Hey Portal 2 community. I recently discovered the great maps available in the steam workshop for portal, and have played through around 40 of the top rated single player and coop maps. The challenge of the puzzles begins to decrease dramatically unfortunately.

Are there any lesser known Portal 2 puzzles that offer good challenges?
My favorite maps creators I have played so far have been Mevious, Mr. Late, and Zivi7, more like these world be awesome!

Sry for Post ^^

Goose, Gig and Azorae are all great puzzlemakers. I suggest having a look at their stuff.

Also, browsing through the Downloads category here at TWP should yield some good results.

The three that srs bsnss mentioned are some of my favorites too. There are tons of other great authors to check out. There's a big variety of authors here, so you might like some and not others.
srs bsnss himself.
Juggler
camerson1313 has a shit ton.
AD_79 (link might change because he uses a dumb id)
Near and Lawliet, the Death Note duo
ColorCubeMan
BEN 77
Lpfreaky90
Motanum
toncica
Barbos
Jotta

If you're looking for an extra challenge, try these authors. They are usually too pro for me to figure out.
josepezdj
chander
marKiu

People often complain that the workshop is full of crappy maps, but those people simply don't know how to find the good ones. "How do you do it" you ask, well you already have a big list of authors, and many of those authors have favorites. Play the favorites. Let others (people whose opinions you trust) discover great maps for you! For example, you mentioned liking my maps, if you look at my favorites page you'll see probably at least one map from every author I mentioned above. Many of those authors have their own favorites list (be wary of those who favorite their own maps), which you can follow and so on. You won't run out anytime soon.

Greykarel has some challenging maps. Also HMW.

yishbarr wrote:
Greykarel has some challenging maps. Also HMW.

Damn! you anticipated it!

I was about to, thank Mev in first place for mentioning me, but I honestly doesn't deserve to be mentioned right there beside Chander and Marc, ... Grey does instead

I wanted secondly to deeply recommend Grey's maps. I admire him since the very beginning I tested out a map made by him. One of my favourite maps of all times is Hard Light... I enjoyed like hell solving that monster! You will discover soon that he has the impressive ability to make so clever and so twisted maps into a fuc***n' reduced space! >.< he's simply impressive, and ALL of his maps.

Chander and Markiu are my favourites too for long time altogether with HWM, Mevious, and recently Toncica.

link_36p wrote:
Hey Portal 2 community. I recently discovered the great maps available in the steam workshop for portal, and have played through around 40 of the top rated single player and coop maps. The challenge of the puzzles begins to decrease dramatically unfortunately.

Lol, don't play the top most rated Follow Mevious' advise and check out for the favourites of ppl whose opinon you respect.

How I wish original Portal maps were in Portal 2. (Especially manic mechanic, TA2, lost chamber zero and afterburn).

Wow thanks guys! Exactly what I was looking for, should keep me busy for awhile ^_^. Never considered Mevious's idea of looking at favorites.

It just sickens me that these authors never took off in popularity because the workshop promotes 99% crap.

**### Collections:**
My favorite single player maps (includes 19 single player collection "campaigns")

### Single Player Authors**
My Picks:**
Mevious
BEN 77
Lawliet <--Mevious recommendation to me
TuRboz <--Mevious recommendation to me
Azorae
Near
Gig
Jotta
uXcCobbs
srs bsnss
ColorCubeMan
LoneWolf2056
tmast98
Demon Arisen
Goose
Cobra

Potential (honorable mentions):
camerson1313
Mathey2009
Toothless2603
Reep?lue
Fluppy
Lpfreaky90
LuckyRJ
13aboon
RectorRocks
AD_79 <--New link because Mevious's link doesn't work.
smfinch10
olshi
eMbAh
MysteryBattle
UFS FrostGiant

People with five maps or fewer :
AmnDragon
Dr. Toaster Waffles
Kevin
Mr. P. Kiwi <-- Had two more good ones but got rid of them...
laakkone
Tesselode
Firefox
Mr. Crowley
KodenejmBerni
Layne

If you *really want a challenge:*
cyhborg
toncica
josepezdj
chander
marKiu
YUKI_67
Piranha.A
Donderbus
greykarel
Prototype
Polux

If they made the Portal 2 Level Creation Group:
http://www.steamcommunity.com/groups/P2LC#members

This list is growing periodically.

I've played this map a while ago already, but unfortunately, it never got noticed on the front page.
You might not believe me, but this map is one of the most fun maps with lasers. Once you play it, you'll understand.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =210514602
This is a must play.

One of the few people who hasn't been mentioned yet is current community spotlight, Pitkakorvaa. Also, josepezdj you need to seriously realise how GOD DAMN AWESOME you are. Your maps are such incredible works of art that it makes up for how insanely challenging they are.

And on a similar note, I would love to point out the magnum opus of neco. It's unfortunately too old to appear on the Workshop, so you'll need to unpack the .rar, but these 5 infuriating chambers of an entirely new aesthetic are a must play.

EDIT: Wait, what's the plural of Magnum Opus? Magnum Opi? Because Neco made two maps before he became a transcendent immortal Portal maestro. Here.

I'm back, and it's been a while. I've been recruited to post the following list of Steam users (I'm keeping this post updated).

The following singleplayer level designers are all honors in my book (not sure about coop, but it's probably the same). They utilize good principles of test design, including good visuals and tests that aren't too difficult:

Mostly or exclusively PeTI (with or without mods):
AD_79, Azorae, camerson1313 (select tests), Demon Arisen, Gig, Jotta (thanks to wildgoosespeeder for introducing me to him), Kimmi, Lawliet, Mathey2009 (semi-hard!), Mevious, Mothalius, Near (thanks to wildgoosespeeder for introducing me to him), smfinch10, Toothless2603, and TuRboz.
Total: 15 mapmakers

Other honorable mentions (PeTI mapmakers) include: Andi (learning Hammer), dire.fcs and GBMusicMaster (list in progress).

Mostly or exclusively Hammer or mixed Hammer/PeTI:
| _/ (), Arachnaphob, BanJaxe, BEN 77, BenVlodgi, bhoun, ChickenMobile, ColorCubeMan, CosmicD, DaMaGepy, Dr. Orange, Dr. Toaster Waffles, Dreey, Firefox, Fluppy, FourthReaper, HMW, InvisiblePanda, laakkone, Layne, LoneWolf2056, LpGoaty90, LuckyRJ, Metallic Hero, Mevious, Motanum, Moth, Mr. P. Kiwi, p0rtalplayer, PsychoBR, Rand0mNumb3rs (conceptual testing), RectorRocks, Reep?lue, RubyCarbuncle, Seji-Evan, Sleter, Snake, SpAM_CAN, sprowl, srs bsnss, Tmast98, and zivi7.
Total: 42 Mapmakers

These 9 level designers also follow fair principles of level design, but they tend to create levels that are too hard for most players, myself included! I'm wondering when these guys will ever come up with anything easy:
- camerson1313 (select tests), Cyhborg, Donderbus and toncica (PeTI tests only)- greykarel, josepezdj, marKiu, Piranha.A/Innocentive and Prototype
Chances are, you've been listed more than once in this thread. Also, there's no guarantee that any of these guys are also on TWP (unless of course you know them). If you have good content exclusively on TWP, I exhort you to share at least a taste with the Steam Workshop too.

I think Lawliet and Near are the same person!

You are talking about challenging maps? But why no one has mentioned jonatan here yet?
He is simply incredible and his Seven Gates is my ever favorite.

greykarel wrote:
You are talking about challenging maps? But why no one has mentioned jonatan here yet?
He is simply incredible and his Seven Gates is my ever favorite.

I totally agree with you, my friend. I also loved Devil's Chamber and Enigma.

Inspirata wrote:
These level designers also follow fair principles of level design, but they tend to create levels that are too hard for most players, myself included! I'm wondering when these guys will ever come up with anything easy:

Cyhborg, Donderbus and Toncica (PeTI tests only)
greykarel, josepezdj, Pirahna.A and Prototype

Just by allusion, I'd like to say that to me the motivation to make a puzzle is innovation, in the sense that I only start building a map when I want to show a creative mechanic or unusual sequences of moves. You have to agree with me that after these 2+ years we've been developing puzzles, we've seen almost everything already! and it is difficult to come up with interesting and creative puzzles. To me, a puzzle is interesting as soon as, after entering the map, checking out the environment and identifying each puzzle element, I can't solve it straight and quickly. To me the puzzle must be a challenge in this way. For some experienced players like me, sometimes it's truly easy to know the sequences of moves we must perform to reach the exit quickly, and the avoidance of this is crucial to me in order to make the experience interesting. This often ends up in making a challenging map where the moves aren't esily deducible, but I really think this is the way things must evolve... towards innovation and exploration of new moves and combinations to make anything actually new, even though our maps are developed for only a few advanced players... not towards making the same as everyone, with the average difficulty so workshop players can enjoy.

This is my point.

josepezdj wrote:
Just by allusion, I'd like to say that to me the motivation to make a puzzle is innovation, in the sense that I only start building a map when I want to show a creative mechanic or unusual sequences of moves. You have to agree with me that after these 2+ years we've been developing puzzles, we've seen almost everything already! and it is difficult to come up with interesting and creative puzzles.

I use to do the same, and that became Blue Portals. Sadly, most of those elements have been replaced by the main mechanics of Portal 2 (Lasers vs Light Beams, Funnels, vs Magnets/Fans). From my experimentation's, the only new thing I created for Portal 2 that really added to the experience was the gel cube in A Little Higher. And when I released that mappack, I got accused of copying another map's idea although I did not pay any attention to the releases. Goes to show you that it was not too cleaver. To be honest, other elements and other's I've seen just made the game more of a game with portals then about them.

I've mapped for Portal for about I would say 5-6 years and I rarely get any Portal ideas anymore. The ideas that do come are usually done before, boring, or required a lot of custom content which sucks when it came to publishing on the workshop. More into my own puzzle/Portalish mod these days.

New addition to your list: Demon Arisen. Overall difficulty is comparable to that of Gig, Mevious and Azorae (and others alike).

By the way, can any of you recommend some coop mapmakers? We like maps with a lot of logic and less ninja'ing. Aperture Valentine (together with the advanced chambers) has been our favorite so far. PortalCombat has quite a bunch of coop maps, we've already played through them.

Elite Squad by marKiu.

Linking-yellow: new mechanics and interesting chambers
Yunas jet: amazing tests
Zhayd
Lopoi Yoshi
Inferno: more execution-based abuses of the PTI editor
Meraknar
Togedie
Flutters
SentientClockwork: great pulse-based tests
Portal Master: great tests