Return of the Tutorial: Escape from Skull Island - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 123

horrible noises. Seriously, just play a vacuum cleaner mixed with a
blender grinding up a glass jar full of pennies. Players should very
nearly hate seeing this screen!
None of this is to say that you shouldn't give players an option to
skip sequences, give them amazing weapons to give them an easier
time, provide them tips, or entertain them. However, I hope we have
learned that what we teach is exactly as important as when we teach it.
We want to offer players rewards when they have done something that
we want them to do, such as accessing a menu, navigating a level, or
overcoming an obstacle, so as to reinforce those behaviors. If instead
we reward them at the Game Over screen, that is going to have unin-
tended effects.
To this end, the Game Over screen in Skull Island is as classic as
you might expect. The game cues down its orchestral soundtrack to
a slow, dull hum, until it eventually is replaced with total silence and
the sound of Dr. Horrordoom cackling. This cackling sounds awful. It
is loud, ugly, and jarring. It is punctuated with lightning blasts and the
sound of the island collapsing with a backdrop of pure black, fading
to bright, blinding red. The words GAME OVER are emblazoned
across the screen in white, contrasting harshly with the background.
Players are held on this screen for 5 seconds, after which any input will
return them to the main menu. This screen is very clearly and with-
out a doubt a punishment. There is a catch: if players die on the first
floor, they are instead simply returned to the main menu. Remember
that we only want to punish players after we know they can win. If
players feel like they are being blindsided by punishments, they will
stop playing. So, to that end, we use the same mechanics for detecting
player behavior that we used in the gameplay example to determine
when or when not to show the Game Over screen.
Summary
his chapter takes most of what I have talked about in the topic and
makes it into a nice cohesive package. As such, I haven't really intro-
duced any new information, so there is no cheat sheet. What I would
like you to take away from this chapter is that there is a place in game
design for understanding how the mind assimilates information.