The Entropy Centre

In the 15 years since Portal first appeared in the Orange Box bundle there have been many clones and homages of varying quality and degrees of originality. How does this one fair? Well, despite shamelessly ripping off Portal's story and level structure, tone, and even humor, The Entropy Centre does so with considerable heart and delightful detail. If you loved Portal you'll likely love this. I had a great time with it.

As with Portal your task is to solve a series of puzzles using buttons and cubes for a convoluted scientific reason. As with Portal something has gone wrong with the science and the facility is falling apart. As with Portal you have a wacky sidekick to provide hints and comic relief. And there are even cute robots. Really, the only significant difference is in your primary puzzle-solving gun-tool: here you "rewind" time on objects, requiring you to think temporally as well as spatially.

And yet The Entropy Centre is good at all the above. The excellent story has a classic sci-fi premise that fits well enough with the puzzle mechanic. The characters are charming and hilarious. And there's a nice addition of non-puzzle adventure areas to provide a change of pace. As for the puzzles, they are generally satisfying. The increase in difficulty is quite gentle and I found the first half of the game, perhaps even more than half, to be a bit too easy. My patience was rewarded with some juicy challenges later on.

I must mention that the initial release was a bit buggy with some wonky physics here and there and a broken achievement. Since then it has been patched and feels more polished.

All in all, The Entropy Centre is the opposite of groundbreaking. It wants to achieve exactly what another game did and, well, it does.