The Tutorial

The tutorial is a great tool to introduce the player to your game and this week I've been working on the tutorial for our game.

On the first attempt to create the tutorial I wanted to explain the basics of our game; How you move, shoot, pick up evidence and progress to the next level. The tutorial was also meant to serve another porpoise: Explaining why you are there. I did not want to have much text in the tutorial, mostly images and preferably everything should be intuitive, but I failed on my first attempt.
   Firstly I limited what the player could do before he had advanced to a specific part of the tutorial, which isn't bad except I did it with movement. On the play-test day almost everyone playing the tutorial got stuck right away, some asking "Can't you walk?". This was obviously really bad.
   Secondly I wasn't clear with what the player was meant to do. At the start you are standing in front of a man and there is an image saying: "Move the 'image of a mouse' to aim". Everyone tried to walk with the character, who was immobile until a later stage, instead of aiming at the boss. We had to tell almost everyone what they needed to do at this stage, and that wasn't very good either.
   When the player aimed at the boss another image replaced the old one saying: "Click 'image of left mouse button' to shoot". However, this was so similar to the previous image that some players completely missed it.
   After the player had killed the evil boss it was fine. "Move with 'wasd'" was everyone familiar with and "Press 'space' to pick up evidence" was straight forward as well as the arrow pointing at the elevator when the evidence was collected.

There is one big thing however I did correctly with the tutorial: I completed it in time to be play-tested. I gained a lot of valuable feedback and now know how to create a better one!

So I had to fix these errors and create an easier tutorial. The first thing that happens in the new tutorial is that the character walks out of the elevator into a room with no guards, there is no UI to see either. If the player doesn't move for the first five seconds the image pops up telling the player to walk with 'wasd'.
    The player then progresses out of the room and walks into a corridor with a guard guarding. First now the player will see a circle around him and an image saying simply: "'Ctrl' to sneak". If the player press ctrl while walking he will see the circle getting smaller and that he moves slower. If he stands still the circle disappears. It will be easy to walk past the guard and advance into the next room.
   In the next and final room there is the evil boss. When the character walks in, the boss will say: "Don't hurt me!" and the character replies: "You don't deserve to live.". The 'how to shoot' image will pop up and the bullets UI will show as well.
   When the player kills the evil boss the tutorial will remind the player that the bullets can't be replenished. Also an evidence spawn in the room and the evidence UI is shown as well as the 'how to pick up evidence' image.
   The last stage of the tutorial begin when the player picks up the evidence and an arrow appear pointing in the direction of the elevator. The guard the player walked past before now enters the room and the last tutorial message is displayed saying: "'Shift' to run". When the player run the circle around him will increase considerately but he will be a lot faster and thus outrunning the guard will be easy.

I believe these changes will create an better tutorial which is more intuitive and teaches the player  more things about our game. Still, there is a few weeks before the project should be finished so I have plenty time to play-test it and ask others to try as well.

That's all for me this time. Thanks for reading and stay awesome!