To be able to publish a new demo of the game, I am building a new tutorial.
What was wrong with the current one?
Well, it is basically a room full of stuff and a riddle or two. The problem is, that the player is free to look at (or touch) everything in the room from the start, so there are tutorial hints like "left click to take", "press space to jump" and so on all over the place. But the player is in an exploration phase here: Finding the hints to the riddle, picking up stuff, looking at things.
I feel that all those texts popping up are a hinderance here.
What's the goal with the new one then?
The goal is to remove all tutorial hints from the current starting room to make it a "real" place in the game.
Also the new tutorial will be very restrictive, like most of the tutorial elements in games out there.
The player will reach an obstacle and will only be able to proceed when he has mastered a "skill". There are no distractions from those tasks and they will concentrate on showing you a few controls at a time.
What's that video about? Will I get rickrolled?
Unfortunately not. It might contain spoilers, though.
It is showing the first element of the "tutorial dream": The symbol wall.
Here, you learn to:
- Examine things and rotate items in the closeup view, as you need this to find out the correct solution
- Use stuff to push those symbol stone buttons
- Crawl (don't we all start with that?) to get through the hole, once the wall has been opened
Adding the sounds was a pain and they still seem totally off, although the timestamps are right.
What's next?
The second obstacle needs to be build and will teach the player to move stuff, pick up items and use the inventory.
Some simple traversal scene inbetween will teach you how to jump/climb.
