Game design concept style, Valve’s Portal 2 winning edge

You can often tell when a designer (or in this case also developer) puts a lot of effort into the style and look of a product, focusing on from concept to production giving the final outcome a unique edge or feel. In this case, Digital Design Media takes a look at the concept of Portal 2 and the design style that got it where it is today.

Above are a selection of concept images for Portal 2 which was released recently. This game from Valve‘s main challenge was to create a feel for computer artificial intelligence, giving the robots a human feeling while you play. While this game constantly makes you feel as though the computer elements are trying to emotionally associate with you, nothing draws you away from the clean lines and realistic physics which are generated in game. At the end of Portal 1 the game credits are done in such a way to show all of this, below is a typographic version, which you can watch below.

It seems that most game concepts from the team at Valve have a very unique style, for example the “Half Life” series – which uses the same engine as Portal 2. Even though Digital Design Media have not got this award winning game yet in the office, by the look of things we are going to be very busy playing very soon…