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Way To Crown

Turn-based deck-builder, minimal visuals, focus on advanced strategies and builds. · By AlSoKnown

the tutorial

A topic by account to comment created 34 days ago Views: 38 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 3

I will say, this tutorial is a bit excessive. you can almost certainly guarantee that a player will be familiar with the basic concepts of this game (play your cards, defeat the enemies, get rewards) and such things do not require a tutorial, in fact, including such things can cause players to think the tutorial popups are just telling players info they already know, and skip past them, potentially missing important information that they don't know.

additionally, you have tooltips! even the tooltips themselves can serve as a tutorial. just by reading them, I was able to figure out that my cards cost hp. the only thing you really need to tutorialize are the things the player potentially won't understand, like how your arrow notation works.

as for the "interactive" part of the tutorial you could briefly explain how things like shield and card refill work, but if you do, you should do it after the player experiences these things, especially in a safe environment like a tutorial where any misunderstanding would not cause any meaningful amount of failure. ideally the visual and auditorial design of the game should communicate this without the need for a tutorial.

I personally think it would also be good if the info from the tutorial could be viewed at any time through a ? menu or something, if you think the game is complex enough to need extensive tutorial. think about what information you might put in such a menu, and try to limit the tutorial to explaining such info. allow the rest to be communicated through gameplay (and tooltips).

Developer (3 edits)

Thanks for your feedback. I hope to also hear your impression about the game itself.

Tutorial indeed explains very basic things, but there are subtle differences from the “normal” expectations of many players (e.g. persistent resources, “mixed” enemy targeting) which cause confusion for players who think they know how things work based on other games. This was actually the reason I added tutorial at all.

Can you point out some specific small improvements, to maybe give me a better idea of direction you suggest?

explain how things like shield … work … it after the player experiences these things

Hm. This is a novel idea. I am afraid this can be inconvenient since the player will miss the interaction and would be frustrated by the fact that game did not tell beforehand where to focus his attention. (I.e. “the defenca icon which just disappeared meant that some damage was prevented”)

it would also be good if the info from the tutorial could be viewed at any time through a ? menu or something

There is indeed “info” window accessible by clicking “?” on the right-side menu, and also “?” icon on rewards screen allows to repeat rewards tutorial (which may be useful since that tutorial changes as you unlock new gameplay mechanics). Although currently “info” windows does not directly repeat tutorial, it documents lots of other, more complex elements of gameplay. Do you think adding “Basic info” section there is worthwhile?

sorry I didn't see the  “info” window until after I made this comment, I sincerely apologize for berating you on that point.

 "the player will miss the interaction and would be frustrated by the fact that game did not tell beforehand where to focus his attention."

this is why you add animations and stuff to draw their attention. alternatively, you could do something like making the game pause and spotlight the interaction your hoping to showcase, effectively doing it while the player experiences them, but in either case, don't make the popup several pages long. if there's really that much to learn, spread it out a little and use a different popup (this could even be done by allowing the textbox to persist and just advancing it automatically when they do something. this way, you could stick with your style of displaying things. if you really want them to block first so you don't have to deal with branching paths and whatnot, then you can just make their starting hand all defense or something and then have attack in their next hand). 

the point is informing the player of mechanics as they become relevent. this way, the player can develop a more vivid understanding of why you are telling them this. 

as for specific critiques:

telling the player they can move the popup around is good (it's like a common curtesy/greeting)

you don't need to tell the player about the stages number, although you could include in a tooltip that the value after the dot is the turns number this is entirely optional and is something the player will likely figure out eventually. even if they don't, this is  basically irrelevant most of the time

the hint window can be assumed, although the ctrl thing is interesting and you might want to put that somewhere, although personally, since the hint shows up in less than a second, it doesn't exactly change anything.

it's fairly obvious the player has various resources, but it would be worthwhile to mention they persist. perhaps inform them at the end of the guided part of the tutorial though, just because that seems more fitting, especially if  you put it together with some other words.

the fact that the numbers in the top left of the cards are the cost is fairly obvious, it's part of the universal UI design. the fact that clicking a card once selects it and clicking a selected card plays it is a bit awkward to get used to though, I would defiantly make sure to explain that when you make the player play their first card.

everyone knows how draw and discard piles work, and your UI should make obvious the difference between a draw pile and a deck. the limited hand size and cards retaining in hand are some things that you could tell the player (again, like a common curtesy), but ultimately things they figure out on their own, or in the case of hand size, they will probably be able to deduce what will happen.

you don't need to explain that the goal is to defeat the monsters. in the absence of other objectives that can very quickly be assumed.

I do find it useful to know where the enemy's hp is, considering it uses the same notation as the costs on the cards.

I also find it useful to show me where the end turn button is, mostly because it's pushed so far away from everything else and might not be noticed by a first-time player until pointed out to them.

the rest of the tutorial was fine, it's just that you opened up with so many pages of common knowledge that the player might think the rest of the tutorial will continue to be like that. first impressions matter.

overall, I think the status effects could use a lot more explanation, especially the more confusing ones that have 3 or more thresholds, or that interact with 3 or more other effects. they deserve a lot more explanation than they get, considering how much they affect the gameplay.