Leap of Phase: Samantha Reviews

Boring, in 30 minutes I didn't use my brain at all

I very much enjoy this game. I stumbled upon it when it had just come out, so I was more than happy to be a part of testing for bugs, as it were. I would definitely recommend it if you like games like Portal.

I'll never have enough of Portal-like puzzle games, especially when they're well crafted. TPORT might not become a milestone in the genre, but it rightfully earns its honest place among Portal-inspired games. The elements are all there: well-thought puzzles revolving, this time, around a teleporting device, a good difficulty curve (which never goes hardcore) and a testing facility holding secrets. Dark secrets, I should say, which later in the game develop into some new interesting puzzles... I won't spoil more. If you're into first person puzzlers, you'll enjoy TPORT. Short, but fun. I'd surely appreciate a sequel that continues / expands the backstory.

[h1]Neat "short" puzzler[/h1] I'd say it offers a healthy mix of >[i]I see what I have to do[/i]< and >[i]Gotta think for a bit[/i]<. I would've probably enjoyed some QoL in some areas, but none of them are desperately needed. [hr][/hr] Bonus Points for the Devs for rolling back the game version, when I encountered a rather weird bug.

As of now I played about an hour and so far the riddles are fun. The game gives you enough time/rooms to learn the mechanics and although I got stuck from time to time it always kept me wanting to solve the riddles. At some point the story starts to become really interesting, wanting you to discover more of the (maybe deep and dark) secrets behind the mysterious company and its technology. The visuals are clear and you always know where to go and what to interact with. The acoustic environment fits the atmosphere the game starts to build. Can't wait to explore more levels and secrets (more so as I got a glimpse of what is to come during the live broadcasting streams here on steam, though I didn't want to spoil myself too much :D). Anyone who is interested in logic puzzles and a mysterious story can safely grab this game. And on top you support a small developer and not some filthy rich stakeholders and what not ;)

Overall, I liked it. This is a 3D puzzle game heavily inspired by Portal (a bit too much, actually xD). It was made by a smaller team, and succeeded in creating an interesting new mechanic that still involves portals, but ithey work pretty differently from the ones in the aforementioned game. It's not without its flaws though, and if you were to compare it to its inspiration, it falls short in basically every category. However, I feel it still manages to be an interesting addition to the genre. Story-wise, this game is not unlike others of its kind, where you are a test subject proving some new technology; you signed up for it for... reasons, but things are not like you were told. Tests are... deadlier. This is a premise that can be traced all the way back to Portal 2, and that was employed by many successors (Magnetic: Cage Closed, Gravitas, Portal Stories: Mel, etc.). It has lovecraftian undertones, but those aspects aren't fully explored (Magrunner: Dark Pulse went through that rabbit hole a lot further). Many questions are left unanswered by the end, which pissed me off a little, but it's not that bad (not enough to make me not appreciate the rest of the game, at least). Game-play wise, it's fine. It has flaws (chambers are pretty easy overall, the mechanic is much more annoying than the original Portal, requiring you to backtrack a lot more to solve stuff, and in some cases, you have more portals than what you actually need, which makes it seem like some of the supposedly hardest chambers should have appeared earlier in the game, things like that). However, it also leads to some interesting rooms where you have to really think what to do (and crucially, in what order), to solve them. Performance-wise, I didn't run into any bugs, didn't have problems with the saving system (there's a choice at the end, and you don't have to back up your save to explore both possibilities, you can easily return to that point in the game), didn't have any crashes, and my PC fans stood mostly still during my playthrough (and it's summer here, so room temperature was high). Soundtrack and voice acting were ok. Neither particularly memorable, and the latter only slightly cringe-y at times, but it was mostly pretty alright. All in all, the game is fine. There are better games of this kind out there (I highly recommend the Turing Test, and Portal Reloaded, for example), but this is a nice enough addition to the genre and I can recommend it.

nice and fun riddles with increasing difficulty that got me hooked quickly, great athmosphere and even greater ambient soundtrack. fully recomended

If you enjoyed Portal (Valve's critically acclaimed puzzle game), you will be a fan of TPORT. The graphics are clean and simple, the voice acted story draws you in, and the increasing complexity of the puzzles continue to engage your brain. I streamed this game on my Twitch channel and enjoyed every minute of it.

A short and sweet game which was definitely inspired by Portal, but is has enough differences to stand very well on it's own. Having three portals that you teleport through in a specific order no matter which ones were placed first definitely made for a great puzzle mechanic and where I had most of my troubles figuring out puzzles. My one gripe with the game is a small one, the control to place down the cubes that show up in some puzzle felt a little unintuitive to me. I was quite often placing down a portal instead of cube after I selected to place a cube, which was annoying but not enough that made me feel any less about the game as a whole.

Good but not great. The base gameplay mechanic is the ability to place a teleport sphere where you are standing, and then later being able to instantly teleport to that location, thereby also recycling that sphere so that you can place it elsewhere when the time comes. As the game progresses, you will have up to 3 teleport spheres at your disposal, colored blue, green and red. You can select which one to place, but teleporting back you will always teleport in the order of blue (if sphere is placed), green (if sphere is placed) and red (if sphere is placed). There are also "press to activate, unpress to deactivate" floor switches (and weighted cubes you can place thereupon), as well as toggle switches. Switches usually control either platforms that go up and down (and on which you could place a sphere), ramps that go up or down, or doors that open or close. Later in the game, the switches can control one more thing but I won't spoil it. Finally there are emancipation screens and pools which cancel/recycle any placed cubed or spheres. Recycled cubes go back to where they were at the start when you first entered puzzle chamber. If I recall correctly, that is the sum total of gameplay mechanisms. The puzzles (organized essentially as a linear series of puzzle chambers) created with the combination of all these gameplay elements, is the core of the gameplay. Ultimately, I felt that the overall quality of the puzzles was a bit disappointing. The puzzle chambers were mostly rectangular rooms with some assortment of switches, doors, ramps, and so on that you've seen on previous levels, but almost zero other adornments or textures. As a result, the puzzle chambers all looked rather monotonous. Unfortunately, the underlying problem-solving aspect of the puzzles was also too similar, and I just didn't feel like any of them were very creative. They all just felt like more of the same. Some of the puzzles did provide a pretty good challenge in terms of my time taken to solve them, but again I can't quite put my finger on why, but ultimately they just weren't that much fun in comparison to many other first-person puzzle platformers (probably my favorite genre) that I have played. There is a story that didn't make much sense to me and voices talking to you the protagonist "test subject", as well as some very linear boring walking simulator sections that advance the story. In summary the puzzles were OK but not great, and I did stick around to finish them all, so for that, the game deserves a thumbs up. I encountered no bugs.