Before you try Portal, the upcoming bonus game/tech demo that Valve is shipping with Half-Life 2: Episode Two alongside Team Fortress 2, try out Nuclear Monkey's original.

Created as an end-of-year student project at the Digipen Institute of Technology in Washington, Narbacular Drop is a first person puzzle game utilising a similar example of portal technology to that seen in 3d Realms' recent Prey. For those unfamiliar with this new technique, it's a little tricky to explain without scaring people with quantum physics terms like "worm-holes". To put it as simply as possible, a portal is made up of two doors that the player or other objects can see and move through. Now, these doors can be placed anywhere, so if you were to place the entrance and exit on opposing walls of a square room, you could look through the entrance door and see yourself from the exit door looking into the entrance. Confusing, no? This also allows for all sorts of interesting possibilities when it comes to moving around a level, such as dropping through the floor to land on a higher platform and the like. It's a concept that takes quite a bit of getting used to, both in theory and practice, but once mastered, it's a lot of fun.

Narbacular Drop tasks the player with simply reaching the level's exit, using the portals which can be placed on any stone surface from any range with a mouse click. The challenge comes from the fact that the player is unable to place portals on metal surfaces, which generally make up large portions of each level. The game is quite short - only around eight levels - but it's just enough to get a handle on the concept of the portal technology, and to make one even more excited about Valve's upcoming spiritual sequel, Portal.

ND is a free download of a mere 25.6 megabytes. It's available from the Nuclear Monkey's web site but given the massive upsurge of hits the site has received since the announcement of Portal, it is frequently down due to exceeded bandwidth limits. Fortunately there are a number of mirrors hosting the game.

On a final note, a quick warning. People who get any degree of motion sickness from first-person games may find Narbacular Drop to be too much. While we highly recommend you give it a try anyway, PC PowerPlay takes no responsibility for any necessary cleaning bills or replacement of vomit-filled hardware that may be required after playing this game. Have fun.

Horrormeister Clive Barker teams up with Codemasters

"I have seen the future of horror and its name is Clive Barker." - Stephen King.

Following up from his critically successful 2001 game "The Undying", horror/fantasy veteran Clive Barker (Hellraiser) has teamed-up with UK-headquartered publisher Codemasters to develop an upcoming PC/next-generation game called "Clive Barker's Jericho". The mature title, scheduled to ship in late 2007, will apparently feature an open world where the player will be able to explore multiple story paths simultaneously.


Barker's most recent venture into video games was a cross-platform property titled "Demonik" that was meant to be turned into a movie, co-produced by Barker and John Woo, developed by Terminal Reality and published by Majesco. Unfortunately this title had stalled earlier this year.

If The Undying is any indication of what Clive Barker is capable of with the right development team behind him, Jericho promises to be a title worth keeping an evil eye on.

Independent developer Phoenix Studios are organising an online discussion with the team on the creation of The Silver Lining, their upcoming sequel to the King's Quest adventure game series. Of particular interest will be Phoenix's dealings with King's Quest intellectual property owner Vivendi Universal, a publisher well known for being very guarded about who they allow to work with their licenses. For an independent studio to negotiate their way through the red tape and gain Vivendi's stamp of approval is virtually unheard of.

The discussion is scheduled to take place on Sunday, July 30 between 6am and 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time. An early morning, but one well worth getting out of bed for, particularly for anyone looking at getting into independent games development. To sweeten the deal, Phoenix has invited a number of "Legends of the adventure game genre" to attend the discussion. While the team has yet to announce who these special guests might be, it is known that Ken and Roberta Williams, former president of Sierra Online and creator of the original King's Quest series respectively, have attended Phoenix's online events in the past.

For those who just can't bring themselves to get out of bed that early on a Sunday morning, the discussion will be transcribed and posted on The Silver Lining web site shortly after its conclusion.

Bill Tiller, Art Director on the Curse of Monkey Island and a host of other LucasArts games, recently announced that the first title from his new studio, Autumn Moon Entertainment, has finally been signed to a world-wide publishing deal with German Publisher Crimson Cow.

A Vampyre Story is a point and click adventure game very much in the vein of LucasArts' classic adventures -- Monkey Island, Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, and the rest. It utilises a combination of semi-cell shaded 3d character art and luscious, hand drawn backdrops. It's a fusion that works amazingly well and should make for one of the most beautiful adventure games yet seen on the PC, one with a distinctly Tim Burton-esque flavour.

The game tells the tale of Mona, a woman who has been kidnapped and infected with haemophagia (turned into a vampire for the less scientifically minded) by the no doubt evil and devious Baron Shrowdy Von Kiefer. Mona must come to terms with what she has become in order to free herself, with the help of a friendly bat called Froderick no less. No further information has been released as yet.

It'll be quite some time before A Vampyre Story finds its way to the shelves. The game has only just gone into full development since the deal with Crimson Cow has gone through and so it'll likely be a couple of years before release. It's certainly a title worth keeping an eye on.