Raw Games: Portal comparisons welcome, but The Spire doesn't have any

While The Spire, a first-person puzzler from independent UK developer Raw Games, is pushing all the right buttons for Portal fans, dev MD John Tearle has been quick to point out to Big Download that his game doesn't actually have any portals at all.

Presumably due to a similar aesthetic, setting and being in Portal's non-combat first person genre, The Spire has drawn both praise and wrath from onlookers on the basis of limited promotional assets released so far.

Happy to have his work likened to Valve's acknowledged classic, Tearle wants gamers to know that The Spire does not share gameplay mechanisms with the holey bestseller.

"It's a huge honour to be compared to Portal," he said. "One of main goals is to pay homage to the games that we have enjoyed playing but also focus on the what could have been done differently. One thing we can say is that there will be no portals in our game."

The Spire is built on the UDK version of the Unreal Engine - a lightweight version of Epic's beast designed for smaller developers.

Set in the conspiracy-riddled year of 2029, the game sees protagonist Maher equipped with a prototype Mk1 Tool, with the ability to push, pull, fire energy beams, and other yet-to-be-revealed abilities. It's due some time this year.

Check out the trailer below.