With a discussion about first impressions yesterday, I wanted to go over a couple of ways that games have wow’d me with their tutorials in informative and stylistic ways.
It’s a pretty simple concept but one that I think needs a highlight considering the ways that games can be accessible to a new audience. With a lot of early access games and the surplus of knowledge available to gamers within social media, tutorials are often overshadowed in a way that is detrimental to games as a whole. With that, I want to highlight a couple of tutorials that stuck out to me and are pretty indicative of games I enjoy.
(Note: I’d like to add the recent White Knuckle to this list as an incredible tutorial that I played today, but with less time in the game it didn’t really fit into my script. But it’s really good! Consider it an honorable mention and play it on Steam if you have the time)
Just Shapes & Beats
The 2018 indie rhythm bullet hell is one of my top 10 games of all time, developed by Berzerk Studios and with a 97% “Overwhelmingly Positive” review score on Steam. “Just Shapes & Beats” is one of the games I recommend to just about everyone, especially considering the storytelling and gameplay style feeling rather accessible to the rhythm game genre and bullet hell genre. A major part of this is, in my eyes, due to how well it directs the first moments of the game and their tutorial.
As a rhythm game, the tutorial is set to Corrupted by Danimal Cannon and Zef, a slowly building chiptune that introduces players to the general genre of music as well as a pair of creators who made the game’s incredible soundtrack. With each verse building atop itself, Just Shapes & Beats takes its time with each and repeats the verse until the players dodge the tutorial patterns. This is integral to major mechanics being taught, such as the invulnerable dash in which players must get through in order to continue with the song. It’s after this that the game lets its song crescendo and drops its training wheels, a memorable musical and visual spectacle that shows players just what they’re in for as the game begins its first act.
Just Shapes & Beats is a simple game with an even simpler premise: rhythm game meets bullet hell. In this way, a tutorial is almost unnecessary as the game’s systems aren’t anywhere close to in depth enough to warrant any excess hand holding. The intro scene in this way still functions as a stage in itself and the scene is memorable enough to have glued me to my chair for my first session. Their stylistic choices and polish turn Just Shapes & Beats from a good indie game to one of the best, permanently installed as something I’ve fallen in love with.
And as another honorable mention, their game over screen is just as memorable. Check the game out on steam for $20 and see for yourself!
I Am Your Beast
Not to keep bringing it up, but I need another avenue to talk about the beauty and design within Strange Scaffold’s 2024 first-person shooter. “I Am Your Beast” is still one of the most thrilling games I’ve played in recent memory and despite mentioning it as a hidden gem in my previous article, I can’t stop myself from constantly talking about it. I made note of its tutorial then, and I’d like to take a moment now to illustrate the reasons it stuck out so well to me.
The tutorial is simple and beautiful, an unexplained run through the forest with our main character chasing a bird. The music and gameplay is interspersed by small vocalized lines of the player character’s diary, discussing the bird he saw as the player physically chases it. The game treats players to the standard controls—jumping, crouching, and various mantling and movement that will slowly become more important to the player in the future. Their combat is given as soon as a gunshot rings out and stops the gameplay, shooting down the bird after a group of men take it out of the skies. It is here that the player is treated to the story, although the lines that the player character says notes that they’re “saying the quiet part out loud” it might be that players are still rather confused by the contents until a second playthrough. But it is here that we see our character snap as we’re given each action in pauses that wait for our input: Kick, throw, punch, shoot, each target killed and privy to their cries as you crush them. The music cuts out, and we’re left with the understanding of what the player is.
“I’m what the COI made me.”
And with a rousing guitar riff and a title card, I Am Your Beast begins.
This powerful moment gives me chills and is the best showing of the stylistic way that I Am Your Beast uses its time to tell its story in between heart-pounding gameplay, something that absolutely mesmerized me during my first playthrough. It is with another heartfelt plea that I ask you all to play this game for $20 on Steam if you can.
Valorant
I think this one might be a pretty shocking inclusion, but Riot Game’s 2020 tactical first-person shooter “Valorant” made this list after their newly revamped tutorial. I can’t actually find much info on when this new tutorial was implemented, but I believe it was sometime in 2024 which is a long time after the initial release. This is one of the ways I want to illustrate how first impressions function as well—due to the lack of this in-depth tutorial in the beginning, a lot of players likely struggled with their first games. I was one of these players—someone new to tactical shooters that couldn’t really fit the pieces together to get more than one kill a game because of all the small mechanics. A revamped tutorial is incredibly important, and Valorant really hit the mark with their latest one.
While there aren’t any visual or auditory styles that jump out like with the previously mentioned indie games, the tutorial does make use of its characters and new voice lines to walk players through the space in a very fluid way. It teaches the basics in the same ways you might expect, but also gives players a much more in depth example of accuracy and the unique gunplay elements of a tactical shooter. There are in-character lines from Sova explaining how to control your recoil and the usage of aiming down sights, as well as explicit notes about how movement changes your accuracy. It might be basic knowledge to anyone with experience in the genre, but the details are incredibly useful to new players and something I wish I had when I first started. Before I could finish praising it, the game then launches into a full team simulated round in which Brimstone and Sage lead the player through a traditional round of attack and defense, explaining the spike and the ways teams will go through comms and plans to achieve victory. It goes into explicit detail that feels way more human than a normal tutorial, not just illustrating how to purchase gear and utility but teaching the player how to use it effectively in ways I think even silver or gold level players might not actively have internalized. Each step is given to the player in easy to follow ways and, as I learned when fucking around, will reset you and help you get it right before moving on.
Valorant’s tutorial doesn’t highlight a way that a tutorial is unique or stylistically standing out from the crowd, but instead a view of polish and thoroughly informing players that makes it rise above the rest of tutorials I’ve seen. I have no doubt that with more players getting to experience this tutorial as a first look at gameplay that we might see new players be a lot more successful within the tough genre. While the tutorial can never work to teach every single detail of a game due to the limited time it has with a player, Valorant streamlines its information and chooses very particular notes to give a great starting kit for players to begin their adventure into the tense competitive shooter.
With all this said, make sure to take a good moment to enjoy the first steps into a new game as you learn the ropes before you jump in and see all a game has to offer.