Level Progression: Teaching the Player (Part 1)

Teaching the player is super important and crucial to get right. While not perfect, here were some practices we used in our early and final drafts of levels. In crafting each level we tried to make sure we weren't overwhelming the player while still introducing tougher challenges over time so that they can feel satisfaction from learning and mastering the mechanics of the game.

Here's the very first level in its rough state:

Very simple and easy to solve. Of course this was intentional; the goal was to help players get acclimated with the controls and not to be concerned about anything else.

Either way the player goes, they will reach the goal.

The second level carries on this theme, with a slight change:

Now there's a wall. Not very difficult either, but there's a point to be made.

If the player makes it to 1 and rotates in the same direction, they enter an infinite loop. This movement mimics the basics of rotating the world in the same direction which the player practiced in the first level. They must instead rotate in the other direction once they hit 1 and turn towards 3 to win. But what about the blue arrow route (2)? If the player does this, they have learned nothing. That's why, in the third level...

Things are more complex:

No matter which way the player turns...

They enter an infinite loop. Now they must learn to rotate left or right at the proper moment to traverse more complicated architecture, an important thing to learn that is applicable to all further puzzles.

Still somewhat easy, but definitely a step above the first two levels.

Thanks for reading! We'll be back some other time with more examples of our process in designing levels to teach players.