They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and that’s particularly crucial today with so many options vying for our free time. In games, once you’ve grabbed a player, the next most important thing is holding their attention – and if your game gets off to a slow or confusing start, you risk losing them. So a good tutorial is increasingly vital: how you show someone the ropes plays a significant part in determining how likely they are to continue.
For a game as delightfully dense as run-based strategy The Banished Vault, that’s quite the challenge. Those well versed in the genre perhaps won’t feel daunted going in, but designer Nic Tringali isn’t taking any chances. His game teaches you in a number of ways: introductory scenarios that walk you through the basics of moving around a solar system and harvesting its resources; hiding interface elements that are irrelevant to the task at hand in order to focus player attention; and finally, a manual, laid out like a physical book, with step-by-step instructions and references for just about everything in the game.