Narbacular Drop

Well, a few days later Garret decides to email him with the pretence of asking what we could do to make the game better - we were going to take the game to GDC the following year for Student Showcase. We thought maybe we could brush up the game a bit more before we submit it. We then get an invite to come and demo the game at Valve. So we of course jump at the opportunity, all the while thinking: "Wow, these guys are really nice to give us feedback on our game in person."

We go there and Robin greets us and sticks us in a conference room and lets us set up the game. We were thinking maybe, one or two people would show up to take a look. Slowly but surely, the room starts to really fill up with people. The couch of course fills up first. After the room gets pretty packed and Robin comes back, then walks in Gabe Newell. He immediately goes to the couch and people get up to clear a space for him. We decide I'd do the talking in the presentation while Jeep plays the game to demonstrate. After about 10-15 minutes through the presentation Gabe stops us and asks what we're planning on doing after graduation. I reply that we're looking for jobs, or something of that sort. Shortly after that we find ourselves in another conference room sitting across the table from Gabe. He then on the spot asks us if we'd want to be hired to re-create our student project using Source.

Well yeah, we were all just completely stunned. We thought we were just going in to get feedback on our game and a tour of Valve. We didn't really expect to walk out the door with a job.

Well, we definitely learned quite a bit from Valve about their design process. The most valuable thing I and I'm pretty sure everyone else learned was to playtest and iterate. If a player doesn't know what to do, it's the game developer's fault, not the player. And obviously, we were happy to insert Portal into the Half-Life fiction. Everything else was all us though, we had a few mentors that we would refer to in order to get help, and of course Eric Wolpaw joined our team. But all of the blood, sweat and tears came out of us Narbacular Drop folk.

Uh, no.

That's a bit wordier than Portal. Not to mention, no one knows how to pronounce Narbacular. Nar-back-u-laar.

You deserve a cookie.

Yes, well there's a big difference in having to create a game while you're going to school and having to actually pass other courses. And then having 8-10 hours a day to work on a game. And get paid for it.

Design-Test-Iterate, Design-Test-Iterate, Design-Test-Iterate. People really underestimate watching people test the game. It very quickly proves or disproves theories, it keeps everyone on the same page since everyone is watching the same thing happen, and it helps to keep people objective. In fact, quite a few of the levels came out of watching people playtest and observing particular behaviours.