A few weeks ago I discussed my reasoning for not including a tutorial in my game. But that was not a quick realization, and in fact I had a mostly operational tutorial at one point. But then I changed the UI layout and would have had to completely rework the tutorial… Anyway! So just to get it out there, what did my design for a tutorial look like?

Firstly My tutorial started with most of the (non-play area) buttons hidden. This was to limit the amount of information the player needed to take in at once. The first “level” of the tutorial was the most basic of basic patterns, the cross in the center of the play area. However I did three things to help teach the player. Firstly, I put some text up on screen explaining what was going on. Secondly, used the hint mechanics to highlight where the player was supposed to click. And finally, I disabled all the other play area buttons. This way I could introduce the player to the mechanics of what pushing a button did, while also allowing them to feel like they were making progress. I continued this pattern for a few “levels” moving the puzzle around to demonstrate that the point you click and the surrounding spaces toggled. But that the puzzle did not wrap around, meaning spaces on the edge affect fewer spaces than ones in the center.

After progressing to two move puzzles I introduce he “restart” button and stop disabling the nonrelevant buttons. This allows the player to mess up, to play around and still get back to the start, however I am still highlighting the correct moves for now. After a few of the basic two move patterns are introduced to the player I introduce the next button, the hint button. At this point I stop automatically highlighting the correct moves and let the player decide if or how many moves they want highlighted while also turning the needed moves up to three and (if I remember correctly, it has been a while since I looked at my old tutorial) finally four moves before the tutorial ended.

To summarize my tutorial set out to do four things. First and foremost I wanted to show the player what pressing any of the play area buttons did, some of my early playtesters were strangely mystified by this aspect of the game. Secondly I wanted to explain to the player what the “menu” buttons each did. Thirdly I wanted to introduce some of the more basic patterns found in this type of puzzle. And finally I wanted to introduce each element slowly, so as not to overwhelm with information.