Tutorials

When a game is addressed to people who play often and has standard controls, making a tutorial is not necessary. In Event[0], movement controls are unusual. Therefore, it's important to explain them to the player.

There are different types of tutorials. We chose to make an in-game step-by-step one. This approach requires the player to perform the actions they have to learn sequentially.

My task was to specify tutorials and make sure they are easy to understand and helpful to the players.

specifications

First, I determined the actions that required tutorials: move forward and backward, type on terminals, thrust and stabilize with the jetpack, turn the terminals on and off (the latter being relevant only to the alternative control scheme).

I wanted the tutorials to be non-intrusive and dietetic. Therefore, we decided they would be like the augmented reality HUD. One notable example is the instruction that appears in the input field of the terminals telling the player to use their keyboard to talk to Kaizen (the AI).

Tutorial instructions disappear once the player performs the actions associated with them to ensure a full understanding of the extent of the action.

USER tests

Playtests showed that the time it took the tutorial instructions to disappear was too long. I also noticed that all tutorials worked well except the jetpack stabilization one. Jetpack stabilization allows the player to slow down or stop the jetpack movement. Getting in position in front of terminals is essential. 

The majority of the players performed the action during the tutorial well but failed to reproduce it later, which meant that it was too hard for them to position themselves in front of terminals.

After many tests, interviews, and analyses, I understood the two reasons behind this issue. The stabilization tutorial appears right after a cinematic where the player is spinning. It says the following: “Hold the right mouse button to stabilize.” Once the player performs the action and the movement stops, the message disappears. The problem was that the player associated this action with the cinematic and didn't understand they could apply it in another context.

In addition to that, the players tended to misunderstand the function of the heat gauge. Its role was to encourage the player to stabilize. For more information about how that particular issue was solved, see Heads-Up Display.

recommendations

Changing the heat gauge to a speed gauge helped improve the understanding of the stabilization action.

I also recommended adding another tutorial in front of terminals to teach the players how they can use stabilization outside of the controlled cinematic environment. Unfortunately, the production time frame didn't allow us to implement this particular recommendation.