Hey everyone,
those of you following along might already know that I have been working on a new tutorial level for some time. As I explained in my last devlog video, I had to build a system that allowed me to "quickly" create levels that are not fully procedural. It worked out great and the tutorial level is done now. Here is a sneak peek of the "Mountain Pass" tutorial map:
BattleJuice Alchemist had tutorials before. It was quite basic stuff: windows popped up and explained some aspect of the game or asked you to do something. Watching people play I often saw them closing the windows instinctively in the way you close an ad popping up in your browser. I could not remove 100% of the pop-up tutorials, but drastically reduced their number and got rid of them for the whole Mountain Pass level completely. The level takes about 20 minutes for a new player to complete and mainly uses two new elements to teach the game's mechanics:
1. Tutorial Scrolls
You find scrolls scattered around the level that you can pick up and read. I found this a lot more satisfying, because who does not like to pick up loot, right? In the GIF above you can also see a little magic swirl that spawns in front of the player and points towards tutorial scrolls and other quest items.
To make the process of learning more fun, I made pictograms for every scroll to teach gameplay elements in a more visual and riddle-like way than plain text. This for example is one of the first scrolls that teaches you to equip and use a flask that replenishes your mana (called "Liquid" in our world):
There is also a written version for every tutorial scroll in your quest log if you can't figure out the meaning of a pictogram.
2. Tutorial Shrines
These shrines are text messages left for you to make sure you can make your way through the Mountain Pass. Nothing to ground-breaking here, but I think it is a good thing the players activate these themselves instead of getting pesky pop-ups and also that the shrines are rooted in the game's narrative.
I will test the Mountain Pass level with a few more players and it then should go live on the public branch of the Steam playtest pretty soon.
Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!
Alain