Narbacular Drop
John Walker corners Kim Swift about the game that spawned Portal.
Well we were learning game history at the time to as well, one of the first games we had to play in our games class was Zork.
But mainly it's there to help get your feet wet. When I was going to school there we weren't allowed to use any other engines like say Source or Unreal Engine. So we had to build our own engines and heading right into DigiPen we didn't know how to use Direct3D straight off. So text-based was a good place to start.
Jeep, Garret and I stuck together and then Dave [Kircher] joined in a couple years later. Then the artists, Realm [Lovejoy], Paul [Graham] and Scott [Kintworth] didn't join until our Senior year. And that's the whole Narbacular Drop team that eventually went on to Valve.
The idea for Narbacular Drop started the summer before Senior year [that's the fourth year - Ed]. We decided that we wanted to get a jump-start on the game and actually have a good plan in place for once.
![](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/3.jpg_6oxBBWf.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Yeah, pretty much. Dave had been working on the idea of having these portals you could look in and see out the other. And we all pitched in to try to find a good way to use them. Having the game be an environmental puzzler was somewhat of a mash-up of a couple game proposals.
Honestly, not really. I know I proposed some sort of puzzle game with fish.
Not really, we had Lava Turtles. That was way better.
It's been awhile. I think the last time I played was when I was getting screenshots for a GDC presentation a few years ago.
Wow, it's very brown.
Nah, more like I've learned so much since school. And certainly giant heaping piles of gratitude. And the brown thing too.
![](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/4.jpg_Dw8qQgC.jpg?width=690&quality=75&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Too bad they don't actually exist in real life.
Or getting extremely motion sick.
Yep, us coming to Valve.
Well I was interviewing and hoping I might get a job with Crystal Dynamics actually. So basically looking for a job.
DigiPen holds an expo for game developers to come in and check out the work of graduating seniors. So Valve sends over a couple people to take a look. Robin Walker actually was the one who talked to us. First he proceeded to tell us everything we did wrong. He also commented that the game was very brown. And after we were sufficiently pulverised, he gives us his card and says good work, and stay in touch.