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I started in Portal 2:s own ingame level editor designing the puzzles and blocking out the level. I chose to do this because the editor is pretty limited and it enabled me to focus more on the puzzles and also testing changes for the puzzles were made very easy.

I have always felt that the Portal 2 maps were a bit too straight-forward in their layouts so to make my map stand out I chose to make it twist and turn to keep the player interested while exploring it.

I liked the tractor beams and felt they had alot of potential for fun and interesting puzzles, so I decided to base most of my puzzles around the use of them.

I put the exit in the first big room so I could establish early where the player was expected to go.
I used the laser fields and light bridges to block the players path in different ways.

When I felt happy with the design, I exported the map into  Hammer to add different kinds of props like vegetation hanging from the walls, rusty beams and rocks. I also changed the textures for the panels to give the environment some depth and a more realistic worn and torn look.

One playtester told me that the cube in the first puzzle could get stuck on the small plateau in the middle of the first big room. I fixed this by adjusting the angle of the plateau in a way that would make the cube fall into the water and get reset instead.

 

 

Another tester suggested that I modify the puzzle with the ball to make the player carry it over to the top room with the fizzlerfield in it. What I did to accomplish this was that I extended the walls and the celing of the room so you could see the elevator from the glassbox where the ball button that activated the elevator is located.

 

 

 

The feedback I got on the placement of the laser in the second room was that it were dangerously close and players could get themselves accidentally killed when the fields got reactivated.

To prevent this from happening I moved the laser beam to one of the walls on the small plateau.

To prevent potential frustration, I added auto saves after both rooms with water so the player doesn’t have to restart the whole map in case they misstep and get killed.

To add to the atmosphere and story of the map I added  sounds to be played at certain places in the level.

In the original iteration of the map, players had to backtrack through the whole map after completing all the puzzles in order to reach the exit. One of the testers told me they felt it broke the flow and gave them the impression they had missed something.

To fix this I added a small corridor that led to a small room with a broken window in it that let you see the second room with the exit in it. This made it possible to put a portal on the small plateau to get back to the second room of the level and then head to the finish line from there.