So since we’ve been hard at work on making our playable tutorial, I thought it would be good to perhaps write about our thought processes and ideas behind what makes a “good tutorial.” As most gamers are probably aware, tutorials have been, and still are, somewhat controversial. Many older gamers were basically conditioned into figuring out games themselves by mashing on buttons at the usually unforgiving first level. If someone was truly desperate, they could read the manual, or eventually, check the internet. As time went on though and instruction manuals were phasing out, game devs began incorporating their tutorials into their first levels, teaching the player the controls as they were doing cool things in cool situations. In some cases, these tutorials really worked, getting the player into the actual game play part of their game quickly and efficiently. Other times, these tutorials felt obtrusive and asinine, especially to veteran gamers who didn’t need to be told how to move or shoot in the 5th game of their favorite shooter series.
This has made tutorial crafting an actual art. A demonstration of pure game design as we designers have to figure out the best way to convey new information to the player in a way that will make them understand and process it later for application. This is especially hard for Cameron and I, as The Chaser’s Voyage is a fairly unique game to play. Where most side scrolling space shooters just involve movement and shooting, our game requires managing a system in real time, including repairs, with no actual shooting being done by you. In addition, we need players to understand how our other, more complicated, game mechanics actually work. Where in shooting games, the concept of “shoot the bad guys and don’t get shot” is very easily understood, the core mechanics in The Chaser’s Voyage are more akin to learning how to fly a plane or drive a car. They require skills that aren’t intuitive, but are very necessary. Teaching players these skills is a tall order, which is why we adopted three core principles when it came to crafting our tutorial: inform, apply, and demonstrate.
• 1. Inform
The main goal of any tutorial should be to inform players how to actually navigate the game space they are in. After all, if someone doesn’t know which button attacks or ducks, etc. then there’s no way they’re gonna figure out the more complicated stuff. At the same time, we didn’t want to be condescending to anyone who either already knows how to play or feels like they could figure all this out on their own. That latter idea is why so many people feel like they can just skip the tutorials and then, usually, later complain that they “can’t” do something.
For The Chaser’s Voyage, we have to teach players four basic mechanics: movement, allocating power, repairing systems, and activating the space jump. Movement is pretty obvious and the most conventional of our core mechanics. We include it pretty much as a formality, since every game could be someone’s first. It’s the beginning of the tutorial and is easily moved on from. Next comes allocating power, which means removing some power from one system and putting it into another. On a gamepad, teaching the allocation of power might be considered fairly complicated, since it involves a combination of buttons, so we have to make sure that we are precise in our language and that the player is given plenty of time to safely understand what they need to do. The same is true for activating space jumps and repairing systems which are the 3rd and 4th parts of the tutorial. These controls are a little bit simpler on keyboard and mouse, as they merely involve hovering the cursor over the various systems and left-clicking, right-clicking, or pressing the space bar. Since most of the interactions are on the UI, we even employ the classic tactic of putting big blue arrows where you’re supposed to click.
Once the player has shown that they can actually perform all these actions, they have every tool in their disposal to navigate the game world. However, just knowing what controls do which actions doesn’t necessarily cultivate a good gaming experience. After all, even in the simplest of platformers, you can make a player jump, and a lot of the functions of jumping might seem intuitive, but what’s really crucial is having them understand what jumping actually means for them, which is why our second phase is…
• 2. Apply
In this part of the tutorial, we show the player what all the stuff they learned how to do actually means in terms of playing The Chaser’s Voyage. We start off with something safe, but that will be incredibly useful during the main game, communications. We tell the player to remove power from any systems and apply it to the communications (level 3 in auxiliary power) so that they can talk to a passing by battleship. This is important because it shows that the auxiliary systems have different functions depending on how much power you put into them. By this point the player should have already figured out that adding more power into engines makes the ship go faster and that adding power into weapons and shields also make them stronger too. So, we wanted a sequence that emphasized the importance of auxiliary, even though it’s most likely going to be kept a minimal power during most gameplay.
After that comes our first real obstacle: navigating a debris field. This is gonna be the first time we really let the player “play the game”. They are free to use the knowledge they’ve acquired in an actual scenario. They can go slow and defensive or blast away debris with their lasers while flying past them. They can even try out their sensors (level 2 in auxiliary power). The important part is that we let them experiment, since that’s the entire nature of The Chaser’s Voyage. We want players to experiment, adapt, and strategize, particularly on the fly and under pressure. It’s what makes the game satisfying to play, which is why after this, we really emphasize our third aspect of tutorial crafting.
• 3. Demonstrate
Now that the player knows how to play the game proper, we need to sell them on this whole “The Chaser’s Voyage” concept. After all, there’s no guarantee that they bought our game based on our amazing trailers or even word of mouth. It might just be something they bought on sale… something they could return if they find the concept boring. So, we throw a couple of challenges their way to give them a small taste of what to expect. So why not start off big with a battleship pursuit?
This sequences lets us show off one of the technical obstacles, which is good cause that means we can teach players the value of your sensors as well as dealing with threats like fighters. Also, if the players go too slow, they can get a better glimpse of what exactly they are running from. Battleship pursuits are pretty fun sequences that aren’t too challenging to get through if you know what you’re doing. It also showcases one of the most important distinctions that sets The Chaser’s Voyage apart from many other space games. Namely, you are not in an invincible super-powered fighter craft. This isn’t the type of game where you just bravely charge into battle against massive battleships. You are outrunning, you are surviving by the skin of your teeth, and you are fragile.
With that, we have the player move onto the final exciting selling point of our game, combat. A one-on-one against a space pirate will be a very common occurrence and will require every skill you learned throughout the tutorial to survive. Though, we also want to emphasize how important strategizing and adaptability are and given the last sequence will invoke a sense of fragility, we want players to experience failure, with their ship crash landing on a desert planet which leads the player into the actual start of their grand voyage. What’s also very important to note is that our tutorials give the player a foundation for what they need to know and what they’re going to do, but we didn’t show them everything nor did we teach them everything. We merely gestured at everything they’ll need to become an ace pilot.
Important to note that while “demonstrate” is our third phase to tutorial crafting, we’ve actually been “demonstrating” the cool parts of our game the entire time. From voice acting, to explaining a little bit about the world, and how the rules of the world dictates the mechanics. For instance, at one point, the trainer, Argi, tell you about how the distance a ship can space jump is determined by factors like the size of your ship, which is why i can take multiple days to get from one planet to the next despite some kind of faster-than-light travel. This not only explains the world the player is getting into but also how the number of space jumps relates to the eventual days the player will need to keep track of. We also drop a little more lore in other parts simply to insinuate that there is a lot more going on in this universe than just what we present before you and once the player gets access to the crew journal (and we… y’know… implement it) then they can really see how they are just one small adventure going on in a galaxy that contains hundreds, if not thousands, of other stories to tell. It’s part of an idea I have that feeling like a small part of something bigger makes the world you’re exploring feel all the more richer.
I hope people can see how we have laid out our plans for our tutorials and take away some ideas for how they craft their own. As a bonus, there was a fourth aspect we were sure to implement that I think many games often overlook. After the first time you complete the tutorial, it becomes entirely skippable. It’s a prologue to your story that contains some story elements, but nothing essential that isn’t covered in our opening cutscene and if someone does want to replay it, that option is there too.
Once our tutorial is done and we update the game with it, we’ll really need help in fine tuning to make sure that we achieve all our goals, so please feel free to give us feedback on either Twitter or Discord. What’s also exciting is that once the tutorial is complete we’ll be finally moving onto our next phase of our Star Map, where we’ll be courting some streamers and other content creators to check our game out. So, please contact us if you are a content creator who might be interested.
If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam:
