Gateways has you take control of Ed, a scientist who has mysteriously woken up in his lab to find that his creations have escaped their containment and are running amuck. As he runs to escape his lab, he must find and use several of his new creations in order to traverse past several of his own security systems. He must use all his various portal devices to teleport, resize, rotate, and even go back in time in order to reach his control center, and ultimately escape his own lab.

Gateways features amazingly interactive puzzles that require you to direct beams, stand on multiple pressure plates and even risk rupturing the space-time continuum by assisting yourself to open various doorways, while also attempting to avoid death by escaped creations and broken flasks and beakers littering the floors. The game’s sports an incredibly smooth 2D cartoon look, with dynamic visual properties that allow you to see what’s on the other side of an open portal no matter whether that portal is situated on a wall, floor, or ceiling. Players who get motion sickness very easily may want to be cautious when plaything this game as portaling through the game may cause some headaches and nausea very easily.

The game features four guns (see video for a demonstration of the guns):

The first gun is a standard portal gun that has no special features. It simply takes you from Point A to Point B.

The second gun is a resizing gun, allowing someone to enlarge themselves or shrink themselves to be able to access different areas.

The third gun is a time machine that begins recording time from the moment you create the exit portal. When you are happy with the amount of time that has passed, creating the entry portal and stepping through it will send you back in time where you will find your past self doing whatever you were doing while it was recording. Later further upgrades will allow you to travel back in time multiple times, creating multiple past versions of yourself.

The fourth gun is a rotation gun allowing you to change the gravitational pull of the world, allowing you to walk on walls and ceilings to get past obstacles.

Gateways is a game any puzzle gamer will love. With its dynamic visual aspects to its imaginative puzzle solutions, it is sure to keep players on their toes and thinking outside the dimensions for puzzle solutions.

Gateways was developed and published by Smudged Cat Games. The game was released on September 13^th, 2012 on Xbox 360 and PC. A review copy was purchased for Xbox 360.