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[toythatkills]

Available NOW on:

Xbox 360 (240pts)
Steam (£3.19)
Desura (£2.39)
Windows, DRM free and with a Steam key ($5)



"2D Portal" is obviously the easiest way to describe this, but it doesn't really do it justice. Yeah, it's 2D, and yeah, you have a Portal Gateway gun, but there's a lot more to Gateways! than that.

Y'see, the Gateway Gun has a few extra little tricks up its sleeve. It can manipulate your size, for example, by placing two different sized gateways. Or it can create a clone of yourself so you can use your past self to help you solve puzzles. Or it can totally fuck with your brain and send you craaaaaazy!

Some of the puzzles early on are pretty familiar from Portal, but it really opens up later on when the extra functions are added and soon the puzzles just get insane - if they ever get to be too much you can "buy" a solution with orbs you collect, but of course you'll want to save them for harder puzzles.

And yeah, when I say "extra functions are added," it kind of turns the game into a Metroidvania. It takes place in one giant lab and you'll constantly encounter things you can't access with the items you've got, and it's up to you to work out when you can go back and surpass it. Or you can use the nifty map. It plays awesome, and is well worth your pennies.

 

[Dog Problems]

This sounds great. I'll be buying it on Steam later in the day.

 

[Wario64]

Seems pretty cool so far. I'm guessing the puzzles are pretty hard since you can use the in-game currency that you collect to pay for clues

 

[Chris Murphy]

Christ.... this looks like it would break my brain.

 

[ElectricBlanketFire]

That's a pretty bold promise of a thread title.

 

[toythatkills]

Christ.... this looks like it would break my brain.

Its looks do not deceive =P

 

[RatskyWatsky]

Wow! This looks quite cool. Do you know if it's coming to PSN? (NOT port begging, just asking)

 

[toythatkills]

Wow! This looks quite cool. Do you know if it's coming to PSN? (NOT port begging, just asking)

Not sure, @SmudgedCat is the person to ask!

 

[MightyHedgehog]

This game is excellent. Love the post-process giving it that old TV look, too. Wrote my early impressions in the Uprising III thread:

Gateways! = awesome NES-styled, or Metroid-styled contiguous 2D world puzzle-action-adventure. Sprawling layout with a neat help system that not only gives you solutions to nearby obstacles and locks provided you have the requisite crystals (the game's collectable), it also provides direct confirmation of something not being possible without a new item or upgrade. That eliminates the waste of time, frustration, and flaring up of gamer OCD for trying everything possible over and over again only to find that it was impossible. Smooth animation, nice lighting effects (Monkoid red spinners in the dark), fast 60FPS scrolling and portal-projecting viewpoints and vision cone. Some definite Portal stuff in the beginning, but it seems that's not all to the game's puzzle and action mechanics. Only bad thing to say is that you need to use the nice in-game map to find your next objective since everything is everywhere with no clear sense of guiding toward the next destination since it layers over itself constantly with puzzles and locks butted up against and across other puzzles and locks.

Okay, the

Spoiler

resizing gun

is cool as hell. It's definitely an evolution from Shuggy's puzzle platforming with smooth rotations to Growing Pains' manic Mandelbrot zooming-escape to Portal-influenced Gateways. Smudged Cat has a fantastic record for great platformers.

 

[KodeAndGame]

Smudged Cat has a fantastic record for great platformers.

I've got to say, I agree! I'm about 65% in now and enjoying every single minute. Some of the puzzles are really tough but I haven't been at any puzzle for longer than some of the harder Braid puzzles yet (I'm sure that will change in the endgame).

Highly recommend this game and I wish this thread was getting more love.

 

[KodeAndGame]

94% in. I think I have 2 more puzzles left and I'm stuck at a

Spoiler

laser splitting

one. So hard!

Doesn't help that I didn't legitimately beat the first puzzle of it's ilk. I found a workaround instead.

 

[Vert boil]

Gateways is currently 80msp on XBLIG, temporary price.

The game received an update today as well.

 

[KevinCow]

The later puzzles in this game hurt my head. I've basically gotten to a point where I can complete one or two puzzles in a sitting, that'll take over an hour, and then I have to call it a day.

But finally completing one of those puzzles is pretty damn satisfying.

 

[SteveWinwood]

The later puzzles in this game hurt my head. I've basically gotten to a point where I can complete one or two puzzles in a sitting, that'll take over an hour, and then I have to call it a day.

But finally completing one of those puzzles is pretty damn satisfying.

Damn I really need to put more in the game. I would mess around with it and get bored because I either knew instantly that I couldn't solve it yet or it was really easy. If the puzzles get better I should just get to it.

 

[CrunchyFrog]

puzzles in this deffo get hard toward the end. my only complaint is that the game is a tad short, it just BEGS for either an add-on campaign or some kind of level editor.

 

[Of All Trades]

So far my only real complaint is the design decision to make the time repeater gun "fail" if you touch your previous self. The ability to set up the portals more or less wherever I want means that at times I get near the solution but have to redesign my method because it turns out that the platforming gets too hard, particularly with having to add timing gaps to avoid landing on myself (the hitbox seems a bit large, too). And when I'm working with 3 or more past-selves, failing requiring having to redo all the placement gets a bit tiring.

 

[KevinCow]

Damn I really need to put more in the game. I would mess around with it and get bored because I either knew instantly that I couldn't solve it yet or it was really easy. If the puzzles get better I should just get to it.

It's definitely pretty easy early on. I'd say the first half of the game is almost just a tutorial, teaching you how the different portals work so you'll be able to solve the puzzles later in the game.

But there are two points in the game where the puzzles suddenly and dramatically increase in difficulty:

1) When you get the time travel portals.

2) When you get the upgraded gun that lets you use all four types of portals at the same time.

Then you're suddenly throwing a couple regular portals over here, your size portals over there, your gravity portals over there, and then slapping down a time travel portal and trying not to run into the five other versions of yourself as they hold down switches that open a door for you to run through.

 

[NewFresh]

After playing Shuggy the last few days I am excited to pick this up.

 

[KodeAndGame]

Made this game my bitch today! Took me long enough. What a great game.