After doing a playtest with a bunch of people yesterday I found myself explaining a lot of game mechanics that were simple, but it wasn’t obvious. There are some minigames that give you information, but I guess just too little to explain the game? Some mechanics also just don’t explain themselves.
How do I go about teaching new players in a fun way? I don’t want to just say: hey! here’s a 3 minute long cutscene tutorial, enjoy! I want it to be built into the gameplay but still be fun.
I think that instead of having the entire tutorial be at the beginning of the game, you can split it into pieces and space it out over the course of the game. For example, for an exploration game, you’d first tell your players to explore and look around, that’s it. When they stumble upon something, then you give them that corresponding part of that tutorial.
Meaning, it’s like an interactive tutorial where they walk around and learn things themselves.
As for the instructions themselves, try to limit the word usage and increase highlighting in your game. For example, if you want to tell your players first push a button and then switch a lever, instead of having a giant paragraph of what to do, highlight the lever and button and put numbers on them according to step number.
Hope that helps. I know I was a little vague, but hopefully gave you some foundation to work off of.
I understand but sometimes the players, by the time they get into a minigame with another player, don’t have time for a tutorial that they can spend a lot of time time on. Should I just try to make the things you have to do very obvious combined with some text?
Try to make it simple by emphasizing involved objects (such as levers and buttons) so that they’re easily noticeable and the player has the instinct to go press/switch them. And using directional arrows/highlighting objects can also make a complex process much simpler.
Does that answer your question?
Yep! Thanks for the help.
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