Gateways wears its influence on its sleeve. To be more precise,
the main character in Gateways wears it. It’s the main tool used
throughout the game and it’s a device that is in no small way an
imitation of the portal gun from the Portal series. The gateway
gun is worn in the same way, covering up part of the arm, has
similar prongs protruding at its front, and creates physics-
breaking gateways on particular surfaces. It’s a brazen move to
so closely imitate one of this generation’s most beloved series,
but developer Smudged Cat Games understands the adage of “great
artists steal’ and ends up making a great title because of it.
Often amongst the player community, I see knee-jerk reactions to
decry games with similar mechanics and aesthetics as “rip offs.”
While the claim is sometimes warranted, it belies the fact that
creative mediums are constantly informing each other. Eliot’s
“The Wasteland” couldn’t exist without the Bible and
Shakespeare. Post-modernism couldn’t have existed without the
Formalism that s