LO1 Portal Game Analysis Form

Game title	Portal	Platform tested:	PC
Genre What style of game is this? What genre does it belong to? How does it show stylistic conventions of the genre? How does it sit within the genre in comparison to others titles?	This game is a first person puzzle game, with elements of first person shooters in the gameplay as you spend the game shooting portals to solve puzzles. Unlike most puzzle games, portal has a story, and Portal also goes for a first person view.
Narrative What story is being told through the game? How does the story inform the gameplay? How does the story affect your approach to the characters and your interaction with them? How does the story connect with the target audience?	You play as Chell, a test subject in Aperture Science labs, who is guided by an Artificial Intelligence called GLADos, who guides you through the labs to test a gun that shoots portals. The story gives you a reason as to why you’re solving puzzles, and the story has twists that change up the gameplay objective.
Production process How was this game produced? What elements of production are developed specifically to enhance the gameplay? How are elements such as game physics and mechanics managed to enhance gameplay?	After the development of the Source engine (used in Half Life 2) a small group of developers at Valve began work on a small game called Portal out of the engine, which
Characterisation How are characters relevant to the target audience? What appeal do the characters have to the target audience? How does the characterisation match the conventions of the genre? How strong do you feel the characters are?	GLADos is a dark cynical sarcastic character that has humour about death that would appeal to the older target audience, without any profanity to raise that age rating. GLADos acts as a guide to help with the puzzles. GLADos is a strong character because her humour is funny without getting in the way of the game, and the twist in the story helps her become even more interesting.

Gameplay What challenge is present in the game? How does the level and type of challenge engage the player? What elements of the gameplay are key to the game’s success? How does the gameplay engage with the narrative? How is gameplay consistently evolving to keep the player’s attention?	The challenge of Portal is to go through the test chambers solving puzzles with the portal gun, to do with momentum, box puzzles, sentry turrets as enemies and energy balls. There are moments where you can die in Portal but death isn’t the challenge, really the challenge is whether you can solve a puzzle or not to progress.
Target Audience Who are the target audience? What indicators are there that this game is produced for this target audience? How does the game appeal directly to the target audience? How does the game compare to other games targeting the same audience?	The target audience would consist of teenagers and adults with an age range of 13 to 35 as there is some violence in the game and dark humour by GLADos
Platform What platform is this game available for? Is the game more suited to any one of these platforms? How is the game suited to this platform?	Portal is available on PC (Windows, Linux and Mac), Xbox 360 and PS3, and NVIDIA Shield, and it suits all of these platforms as they all have the controls capable of first person shooting, and it especially suits on PC for the accuracy of the mouse and the custom test chamber abilities the game has.