The one experience that everyone who has ever played a game shares is that moment you boot up a game for the first time. Whether it is someone’s first time loading into one of Halo’s player vs. player modes, or their first time viewing the gently rolling hills of Flower, we all have to start with learning about our in-game goals, and the tools provided to us to help us reach them. Many games do this through interactive tutorials, instructional videos, or (shudder) having the player read paragraphs of text presented to them on the screen. This week, I want to look at how two different games have constructed their tutorials, and why they work so well.
The Jackbox Party Packs
Each of the Jackbox Party Packs contains several small party games for players to entertain themselves and their friends with. These games have players use their phones, or an internet browser, to perform a wide variety of tasks, including drawing t-shirt designs, answering prompts, and launching zeeples (small, brightly colored on-screen characters). Upon first launching any given party pack, players are presented with a menu from which they can select the game they would like to play. Then, once everyone who wants to play the game has joined the lobby, they may start up the game.
It is at this point that Jackbox takes the time to explain how the game works. A disembodied voice explains the rules of the game, and how players are going to use their phones or browsers to play. This explanation is frequently accompanied by graphics, animations, and gameplay screenshots that help enforce the (usually) lighthearted themes that Jackbox gravitates towards as well as augment the spoken instructions.
Normally, simply telling the player how to play the game is boring. Most people would much rather play the game than read the rulebook on how to play the game. Jackbox is able to get away with this for three reasons:
The explanations are short. Each of the games generally takes under a minute to explain before players are handed the controls. Keeping the rules simple and explaining them well dramatically reduces the number of players who will become frustrated by the game starting with a tutorial before moving to gameplay.
The explanations are skippable. At any point during the explanation, players may press a button to skip the rest of the explanation and start playing the game immediately. This allows players to choose when they feel they are ready to play, instead of the game potentially forcing them to sit through unnecessary rules exposition each time.
The explanations are stylized. Instead of dryly explaining the rules, there are plenty of jokes, quips, and other humorous moments scattered throughout each explanation. This helps tie the exposition into the gameplay, and make it feel like it’s a part of the game, instead of something tacked on before players can finally start having fun.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Breath of the Wild (BotW) is an open world adventure game, and one of the more recent installments in one of Nintendo’s longest running franchises. In it, players take control of Link to traverse the kingdom of Hyrule and save it from the evil Ganon. To accomplish this, players are given several different powers, including the ability to summon bombs, temporarily place objects in stasis, and create blocks of ice. To teach players how to use these powers though, BotW does something very clever.
At the beginning of the game, players awaken trapped inside a series of caves. Each of these caves requires players to use a different mobility tool available to Link, such as running, climbing, and jumping. Once the basic movement controls have been used to exit the cave, players are shown that they are on top of a plateau. This plateau serves as both a secondary tutorial area and as a microcosm of the other lands available to explore once the plateau tutorial is complete. This plateau provides a similar experience to the caves, but in a much less linear fashion. Players must find four shrines and complete the puzzles therein, learning about more of BotW’s mechanics as they do so.
To reach each of these shrines, players must learn how the environment can affect Link and the basics of combat, each of which is dangerous enough to kill Link, but not dangerous enough to discourage future attempts to survive the encounters. Similarly, each of the shrines gives Link one of the powers mentioned above, and requires players to successfully utilize these powers to exit the shrine. Finally, once all of these introductory puzzles are complete, players are given the tools necessary to leave the plateau and experience BotW’s full world.
In short, I love this style of tutorial. Instead of telling players how to play the game, players discover how the game is played simply by playing through each element offered with minimal explanation. Everyone loves feeling smart, and letting them discover gameplay elements and puzzle solutions in their own way is a fantastic way of doing exactly that. Having players discover how to play the game also helps them retain the information. This in turn means they spend less time looking up how to do something later on, and more time playing the game.
In Conclusion
Both games are great examples of well made tutorials that suit their respective game genre. They each successfully teach players the skills necessary for gameplay through different methods, but both games maintain players’ interest in playing the game throughout the tutorial. There are aspects of each of these that have found their way into many modern games and that I hope find their way into many more as we continue to push into the future.
In the meantime, I hope you learned something, and I’ll see you next week!
-Mark
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