Teaching the player how to play the game

One of the things I really dislike doing in game development is making instructions, I hate games which force me to play tutorials or constantly pop up/pausing the action to tell me something as a result I suck at teaching the player how to play my games.

It's a hassle to code a system that shows an arrow with advice and waits for the user to pick the button etc.

Have you found a method that works better than others? Are there assets out there that can help ease the burden? Seems like there's a gap in the asset store marker if there isn't anything, I couldn't find anything.

Would love to hear your experiences with this.

 

I like the instructions that pop up to tell you what button to press and then after you have completed whatever puzzle you were meant to complete (ex. Use E to move ObjectA to ObjectB) then the instructions go away. They won't wait for you to press the button, but instead they wait for you to solve an objective.

I, too absolutely hate tutorials that force you to go through them, even to the point of making you replay it because you haven't followed the instructions 100%.

But the instructions that pop up as a hint literally everytime you *need* to press them I honestly don't mind. They're not horrible but they do get in the way sometimes (ex. Press H to use the health potion.... USE IT NOW OR YOU WILL DIE!!!11!1!!!11!! DO IT FFS!)

 

Have you seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM ?

While I think he's a bit annoying about it, he's right that the best tutorial is one that isn't in your way, and you might not even know it exists. Of course, depending on the type of game, that may not really be possible.

In that case, I prefer optional tutorials that get to the point directly. Don't pad it with crap, just show me how to play. If possible, just give me a list of rules, and include images when necessary to make the point.

I downloaded a game (Elder Sign?) the other day, and the tutorial was a list of videos *without subtitles*. Ugh. I ended up shutting it down after the first video and still haven't bothered to pick it back up again.

 

I hate games that are just one big tutorials pointing out the obvious.

I say make it more intuitive, keep tutorials to an absolute minimum, and why not let the player discover some of the stuff by himself?

 

Let's go back in time, to Mega Man X for the SNES. The game teaches you that you can grip the sides of walls and wall jump as early as Central Highway. The areas around the Dr. Light capsules all provide ways for you to practice using your new armor abilities. Bosses follow a set pattern, but force you to either exploit known mechanics, or figure out how to use existing ones in new ways.

To put it another way, while you're playing the game, anticipate how your game will play the player. This is something I'm working on better understanding myself.

 

Look at Super Mario Bros 3. That game never gave you a single tutorial pop up. Yet it teaches you how navigate, kill enemies, throw turtle shells, fly, go through pipes, etc in the first level. Just by level design.

Check this out:

http://www.significant-bits.com/super-mario-bros-3-level-design-lessons

 

This is an interesting one! We're also putting a lot of thoughts in this. Especially since we got the very first feedback on our game. If you're interested in the game, just click on the link in my signature.
We headed to an event here in germany called "Next Level Conference" and let some people try a very early pre-alpha version of the game where you could literally only jump and walk through the first two level. No enemies, No quests, no nothing. Just the Leveldesign, the Player and his animations.
We thought that's something you wouldn't let people play, but we wanted the feedback. And it was really interesting how people react to the controls. As said, there was nothing, no tutorial either. We, the developers, stood aside and told the people how to play it.
We thought the UI was simple and self-explanatory:

- Two simple buttons on the left side (Walking Left/Walking Right) -> the movement-Buttons are symbolised by simple arrows.
- Two buttons on the right side (Attacking / Jumping) -> the Attack-Button is symbolised by a silhouette of the player-character with an emphasis on his spear / the Jump-Button was just another Arrow pointing up

- PauseButton in the upper right
- the MenuButton at the bottom of the screen

So, you could think that should be easy to understand, but apparently it wasn't. Some people started shaking the devices, others tried to tilt it.
It was like this all the time:
Us: "Eh...what are you doing?"
Player: "I thought something would happen."
Us: "No, you just have use these buttons. Look, these move the character around...."
Player: "Ah, alright..."

Conclusion:
All these advices on leveldesign, tutorials and so on are great, but most of them are oriented around games which were played with a CONTROLLER.
To be more specific: NES/SNES Controller. Especially the NES Controller was limited. A D-Pad and only two Buttons. Most of the games (let's say mainly the popular ones) had similar control-schemes. People were used to them. Most of the time people knew what would happen if they hit B or A

On devices like Smartphones it's different. There are games where you don't even touch the surface. Other games require only one touch, while the next game wants you to have as much fingers on the screen as possible.
Of course, that doesn't mean games on Smartphones have to be "easy" or treat players like idiots.
But especially controls and giving the players an understanding of them on mobile devices is an important thing to do.

 

Usually proceed the same way as always. Hard games - no tutorials.
Mobile games - written on map, same as i do with 2D games..
like this ..



3d/FPS//3rd person games i use the annoying menu's and or in game videos/animations.

 

Here's my opinion on a tutorial:

The part that is obviously a tutorial should be very, very short and only serve to introduce player to the most basic controls of the game.

After the "tutorial", the player should now be in a position where there are no more invasive "do this next" messages, but there's only one thing that the player really can do.

After they take a few steps "on their own", introduce one of the core mechanics of the game and keep the player there until they master it. If it makes sense in the game, make the player die a few times before they figure it out. What you want to do most of all at this point is avoid delayed failure. If a player makes a mistake, they need to find out that something went wrong right away, rather than dying later in the level. (This is why the Real Time Strategy genre has a notoriously steep learning curve: the economic choices you make early in the game will doom you to fail, but you might not find out anything is wrong for 10 minutes)

Repeat this until the climax of the game, always introducing one mechanic or one combination of mechanics at a time, then testing the player until they master it. That's right: in most cases, the "tutorial" should extend for almost the entire length of the game. Part of the fun of a game is learning how to play it, so I like to keep the learning experience going for as long as possible.

The best example of this type of design is Portal, although you can also look at pretty much any action/adventure/platform game Nintendo has made for the last few decades.

 

In the old days, tutorial type stuff did not exist, nor was there a need for documentation. There was this thing called intuition, in which the game itself and its design/level layout etc taught you through experience what you needed to know. There was no need to `spell it out` ahead of time. And you could say, if the game is so complicated that you need to give instructions in order to play it, then there are serious usability problems. Make it easy to use, easy to learn, intuitive and integrated. People can learn from that.

 

Some game designers go by the philosophy that learning how to play the game should be part of the experience. I tend to agree with this.
Although some mechanics need to be explained, but these should be done in the most intuitive and least intrusive way as possible.

If your game and UI really has been well designed, there should be little direct instruction on how to play the game.