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Portal Golf - Guide

Posted by Frenchie14 - October 3rd, 2021


Welcome to Portal Golf - the deterministic physics puzzle game where you chain portals together to collect all the gold! This guide will go over the basics of how to play, some necessary techniques, and some advanced tips. Hopefully, with this guide, you'll be able to beat the game without losing too much hair.



The Basics


Objective: Your goal in Portal Golf is to collect all the gold bars in the level using as few portals as possible. You collect gold bars by touching them with the green ball. You have no control over the ball. Instead, you place portals around the level in order to get the ball in just the right trajectory.


Gravity: The ball is always falling downwards. Use this to your advantage to get some free movement.


Portal Chain: Portals chain together. This means that when the ball goes into portal 1 will come out of portal 2, when it goes in to portal 2 will come out of portal 3, etc. You can place as many portals as you have room for.


Portal Orientation: When the ball travels through a portal its direction will change depending on the orientation of the portals. If the ball enters straight into a portal, it will exit straight out of the other side. See the pictures for examples.


iu_436387_6057782.png iu_436388_6057782.png iu_436389_6057782.png



Key Strategies


Deterministic Runs: When you hit PLAY, the exact same thing will happen every time. The only way to change the outcome is to change the portals. Don't hit PLAY a hundred times hoping that something will change.


Iterative Solutions: Don't try to plan out the entire path for the level and then hit PLAY. Instead, play the game one portal at a time. Each time you place or move a portal, hit PLAY to see what happens before making the next change. The series of pictures below illustrates this point by iteratively solving level 2. Tips:

  • The purple trail will show you the last part of the trajectory. Use this to guide the position of your next portal.
  • Any gold bars you collected in your last run will be drawn darker. Focus on getting the rest.
  • The ball must be able to fit completely in a portal or it will bounce off. Sometimes this means you have to tweak a portal to get the ball to not bounce on the edge of a portal.
  • You can press C as a shortcut for PLAY and STOP.


iu_436390_6057782.png iu_436391_6057782.pngiu_436392_6057782.png iu_436393_6057782.png


Maximize Each Portal's Impact: This is best when combined with the iterative strategy above. Each time you place a new portal, try moving it around a couple times before moving on to the next portal. You might find that a slight tweak to a portal's position can get you a few extra gold bars for free!



Advanced Tips


Portal Looping: If the ball enters the last portal it will come back out of the first one. Sometimes, you can use this to your advantage to beat a level with one less portal. Hint: there's a way to beat level 2 using this strategy in 5 portals instead of 6.


Portal Clipping: When you place a portal, you're actually replacing a piece of a wall with a portal. This means that if you place a portal on a wall where the ball will touch the corner, the ball will now pass the corner instead of bouncing on it. Another possible portal clip is by placing two portals directly adjacent. Whereas the ball might have hit the side of the wall before, it can now pass through since there's no more wall. Sometimes you can use these tricks to your advantage, and sometimes you have to watch out for them because they can mess up your previous path.


iu_436394_6057782.png


Easter Egg (Stars)


Every level has bronze, silver, and gold medal scores. The gold medal score was the best score I could find when designing the levels. After a while I found out there were even better solutions on some of the levels! Rather than lowering the gold medal score I decided to add the stars as a bonus. Now you know - every time you get one, you beat the dev! :D



Good luck and have fun! Have any questions? Ask below


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Comments

Interesting game! The only bad thing is that it doesn't save progress.

You're the second person to report this but the game SHOULD be saving progress! The only progress it saves is which levels you've beaten and your scores on those levels. Is that not happening for you?

@HerbieG @Frenchie14 Weird thing is that - I just checked - it saves normally on Chrome, but not on Firefox.

Really really really liked this game. Dunno what it is, maybe cuz I grew up with Nitrome. I love it and I need more levels.

@qwerty741 You are a godsend! Thank you!

@qwerty741 I knew it wouldn't take long for someone to post all the answers lol. It's cool seeing how someone else solved all of these! Your solution to level 4 really surprised me - I put those solo walls randomly and did not realize you could use the right one to beat the level like that!

As for the other levels - level 2: I didn't know this was possible in 4 but it's not too hard to figure out once you know it's possible. Level 7: I knew this was possible in 5 - keep trying! Level 10: in 8???? o.O HOW??? Unless @Riccowed saved a screenshot I don't think anyone will ever get it again

@HerbieG I tried on Firefox and it remembered my progress. Not sure why...

@Frenchie14 @qwerty741 Woops only saw the notification now! Thanks Frenchie for making this game! I definitely had fun playing it. And sorry I never thought of taking a screenshot. I'm surprised my score is still the highest! Honestly I must've just gotten really lucky, just placing portals wherever the ball landed. I definitely do remember there were some loop portholes and what not which made it happen.

i wanted to make a walkthrough for the game so i tried to re-create the best set-ups based on the current high scores for each level.

level 1 (4 portals): https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/0098d28bc6fd0d97036e94749c7c10f1
level 2 (4 portals): https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/a236f52ac48fae89dd003ffd4454bae6
level 3 (6 portals): https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/187afa2bfbfe64efe48f5d624d0ab53f
level 4 (4 portals): https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/74f7e8a590c4a93b9693615c63748dfa
level 5 (4 portals): https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/a8cb6d37640dbab7b8658f835a5a4360
level 6 (8 portals): https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/eb3fef602077bdf22bcf058f3ea0d53e
level 7 (5 portals): https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/9a58a4bafe432c8dc2d92277b75a9d0a
level 8 (6 portals): https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/03e7e08cb74ec9d67cc75d42a1e445a4
level 9 (8 portals): https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/77257092a3ae7e34ee281a687827ae3a
level 10 (8 portals): https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/5017155c999d062306b6457651afd36a

unfortunately it's not possible to edit messages unless it's the most recent one in the chain or something? so i'd have to reupload this every time it needs an edit. if some comments seem amiss it's probably because i deleted the old one.

edit: i did the thing. now i have all current high scores set-ups (assuming no one finds a better one yet again)

I can't believe you got level 10 in 8. Incredible! GG

@Frenchie14 i got lucky with my 9 portal solution. i figured the first 5 portals were pretty good already, since the subsequent ones didn't influence the previous solution at all, at which point it was trial and error.
i simply started moving the last portal in all possible positions, and if it didn't work i moved the second to last one by one and tried again with the last one. rinse repeat