RPP3: Daily Dev Blog Post 09

Welcome to Day 9!

Now that we've presented our project at its most basic level: a platform combat game, it's time to address additional gameplay, such as a playable tutorial. Tutorials can be the bane of many game designers' existence because most players dislike them so much. No one likes reading large blocks of text! (Unless it's an engaging, amazingly informative blog post like this one.)

Some DON'Ts of tutorial design include:
-Interrupting gameplay with large blocks of text that tell you how to play

-Including button prompts that don't account for your game being played on multiple platforms

-Including a map of the controller with each button's purpose labelled

How can we avoid this? Well let's start by admitting that we don't have to hold a new players hand. Most people who play video games have played them before, and understand the universal constant of pressing spacebar to jump or the console equivalent. As game devs, we can avoid reinventing the wheel and build off of those audience expectations to allow players to get playing faster.

Another thing we can do is look at existing games that we love and dissect their tutorials to see how to do it right. I'm handing you an excuse to go start a new save on an old favorite. Create a new Animal Crossing character and talk to your neighbors to learn how to gather fruit. Wake up in the middle of nowhere in Borderlands and bumble around in Claptrap's house to figure out how to pop open crates and collect and equip loot. Now take what you think are effective teaching methods and apply them to your games!

As you're making your game, keep in mind that good design will encourage players to focus on what you want them to and get them excited about the game. A good UI will invite players deep into the weeds of your menu screens, allowing them to see all the unlockable guns. A good level design will lure the player to the objective with effective lighting. Make your player want to play your game, and they'll want to learn how to play it better.

See you tomorrow for another daily dev update!

Today's Bonus Content is a great lecture on tutorials in games by Nicolae Berbece. This lecture is called This is a Talk About Tutorials, Press A to Skip, and inspired almost everything you read here today. I purposefully did not address everything in this lecture partially so you would go watch it yourself, but also so I don't get sued. This lecture is in the GDC Vault from 2016. Unfortunately, I believe it is a members only video at this time, but you can still find many educational videos on the whole range of game development even if you don't have a membership!