YEAR 2 - BA2a - Teaching the player how to play

When the player first boots up the game they're presented with the controls board that tells them what buttons do what.

To their right is the door to the first level.

Between the player and the door however is a wall of blocks, high enough to stop the player but low enough that they can still see their objective. The player HAS to mine through the blocks to reach the 'play' door. If they get stuck, they just look to their left and it says right on the wall "mine blocks: left click" so this shouldn't stump too many players.

In order to get to the first level, the player must be able to:
1. Look around
2. Move
3. Mine blocks

So before the player has even started the game they already understand it's core mechanics.

Maybe the player tries out the rest of the controls. Even on the menu screen I allow the player to try out the flares and the locator so they can get an understanding of how they work.

Also, the door is framed as an objective; a safe object. Any rational player who, coming across an identical looking door in the first level should understand that interacting with it is their goal.

So, upon spawning in the first level, the player sees this. The glowing object positioned right in the center of the players vision is sure to attract their attention and if the player is paying attention to the UI, they know that gold is a collectible item in the game since there is a counter in the bottom-left of the screen.

When the player goes to pick up the gold however, they will be in the hidden zombies sight range and the zombie will run at the player whilst making zombie noises.

The zombie will then get stuck on the wall, (exactly the same height as the one the player was unable to pass in the menu level) before eventually losing interest and turning back into its idle state.





This teaches the player quite a few things:
1. Zombies chase you
2. If they can't get to you, they will eventually leave you alone
3. They are stopped by blocks, just the same as you are
4. They make a scary noise when they chase you (i.e. if a player hears this noise later on and cannot see a zombie, then there could very well be one behind them)

Upon picking up the gold, the players gold counter increases by 100, confirming that it was actually gold. Now they know that gold is a good thing too, because it made a number rise. Also, the player will be in darkness again since the gold was the source of the light.

If the player looks to their left, they will see another gold light, accompanied by a white light. Since the player probably associated lights with good things now, they could very well take the risk and walk into the object to the left. When they do, they will see their ammo counter increase and now they know that these objects increase the players ammo.

I've even colour coordinated the objects with the UI.
all gold = yellow
all ammo = white

Since the GoldBlocks have yellow bits on them and there is gold on the top, hopefully the player will assume that when mined, these blocks drop gold.

Even if the player doesn't make this assumption, the only way they're going to be able to get to the gold is if the destroy the block underneath it. So there's really no way that the player will fail to understand GoldBlocks function.

I've made a variation to the level design slightly for when the player unlocks the pistol, and it's simply to include pistol ammo too.
The player will see it, notice that it looks similar to the flare ammo, pick it up and see their pistol ammo increase. Now they know that this is what pistol ammo looks like.


I said in the previous post that I break the 50% chance for ammo to despawn rule and it's here. Since this ammo's function is to teach the player what ammo looks like and how it works, It has 100% chance of being there so there is absolutely no chance that the player will miss this part of the 'tutorial'.

(except the pistol ammo is still only there once the player has unlocked the pistol because obviously I don't want the player to be able to pick up ammo for an item they don't know about. It would just cause confusion).