Review: Portal

What's going on everyone!? I'm here with another review for you about a game that started out as a video game and took the journey into becoming a boardgame, Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game by a company you just might have heard of before called Cryptozoic! So sit back, Put your controller down, turn the TV off(unless this is how you're reading this!) and let's check out Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game.

 
As always, here's the excerpt:

"With a grinding of gears and some uneasy rumbling, Aperture Laboratories has resumed testing! Your team of test subjects has entered the Lab and is ready to perform all sorts of important, dignified, and dangerous testing procedures...all in the pursuit of cake! It's a fun and funny fast-paced fight to the finish — and by finish, we mean your team probably died."


So now that you're in the mindset of how all this is going to work out, lets take a look at some of the pieces.

As you can see, the components of this game are wonderful. The cake slices actually fit together! The detail on the Turret and Companion Cube models are very nicely done and have pretty good paint jobs.

So, On to the game play. The game is set up pretty easily, we played a few 2 player games and had no problem. You basically give each player their own "Test Subjects" the character tokens, and their slices of cake and lastly, one player aid/portal gun on the reverse side which matches their color as well.


Once this is done, Players set up the playing area by making it 3 rows deep and 5 columns wide. The remaining three tiles are not used and returned to the box.

The first player is the one who has most recently eaten a piece of cake.

Players then do the following actions on their turn as follows:

• Play an aperture card before you do anything(if you have cards to play)

• Move a group of your Test Subjects that are on the same tile
• Move a single Test Subject and draw an aperture card
• Move a single Test Subject and place a new Test Subject at the new end of the Lab(Leftmost side of the board) 

• Recycle an old lab tile(Take it from the rightmost side and place it in any of the 3 rows

Then it's the next players turn to do the same.
 

 
Now, There are other things that can happen as well when you play aperture cards. You can place the turret if it's not on the board or move it to an adjacent room if it is. This is especially helpful when you're trying to kill of your own or your opponents Test Subjects.

You may also be allowed to place the companion cube. If you get to place this, it stops any Test Subjects on that tile from moving OR using the abilities on the tile when it reaches the end.

 

Incinerate another players piece of cake(This is important because the player with the most pieces of cake on the board at the end of the game wins! If you can do this, then you are going to remove one of their pieces of cake from the game completely which limits them to 7 total pieces(or less if you remove more) compared to the standard 8 pieces you start with.

 

 
On to my opinion:
 Game Art: The Art is perfect for this game. It's meant to have a sort of "used" look to it because of the laboratory and it certainly fits with the art from the video game. They did a wonderful job at matching and making it feel like it came from the game.

Gameplay: The gameplay is good. It's not anything out of the ordinary and this makes the game very easy to learn but hard to master. Although it's a bit tedious, I do like how the lab changes the tiles by recycling them from the right to the left edge.

Game Quality: The quality of this game is very nicely done. It has sturdy pieces that do not seem fragile at all. The detail and paint on the pieces is also very nice. The tiles for the board are nice and thick cardboard, the cards have a linen finish to them which has a nice feel and they shuffle very nicely. The box is nice and sturdy and comes with an insert for all the pieces and even has some extra room for possible expansions?


All in all, I greatly enjoy playing this game. So the big question, Should you buy it? Well, If you're a fan of the video games then this is a DEFINITE YES! It even comes with a free steam code for Portal 2!

If you're more on the side as being a board gamer and know nothing about Portal, then I would say pick it up if you'd like something a little different with some light strategy and light play. It's a perfect game to get newer gamers into.



CHECK OUT OTHER TITLES FROM CRYPTOZOIC AND GRAB YOUR OWN COPY HERE!


As always, thank you for reading and take care! :)
-Tim