How I Got My Mom to Play Through Plants vs. Zombies - YouTube by George Fan
10 tips for making your tutorials better
1. Blend the tutorial into the game
Similar to how Mark talks about this in Can we Improve Tutorials for Complex Games, George Fan talks about how he implemented tutorials as part of the game instead of a separate menu item. “Games stop being fun once you’ve figured everything out and they stop being fun when you stop learning”.
The Tutorial Chameleon is when your tutorial is hidden in a way that player’s don’t even realize they are going through a tutorial.
2. Better to have the player “do” than “read”
Let players learn and experiment in a safe environment where they get to play the game and understand its systems without making them read a bunch of text.
Instead of telling players they can use the shovel to dig up plants to replace them with others, they started with their first attempt as a “get rid of the weeds” level with the shovel. It didn’t teach the right mechanism: it taught them to use it to get rid of harmful things. Second attempt had the player remove wall-nuts to make space for plants. Third attempt was another mini game where player had to dig wall-nuts to find squirrels. The fourth and final attempt was a minigame for nut bowling where players remove plants to make space for a bowling alley.
Lesson learned: Fun prevails
3. Spread out the teaching of game mechanics
You don’t have to teach everything at once in the beginning. In Plants vs Zombies, player receives new tools and mechanics slowly over the levels. They introduce new stuff roughly every 5 levels and even then with limited features like having the player only be able to buy one thing from the shop on their first visit.
Here George talks about the the willingness to learn.
(screenshot from Can we Improve Tutorials for Complex Games)
“Let players play with their toys before introducing new ones.” This is also a good mechanic for engagement as people gain many small doses of dopamine rather than all at once in the beginning.
4. Just get the player to do it once
Once the player performs an action and sees the consequence, they often learn how the system works. Draw players’ attention to items they can interact with and that can be enough to guide them through the process.
How to teach economy and engine building to players who are not familiar with them?
They made sunflowers (the engine) cheaper and only provided enough resources to buy one of them and none of the pea shooters. Since sunflowers are cheaper, it would light up more often (to signify player had money to buy one), it encouraged players to buy them more.
Rather than making it feel like dumbed down tutorial that experienced players would scoff at, they made it part of the systems and rules of the game. They also made other cheap plants but to focus on highlighting the sunflowers, they added an initial recharge mechanic so people would end up seeing only the sunflower as highlighted.
“People will press the shiny button.”
5. Use fewer words
“Eight words on the screen at any given time” “1 sentence vs 4 sentences”
Example from their beginning: “Click on a seed packet to pick it up” vs “Hi, welcome to Plants vs. Zombies! Please click on the seed packet in the upper left corner by using your left mouse button! Seed packets turn into plants when you place them on the grass! Have fun!”
Think of them as a sophisticated caveman:
He gets his ideas through with as few words as possible, using simple statements and sentences rather than naturally flowing, grammatically correct language.
Break dialog into smaller pieces. Introduce helper characters bit later into the game: you want players to start playing your game and get invested in it faster instead of reading through long dialog.
6. Use unobtrusive messaging if possible
Don’t break flow!
Passive messaging tells the player valuable important without forcing them to act on it immediately by clicking OK on a prompt. You can read it when you want and act on it when you want.
7. Use Adaptive Messaging
Show information only when something happens. If the player is doing the right thing already, there’s no need to teach them about that.
“One of your peashooters died! Try planting them further to the left!” (editor’s note: this game sure loves exclamation marks!)
Don’t spoon-feed your players or insult their skills by teaching them concepts they already understand.
Don’t rob your play from the sense of exploration. If they get stuck on the same issue over and over, then provide hints and finally tell player what to do.
8. Don’t create noise
Achiement notifications can clutter the UI and direct player attention to the wrong thing. The first version of PvZ was achievement free but other platforms got them. (editor’s note: maybe reward them at the end of the level/session instead of right when they happen)
9. Use visuals to teach
Make your game intuitive and it will be easier to learn.
Rule #1: You should be able to look at a plant/zombie and know what it does instantly
The peashooters have a spout so it looks like it shoots stuff out. Screen door Zombie looks like it holds a shield, making them harder to kill. Spike weed has nasty spikes to communicate it’s a bad thing for zombies to step on. A peashooter with three heads communicates it shoots 3 times as much.
Rule #2: If you can’t achieve #1, then you should know what a plant/zombie does after seeing it do its “thing”
A jalopeno explodes into a line of fire and makes it easy to remember. Same with a polevaulter zombie after it jumps over a plant.
Paper Mario teaches through visuals in a great way: regular goombas can be jumped on. Spiky hat goombas must be hammered. Flying goombas can’t be hammered. These combinations happen throughout the game.
10. Leverage what people already know
Plants vs Zombies uses Piggybacking to help tell the story and increase immersion. Towers became plants because plants are rooted and don’t move, making it clear to the player how they work. Similarly with zombies, they move slowly and brainlessly along the line.
Every level starts by showing the house on the left and zombies in the right, making it clear why the zombies must be stopped.
Magnets attract metals so plants with magnets can strip helmets from zombies.
They use sun and money as resources because sun grows plants and money buys stuff. No need for more explaining!
Plant names are purposefully descriptive: peashooter (✅) vs The Vindicator (🚫).
Sunflower, Marigold, Wall-nut and Squash are all named in the way to communicate what they produce or provide in the game.