Portal is a single-player puzzle-platform video game developed by Valve Corporation. The game was released in a bundle package called The Orange Box for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on October 9, 2007, and for the PlayStation 3 on December 11, 2007. The Windows version of the game is also available for download separately through Valve's content delivery system Steam and was released as a standalone retail product on April 9, 2008. A stand-alone version called Portal: Still Alive was released on the Xbox Live Arcade service on October 22, 2008; this version includes an additional fourteen puzzles. A Mac OS X version was released as part of the Mac-compatible Steam platform on May 12, 2010.

The game consists primarily of a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player's character and simple objects using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (ASHPD, also dubbed the "portal gun"), a device that can create inter-spatial portals between flat planes. The player character, Chell, is challenged by an AI named GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating system) to complete each puzzle in the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center using the portal gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed. The unusual physics allowed by the portal gun are the emphasis of this game and are an extension of a similar portal concept in Narbacular Drop; many of the team members from the DigiPen Institute of Technology that worked on Narbacular Drop were hired by Valve for the creation of Portal.

Portal was acclaimed as one of the most original games of 2007, despite being considered short in length. The game received praise for its unique gameplay and darkly humorous story, created with the assistance of Erik Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek. It also received acclaim for the character of GLaDOS, voiced by Ellen McLain in the English-language version, and the final credits song "Still Alive" written by Jonathan Coulton for the game. Discounting sales through Steam, over four million copies of the game have been sold since its release. The game's popularity has led to official merchandise from Valve including plush Companion Cubes, as well as fan creations such as recreations of the cake and portal gun. A sequel, Portal 2, was released on April 19, 2011.

Platform

PC

Developer(s)

Valve Corporation

Publishers(s)

Valve Corporation

Genres(s)

Puzzle

NA Release Date

October 9, 2007

JP Release Date

October 9, 2007

EU Release Date

October 9, 2007

AUS Release Date

April 11, 2008

ESRB Rating

Teen

PEGI Rating

PEGI 12

CERO Rating

CERO B

ACB Rating

PG

MVGL User Score

8.4 by 4531 user(s)

MVGL Difficulty

1.9372

Composer(s)

Kelly Bailey

Added by

6002 User(s)

This game also exists on:
Mac PlayStation 3 Xbox 360 Xbox One Xbox Series X/S

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