Hey there :)
I hope you're all doing swell and are ready to dive into today's post with me! Buckle up, it's a long one.
"What makes a good game tutorial?" is a question we've had to answer while working on Vahrin's Call.
Our tutorial has changed many times over the game's development cycle and through much re-working and refinement, we now finally have a tutorial we are happy with.
Before we get to the current tutorial though, I want to talk about some of our older iterations.
I think it would be interesting to discuss how the tutorial for Vahrin's Call has evolved over time and more importantly, why we believe the final version works much better than our previous ones.
So without any further ado, let's dive in!
The earliest tutorial we have footage of is one that you may recognise, as we talked about it almost 3 years ago now in one of our earliest dev logs: Vahrin's Call Dev Log #02
In this version, you found yourself in a small, isolated and overgrown area, alongside one of the main protagonists. This character served as your guide, teaching you the basic controls of the game.
As this tutorial was focused on 'learning-by-doing', this character would tell you how to do something and then you would be required to do that thing in order to progress to the next part of the tutorial.
We liked this approach, as it ensured you were being taught everything you needed to know, early on.
We were focused on teaching you everything at the very beginning of the game, as we didn't want you to be confused about the controls mid-way through your adventure.
Additionally, we believed that forcing you to perform an action in order to move on was a good way of ensuring you knew what each button did moving foward.
"forcing" is an important word to remember as we continue..
While this tutorial functioned as intended and was successful at teaching you the basics of the game, it was incredibly hand-holdy. Slowly progressing through the tutorial and not being able to go at your own pace felt like you were being babied, resulting in quite the frustrating experience.
Moreover, we found that by having the tutorial take place in its own seperate area, we were taking too long to get you into the action. It reinforced the feeling of "Ugh okay, let's get this tutorial over and done with so I can move on and get started with the actual game."
Integrating the tutorial into the first area of the game (the Barathrum Forest), and having it flow smoothly with the gameplay was our next objective.
Introducing tutorial number 2!
This is the tutorial that stuck around for the longest time, as we found it to be a significant improvement from the previous iteration.
As I mentioned, we aimed to integrate this tutorial into the the Barathrum Forest.
We used the same pop ups from the previous tutorial (after a visual upgrade) and set them to appear on screen as you progressed through the area.
This approach felt much smoother. You were no longer required to press a certain button or perform a specific action in order to move on, you could now progress at your own pace.
Having a much larger area to work with also meant we had more freedom to teach you everything you needed to know about the game, and adjust the pacing of the tutorial for a more natural experience.
So! A much better method than the first...but not without its flaws.
While we were happy with the pacing of the tutorial and how it was now a part of the first area in the game, the problems arose around the pop ups themselves.
Each tutorial pop up in the world would appear on screen when you entered an invisible trigger box.
It would then remain on screen until you left this box.
One of the trigger boxes, visible in editor-
As the trigger boxes are invisible in gameplay, we found that players would unintentionally exit and re-enter the box, causing the pop ups to constantly disappear and reappear on screen. This was distracting and annoying, especially during sections that involved combat.
Furthermore, we found that the pop ups didn't need to be on screen at all times while in the box; as after you had read the pop up and got all the information you needed, it was now just unnecessarily taking up space on your screen.
We considered some solutions to these problems, but in turn they would create other problems.
Setting the pop ups to only appear on screen for a set amount of time after entering the box, would not allow us to account for the variable speeds at which players read.
Setting the pop ups to permanently disappear after you leave the invisible box would solve the issue of them constantly disappearing and reappearing when you exit and enter the box again, but it doesn't prevent them from staying on screen unnecessarily long. It also stops you from being able to go back and re-read info from a part of the tutorial, if you forget something and need a refresher.
*breathes*
Now, if that all sounds overly complicated to you, then don't worry! We were thinking the same thing, and it's this that lead us to the current and final version of our tutorial, a much more simplified approach which we think works much better than those that came before it.
As you traverse the Barathrum Forest, you'll notice mysterious signs placed around the environment, and reading these signs will give you info on how to play the game.......and that's it!
This approach is incredibly simple compared to the other ones we talked about, but aims to cater to all types of players, by giving you full control over when you view the tutorial information.
Text will no longer appear on screen when it doesn't need to, you can read all of the information at your own pace, and you can revisit any of the signs at any point, if you need a refresher on something.
Whether you're the kind of person to meticulously follow a tutorial to make sure you fully understand everything, or you prefer to figure things out entirely on your own, with this the choice is left up to you.
And I think we will leave it there! This was a bit of a long one and I fear I'll drive you insane if you have to read the words "pop up" or "tutorial" again. Congratulations if you made it all the way to the end!
I want to know what you guys think though. Do you tend to follow tutorials or do you like to dive in and figure out everything by yourself? And what do you think of the approach we went with in the end?
Either way, thank you all very much for stopping by as always and we will catch you all again next Friday for our final post of the year!
Cheers all~