How To Fail At Tutorials

Most games have a tutorial. So you might as well learn how to suck at making one.

If you would like to learn to code, I recommend these great online courses! (It's what I'm using.)

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Music:
Doh De Oh by Kevin MacLeod

[Artindi]

What topic or genre should I cover next? 0.0

[fiddleriddlediddlediddle]

"The best way to fail at indie game development is to never try, but if you never try you'll never fail so let's assume you do try. Here's how to fail."

I love this dude's intros.

[BrickThought]

Too many people have followed these steps!

[AlexPBenton]

For a level design class, my group created a first person rocket-jumping game. After the first class-wide playtest, the main gripes with the game were that the first jump was too hard. We suddenly realized that the rest of the class wasn’t aware of how our main mechanic worked, even though we all had thought it was obvious. Next playtest we put a Dev-art png at the first obstacle which showed a very basic example of a person rocket jumping, and that was actually the last of our negative feedback from then on. We later enhanced the tutorial by turning it into a video of someone performing the jump, rather than static hand drawn images

[fumetsusozo]

Should've added a unavoidable annoying NPC who chases you around telling you how to do basic stuff like how to jump after you already had to learn to jump by the time you even came across the NPC... but then the same NPC never teaches you anything actually complex about the game you would want help with later on.

[Skeffles]

Great video. Who even needs a tutorial when you can add a wiki page?

[artman]

Oh...make sure that if the players are doing the right thing, they think they're not doing the right thing. That's how they can "enjoy" your tutorial longer.
Example: There's a block that must be hit 20 times but there's no indication of any feedback (such as the block cracking as you whittle away its hitpoints) so players think it's not something they have to do.

[link]

Jokes aside, never underestimate how useful a codex or encyclopedia of some kind can be to a player. If you have anything remotely complex, be it a game mechanic or a concept in the world you're making, it won't hurt to make an explanation that's easily accessible.
Also note that game explanations and world building should *always* be put in separate categories within, even if that means making two different entries for the same thing in each of those categories. Some people just need to know what button they need to press, no need to flood them with exposition.

[amimirmimir]

don't follow these steps and make your tutorial as short as possible and you made a godly tutorial

[StepanKorney]

These videos are pure gold. They're both entertaining and useful.

[Gabu_]

Wait a minute... is this a complex game tutorial to a game without tutorial that wants a bad tutorial? Suspicious.

[TheMamaluigi]

The best tutorials span the entire first-hour prologue and are assigned to the brand-new partner character you wanted to people to like, ensuring they’re *so* unliked by everyone who played the game that you have introduce a replacement character in the sequel.

[upsidedown-pug]

I actually want to say about game that has a *_really_* good tutorial. The Witness is a puzzle game and the tutorial for the set mechanics is perfect... Once you get past the first 2 straight line puzzles your actually able to move around and to get out of the tutorial area, you need to open a gate, to panel the gate you need to solve 3 puzzles and these puzzles are pretty hidden *_unless you follow the wires connecting to them._* This shows you that wires can be very useful when finding puzzles, next is the puzzle themselves. The simplest puzzle in the area is staring right in the face as soon as you enter into the area. The first "set" of panels are three panel connected together by wire (teaching you that panel can be connected), The second panel has 2 start points and one is impossible (teaching you that start points give more options), and finally the most hidden one the third panel has 2 end points, each end point activates a different wire, the path you need to cross to get to the wire you want is only possible by going *_directly past_* the other exit... I pretty hard to explain this game in just text so if you are interested in it try not to look too much up, it is very easy to get spoiled

[ZarroTsu]

Recently some old friends of mine released a game whose tutorial is approximately 2 hours long. Thank you for giving them this insight, they've happily used it as a shield against criticism.



😬

[GunSpyEnthusiast]

what i have learned:

the WII and GC Zelda games had the best fucking tutorials known to man.

[strangecolouredbird]

There's been so many tutorials that just... suck. I've been practising Unreal for the first time and there's been so many "tutorials" that either show the finish product and say "go with it, bitch" or gloss over a section that could go wrong and not explain the slightest what to do if it does.
And the sheer *AMOUNT* of Tutorials that click on things so fast you have to watch them at x0.25 just to see what button they clicked...
I'm lucky I found a good tutorial channel or id've gone back to Scratch.

[bonbon]

The moment when these meme videos are unironically more helpful and to-the-point than most other game development tutorials

[KitsuneFaroe]

0:41 the last thing I would have expected on these videos is a Dota reference lmao that caught me out of guard.

[CarbonppleJuice]

Good tutorial, i plan on making games in the future, and I had never even considered tutorials in games.

[顔boom]

0:31 While a highly polished tutorial would be a bad start, I feel like a playground of sorts is usually useful for developing gameplay mechanics. If done right it could then be adapted into a tutorial, or that power-tripping intro before you lose all your power-ups. Or would it still be easier to just make it from scratch in the end?