Dark Souls since it doesn‘t stop you in your tracks much. I dislike tutorials that stop you and make you read walls of text or force you to input/click exactly what it wants you to.
Dark Souls has a good tutorial because it lets you skip it? That’s your bar for a good tutorial?
Souls games are terrible at even explaining what the buttons do. Every blind lets play I’ve seen it is like 30 minutes before the player even discovers they have estus or what it is for.
Yes, I prefer a game that lets me figure things out on my own through gameplay instead of popups. You are (arguably) forced to engage with the game‘s mechanics to beat the level, it has parries, environmental hazards, ambushes all in it without huge punishment in case of failure. I take the aha moment of using estus over „press square to heal.“ I‘m aware that others might need more guidance, but I didn’t and hence it‘s a great tutorial for me.
I wouldn‘t mind replaying the tutorial even now after having done it dozens of times already. It doesn‘t feel like one, I’m already playing the game and having fun, immersed in its world. So my bar is: The best tutorials don‘t feel like tutorials at all.
Force them to jump in the tutorial, and solve the main boss thing through normal storytelling, whichever way makes sense for your game. If the only time you need to know something is late game and there’s nothing to remind you mid-game, that’s poor design.
I was coming here to mention Dark Souls. It’s an excellent example of how to make a tutorial not feel like a tutorial. Either you take the time to understand what the game is telling you or not, up to you. Don’t care about going through the entire tutorial area? Just beat the boss and start the real adventure.
Dark Souls since it doesn‘t stop you in your tracks much. I dislike tutorials that stop you and make you read walls of text or force you to input/click exactly what it wants you to.
Dark Souls has a good tutorial because it lets you skip it? That’s your bar for a good tutorial?
Souls games are terrible at even explaining what the buttons do. Every blind lets play I’ve seen it is like 30 minutes before the player even discovers they have estus or what it is for.
Yes, I prefer a game that lets me figure things out on my own through gameplay instead of popups. You are (arguably) forced to engage with the game‘s mechanics to beat the level, it has parries, environmental hazards, ambushes all in it without huge punishment in case of failure. I take the aha moment of using estus over „press square to heal.“ I‘m aware that others might need more guidance, but I didn’t and hence it‘s a great tutorial for me.
I wouldn‘t mind replaying the tutorial even now after having done it dozens of times already. It doesn‘t feel like one, I’m already playing the game and having fun, immersed in its world. So my bar is: The best tutorials don‘t feel like tutorials at all.
On the other hand if you don’t make people read, you end up with “Who the hell is John MainBoss?” or “This game sucks, how do I jump?”
Force them to jump in the tutorial, and solve the main boss thing through normal storytelling, whichever way makes sense for your game. If the only time you need to know something is late game and there’s nothing to remind you mid-game, that’s poor design.
I was coming here to mention Dark Souls. It’s an excellent example of how to make a tutorial not feel like a tutorial. Either you take the time to understand what the game is telling you or not, up to you. Don’t care about going through the entire tutorial area? Just beat the boss and start the real adventure.