Post #4 – Introducing features to the player
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What? A tutorial level, meant to teach players how to use the various functions of the game.
Why? After a lot of playtesting we have found one thing to be consistant, players rarely comprehend all the abilities they can use, when said abilities are best to use and how to figure out when they are able to do so. Hence the need for a tutorial level seemed apparent to us (the members of group siren). How? We gathered the group at Campus Gotland (Uppsala University) and held a brainstorming session, discussing which features that ought to be introduced at what point, and of course, how to intruduce them in order to make it as pedagogical as possible for the players. After that we used Google Sheets for digital paper-prototyping, by using each cell (left to right) as a representation for each event in-game. It took a lot of going back and forth but we ended up deciding on a combination of information being presented in the background in the form of imagery and text while the player would test some features in combination with some forced pause screens (a couple of seconds per forced pause) to explain the more complex features. Possible Problems The tutorial level as it is right now is very easy to understand for us, the developers of the game. The problem is that we are aleady very much aware of which features are available and both how and when one should use them. While the tutorial ideally is just as clear for a first time player, we do not know for sure and should not assume. Solution Just like most problems arising whislt developing games or software in general, the best solution is an itterative process of testing, receiving feedback and then use said feedback to refine the product. The product in this case being the the game Behemoth and more specifically the tutorial level in the game. What I am doing in order to figure out whether or not the tutorial is as pedagogical as we hope is to have students from other majors who ideally do not play digital games that often test it and see if it makes sense to them. Time will tell!  |
