Getting players to act without being told: a tutorial redesign
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Overview
Secrets of Soltryss teaches data ethics through fantasy mini-games. Players balance a potion for a village, a stand-in for a fairness-aware algorithm. My question: do players know what to do before the game tells them?
Testing Insight
The tutorial was built as a practice round, but players read it as a demo.
What this drove
Each failure pointed to the same root: the tutorial presented information instead of directing attention. The redesign had to move, speak, and point.
Research
How do the best mini-games teach a mechanic in under 10 seconds?
One mechanic at a time, introduced when it's needed, not front-loaded.
A wall of text has no reading order. A narrator's voice does. It moves through the screen and tells players where to look next.
Motion, glow, or a direct cue. Without one, an empty space reads as "done," not "your turn."
Hypothesis
A narrator introduces each element in turn, and each one lights up as it's named. The tutorial now moves, speaks, and points, the three cues the best mini-games used and ours didn't.
Design Solution
From static modal to narrated sequence
A narrator introduces each element in turn, and each one lights up as it's named. The tutorial now moves, speaks, and points, the three cues that competing games were using but ours was not. It stops feeling like a rulebook and starts feeling like a character guiding the player through their first minute.
Impact