Day 1: Starting the experiment

Welcome to Day 1 of my 30 Days to the App Store experiment, and maybe, welcome to my new(ish) website and blog. More about the game soon and how it came about and the current state of it, but for now...

I'm finally building a tutorial for the game, after the better part of a decade.

It's one of the least fun parts of game dev, to be honest. I'd rather be coding or debugging or just about anything else, somehow.... but it's super critical.

Not only does it help people learn how to play, but the process can also uncover more about the game to you.

Even though I think my game is ridiculously simple to play ("just use the arrow keys! or WASD! or the onscreen joystick!"), I've found that testers were missing crucial parts of the game.

Putting together a tutorial isn't the most difficult thing in the world... but it does require some thought and some code to make things sort of appear and disappear as they should, in order.

But before I publish this game... I absolutely want people to have a tutorial that shows them how to play so they don't miss any of the nuances.

I know that having a tutorial doesn't guarantee people will use it... I'll be the first to admit that I'll often skip a tutorial... But if I feel like I'm missing something, I'm going to go back and look for that tutorial button before I write off the game.

I am painfully aware that my game does not look very good in screenshots. But it shines in video – but only if people know how to play.

Have you ever played a game that didn't have a tutorial but you wished it did?