Tutorials
Prototyping for my deck-building roguelike is going well. The basic loop of the game is coded out, the logic for each card is in place and I even animated a coin flip to determine the initiative of the match and each consecutive round.
As the gameplay comes into focus, it dawns on me now that I will have to tutorialize this thing… What a nightmare. Like exposition in a novel, I will have to slam the brakes of any interested party and teach them… the RULES.
I was watching the Designing “Marvel Snap” talk by Ben Brode. In it, he goes in depth on how they came about to designing Marvel Snap. It’s a great, eye opening, talk on how mixing elements of existing games can make something new and snappy (pun intended). There is more knowledge in this talk than I know how to process but at about the 15 minute mark, Ben mentions another talk: “How I Got My Mom to Play Plants Vs Zombies” by George Fan (from PopCap).
This talk is a masterclass in Tutorialization. Here are my top 3 takeaways.
Teach players without them realizing they’re being taught: Fan explains this beautifully using Plants vs Zombies. The designers want the players to know just how important the Sunflower unit is. This unit produces “sunlight” which is used to buy more units. It used to be that when the first round started, the player could buy one of two units: the Sunflower or a Peashooter (used to attack Zombies). In order to emphasize to the player that producing sunlight was a large priority, they lowered the cost of the Sunflower and gave the player only enough currency to buy it and it alone. This meant that the very first thing any player ever bought would be the Sunflower. Without knowing it, they were taught a priority tactic in the game.
Have the player “do” rather than “read”: The above example encapsulates this principle as well. By having the player go through the motion of buying the Sunflower and placing it, they have gone through another step of the tutorial. Fan uses another great example. If you haven’t played the game, plants are on the left of the screen and zombies approach from the right. The actual field has a lot of squares and a lot of freedom to place your units wherever you want. To teach the player, however, they created a really simple level. There is one row and one unit to place. There is a single zombie to the right in that single row. In this way, the player is limited by what they can do and are taught the core objective of the game: place your plants to attack the zombies.
Use fewer words: Speak to the player in a short, concise way. No more than eight words on the screen at a time. This is the goal. Large chunks of writing are easier to read when broken into little pieces. This is such a great, concrete goal that it really inspires me to act. I can teach in eight words at a time.
Hopefully with these principles in mind, my next tutorial will go down easier for the player and allow them to get to the good stuff even sooner.
Thanks as always for reading and following me on this journey.
Andrew
