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R4 3DS Affiliate Program

The R4 3DS Newsletter


Portal 3DS Homebrew Puts Portal on Your Nintendo 3DS

They say a picture is worth a thousands words... We agree, so this review will be filled with some of the amazing screenshots from the newly released Aperture Science DS, Also known as Portal 3DS.  This game has been talked about for some time, and even had a beta release about 6 months back, and now with 14 full levels, this (Still in Beta Stage) remake of the super popular Portal game that has graced PC's for years is finally here for all R4 3DS owners that just can't get enough of some of the very best freeware 3ds games available.

portal3ds1.png  portal3ds2.png  portal3ds3.png

Smealun has said himself that he's been working in this game for quite some time, and thought it was time to release it.  His plan of course is to continue the development of the game and make it as good as possible.  This allows a lot of truly unique level creations, and he plans on making the original campaign using doug rattman as a protagonist.

With the included level editor, this game is going to have endless replay value.  You can create your own levels, share them online with friends and download new levels created by other gamers.  Smealun & Lobo seem to have thought of everything.  The developers hope is that with the level editor, portal fans everywhere will take the time to make their own creative levels and upload and share them with the rest of the community.  And why not?  There are so many creative people out there, that love modding and making game levels that this should be a sure sign of some long term portal style gaming on the Nintendo 3DS, DS and DSI systems.

portal3dsleveledit.png

As the developer has stated, the game is still something of a work in progress, though it is certainly finished and polished enough that all of us here in the office had a blast spending an hour playing it.  A work in progress is not a bad thing, it means that they're still working on making it even better.

APerture Science features so far :
  • working portals (you can place them, look through them, go through them)
  • okay player physics (for instance, momentum is conserved when going through a portal, flinging works great)
  • a full fledged rigid body physics engine for turrets, cubes and stuff (watch the video, I think it's pretty cool for a DS game)
  • mini gravity gun !
  • an on-board and intuitive level editor
  • more or less working puzzle elements (including buttons, dispensers, turrets, energy ball things, doors, emancipation grids...)
  • an entirely new gameplay mechanic ! (not fully implemented yet but I think it's going to be pretty neat)
This game shows that with the right design and coding experience, a freeware game can be just as good (if not better) than a lot of the commercial game offerings out there.  Aperture Science alone is reason enough to get an R4 3DS card, and validates what we've been saying for years.  There are literally hundreds of freeware games available for your favorite hand held.  Just the games and apps we regularly review are more than enough to give you a fantastic gaming library, and one that you can have for free.