Tutorials suck. Nobody likes learning the rules of a game before playing it. That’s one of the reasons casual games are so popular: shallow learning curve. Yet players must learn how to play your game.
The best approach I’ve seen is the way Bioshock does it (Half-Life 2 is similar and really good too). The game starts slowly, setting ambiance without too much action. You just move around, exploring the world of the game. The important thing is that it makes you do the basic actions in the game — moving, looking around, activating stuff, using a weapon, etc. — in a slower paced, safe environment while you’re exploring. It only prompts help if it detects that you’re stuck.
What’s brilliant is that it makes you discover the rules of the game by yourself rather than explain them to you. This is both more fun and more memorable than being taught everything in a rigid way. You’re more likely to remember something you figured out by yourself than something you’re told.
Removing visible tutorials applies to more game types than just first-person shooters. You just need to open the game with a safe environment where players can experiment with the game. You put a few basic puzzles requiring the use of the game’s basic skills and you’re set. The key is to trust players will figure out the way to play the game themselves — and if your interface is intuitive enough, they will. If they don’t, then you can give gentle tips that help them along without interrupting their experience.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Agreed, tutorials suck. It is never pleasurable to go through 30 minutes long tutorial before playing. Worst of all are RTS games.
I’m currently working on a Shmup and I think it is very hard to add new gameplay mechanics to the standard formula. The problem being that you shouldn’t interrupt the fast gameplay and bulletdoging with an introduction to a new mechanism.
It breaks the flow, and that is of course not desirable in an action-driven shmup. The alternatives are either just making a standard shmup (gameplay-wise), only adding obvious and very intuitive mechanics (requires lots of thinking) or making a tutorial level (sigh).
What do you think? Is it possible to introduce new mechanics without irritating the player?
Thanks.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
It’s hard to say without knowing more about your game. One way arcade shmups did it was to teach the core gameplay in the “attract mode” that plays while no one’s playing — but that’s obviously harder to make work on a home system.
Giving lots of context-sensitive tips helps to communicate unintuitive gameplay. In Ikaruga, you could have “(X): Flip ship” appear if the player hasn’t used this ability in a long while.
Another method could be to force the player to discover the mechanic through a low-threat problem he has to defeat. You could, say, have a mini-boss that’s relatively easy, except you must use your unique gameplay to defeat it and progress. Add some tips and you could have something simple enough to figure out while playing.
But yeah, it’s definitely harder to teach gameplay mechanics without explicit tutorials. That’s why few games do it.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Those are great ideas. We might mix them with a skippable tutorial so that everything is clear even to the casual gamer and non-gamer.
BTW Thanks a lot for the answer. I just recently discovered this blog and it is brilliant! All your posts have very interesting and compelling ideas for those of us who want to know more about game design. Keep up the good work!
April 17th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Thanks a lot!
BTW, if you do put in more regular tutorials that pause the action, you might want to consider making the player activate them himself. You could, say, have a box with a question mark on it that the player must pick up to show each tip. That way the action isn’t interrupted unexpectedly when there’s a tutorial and experienced player can just ignore the boxes.