General Principles of Level Design - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 377

A tutorial level is not simply an easy level or a short level. A tutorial level should be
a scripted or partially scripted experience that explains the game's user interface,
key challenges, and actions to the player. Use voiceover narration, text superim-
posed on the screen, or a special mentor character to explain things to the player.

TIP If you discover
that players are often
uncertain about how
to play, establish a
Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) web
page for your game.
Ideally, however, you
will design the game
so well that there won't
be any frequently
asked questions!

As you design one or more tutorial levels for your game, consider these key
principles:

■ Introduce the game's features in an orderly sequence, starting with the most
general and most often used features and proceeding to the more specialized and
rarely used ones. Your tutorial should introduce each individual action that the
game permits, but it need not discuss combinations of actions and what effects
they may have. The players can work that out for themselves.

■ Don't make all the game's features available at once. It will only confuse the
player if he happens to select, by accident, a maneuver that you haven't yet intro-
duced, which produces an effect on the screen that the player doesn't understand.
Disable features until the tutorial introduces them.

■ If the interface is complex, as interfaces tend to be in many war games and con-
struction and management simulations, introduce the information over two or
three tutorial levels.

■ Highlight user interface elements that appear on the screen with an arrow or a
colored glow whenever your explanatory text or helpful guide character refers to
them. Don't just say where these items appear on the screen and make the player
look for them.

■ Let the player go back and try things again as often as he wants, without any
penalty for failure. All the costs of making a mistake that you might put into the
ordinary game world should be switched off in the tutorial levels.

DESIGN RULE Make Tutorial Levels Optional

Make the tutorial levels optional. Experienced players may not need them and will be irri-
tated by being forced to go through them. ( America's Army violated this rule, largely
because of the game's function as a representation of the U.S. Army. The developers
wanted to make the point that not just anybody would be allowed into the army, so the
tutorial levels symbolized Basic Training in the real army. America's Army is not a pure
entertainment product, however.)

The Level Design Process
Now that you have learned the general principles of level design, let's turn to the
process . Level design takes place during the elaboration stage of game design and,