Narbacular Drop

With Valve's Astoundingly complex Portal game exciting physicists all over the Internet and Prey's not-so-complex but still quite clever portals creating a buzz among post-modern artists, it's time to roll in Narbacular Drop, the spiritual predecessor to Portal by way of having the same development team.

At the core of both Portal and Narbacular Drop is the idea of personsized, space-warping portals - two can exist at any one time, both of which are placed by you. As you enter one portal, you seamlessly exit another. Even as you look through one portal you see out of the other. If you've already read Will's hands-on with Valve's Portal, then you'll know why Gabe Newell is so enamoured with the technology behind it.

Narbacular Drop is a puzzle game whose childish hand-drawn introduction belies a huge amount of depth. Almost everything you see happen in the Portal movie can be recreated here, from chasing yourself in circles to falling through an infinite loop. While initially confusing, placing portals becomes second nature long before the novelty even begins to wear thin -in fact as soon as you've finished the few puzzles supplied with the game, there are a handful of decent fan-made levels to be found online. These present far tougher challenges, often requiring you to fall into a portal on the floor to launch yourself from a portal on the wall at high speed, just one of the many ingenious methods of portal usage.

Narbacular Drop is the best way to take the edge off that festering anticipation of Valve's new puzzler, and one which will get you thinking with portals.