I’m making a game about robbing a bank while disguising as NPCs, and I made a tiny little tutorial place for it. It goes over the NPC morphing and collecting items, opening the vault, and exiting.
The problem though, is I’m not sure if players will want to stay and go through with this tutorial, I may be wrong, but I don’t know. Is there anything I can do to make this more fun to do, and more informative while not using too many words?
Here’s the current tutorial for those asking. The exit part isn’t finished, but what I’m talking about is the main parts of it. Video
Doors is a good example of a tutorial I think. You here have a separate place for the tutorial whereas Doors has it built in whenever you start a match/run. It’s about weaving the tutorial in to feel like it’s not a tutorial. It’s learning by playing, not by reading.
Your approach is more narrative, lots of clicking “okay”. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. There is interaction with different systems.
Making it smaller might help. More engaging, but what is that really? What has to be cut? I think playtesting will be most helpful. Get player’s current thoughts, make a change, and go from there.
Thank you, I’ve considered an in-game tutorial but this game is pretty competitive and I don’t want players just wandering around following instructions with the chance of them dying even mid-way through. I’ll get a few friends to playtest and give feedback.
I think multiplayer is difficult to design a tutorial for compared to single-player because of that very reason: “Players just wandering around” in a match with others. I can’t find much online about multiplayer tutorials specifically. Maybe the other room outside the main game is the way to go.
I think it’s a pretty short tutorial, but maybe cutting out the guy talking to you and replacing it with some text that instructs what to do. Would probably shave about 30 seconds off the tutorial.
