Tag Archives: tutorialization

Language is tricky. What we mean when we say a word doesn’t necessarily convey what we want. And the results can be quite bad if we are misunderstood. In this brief essay I use an example of a single word causing confusion to illustrate why care in the use of language is so important in the design of a game.

The journey through the FromSoftware games and their tutorials brings us to Elden Ring. A game at once familiar and unfamiliar, it imposes some interesting demands upon the player that require careful teaching. And so how well does it measure up? In this essay I take a look at the first few hours of gameplay and what lessons are communicated to the player by way of how its world and challenges are laid out.

The journey through the FromSoftware games to peek at the concept of tutorialization provides us with a new perspective on how games can instruct players to become “experts” in that game. And yet the opening sequences of Sekiro leads to an interesting conundrum: how well can we understand a game’s teachings in the moment?

We keep going through our journey into the FromSoft tutorials with Bloodborne, the first of the non-Souls games. With some new ideas to juggle, we will examine how well the game is able to get a new player up to speed on what it means to play well.

Continuing the project of analyzing how games teach players to play effectively, we tackle Dark Souls III. I examine how well the game is able to take a new player and get them to understand the game’s controls and mechanics in a way that they can overcome any obstacle the game throws at them.

Dark Souls II is one of those games in the FromSoft catalogue that tends to draw a lot of division. Many fans of the developer regard it as the worst game in the series, or among the various Souls and Souls-esque games that the studio has put out. But in tackling it from a design perspective, I examine how well it is able to teach players to become “experts.” My exploration leads to a conclusion that it generally does a good job, about on par with its predecessors.

Digging into games and asking what lessons they are giving to players helps us see both principles of design and how we learn – or don’t learn. In this essay I examine the openings portions of Dark Souls to see how it tries to teach players to succeed.