YEAR 3 - BA3b - Tutorial

After removing single player mode from the game completely, I've decided to bring it back again to try and teach players how to play.

This first stage is designed to teach the player the basics of movement; jumping, and hovering.
The little black creatures aren't enemies, they're waypoints for the helper which I'll talk about later in this post.

In the left half of the screen you can see I introduce the jump, and air jump. In the second half, the gaps are larger; here I'm trying to encourage the player to hold down the jump key to hover without explicitly telling them. But if they don't get it immediately, the helper will tell them what to do.

I've also included little pictures on the walls (that change based on whether or not a gamepad is connected) telling the player what buttons they need in each situation so even if they don't read the helpers advise, they should at least have an idea of what they need to do.

The second stage is all about teaching the player aerial movement; hovering mid fall, and double jumping out of a hover.

I'm keeping the stages short so as to reduce the punishment time for dying. The first hole just requires hovering mid fall, the second requires hovering strait off a platform and jumping mid-air, and the third requires falling, hovering, moving and jumping all in the same move, which should hopefully teach the player about making the most of their air jumps too.

This third stage is to teach the player how shooting and reflecting works. I reused some enemies from the metroidvania version of the game to make it.

The first challenge just requires that the player press the attack button whilst in a safe space. I use the breakable ground to show that the player can damage things. The first enemy just requires an attack, the second teaches the player that they can shoot in mid-air. The tall enemy shoots at the player and I'm trying to get the player to try and shoot it, accidentally reflect it's bullet and in the process, learn that they can reflect bullets. If they don't get this immediately though, the helper is there to tell them. Finally, the glass block is there to show to players that they can reflect any bullet including their own and that certain ground types require higher tiers of bullet to break.

--  Another major change I made to the game is to reduce the number of bullet tiers from 3 to 2 --

I've concluded that 3 is too complicated to track for most people and tier 1 and 2 operate more or less the same way in 90% of cases, so I removed the middle tier. Also, 3 tiers gives the more defensive player a bigger advantage in that they can shoot whilst being safe from reflected bullets (because they'll get the option to reflect it back again). 2 tiers however means they have to be a lot more careful about when they shoot, which I think will improve the flow of the gameplay.

--- EDIT - 18/05/2017 ---
Adding a video of the most recent version of the tutorial to show how Buddy moves and tells the player what to do.