue. Because it’s...wet? I dunno, man, I’m not a color psychologist!”

• Needed to bounce...something. Cubes? Player?

• “Flooded Basement”
• Broken floor reveals death water below
• Fill it up with debri to cross?

• Getting out through the ventilation shafts
• Lots of bouncing, maybe faith plates?

As you'll soon see, I make some pretty drastic changes to the actual level, but having this initial document make it a lot easier to create a cohesive design.

The formatting is being really annoying, so we'll just pretend that those inconsistently bullet points are there for...flavor.