The importance of on-boarding in game design?

I’ve shipped seven games in seven months and soon to release my eight. I have to say that I’ve learned a ton. Not only on making games, but on the design perspective as well. But there is at least one thing I keep struggling with and that is the on-boarding of my games.

I feel that I’m quite good at building complex game mechanics nowadays, but also to make graphics and storyline. But once I have the core game complete, I quickly realize that the new player does not understand the mechanic (or the story) I’ve built.

Most of the players want the game to feel intuitive, clear and straightforward at the beginning. Whereas I easily trust that the player will try, learn and ultimately figure out the game. Which, obviously, leads into a conflict.

As I’m building games within a month, I can’t really build intuitive tutorials and on-boarding systems for my games. It easily becomes a game that has some depth in the mechanics, but the player is not able to understand it. Because the game doesn’t communicate it in any way.

I yet again realized this when organizing a playtest to my friend for Mining Grounds. The systems that I thought were intuitive and clear, were the ones he was struggling the most. And that happened at the very beginning of the game.

And if such experience happens for most of the players, you can pretty much guess how people will react. If the first minutes of the game include a feeling that the player doesn't know how to proceed: It will affect the whole experience of the game.

All that depth I’ve built and complex mechanics doesn’t really bring any value, because the player's mind is clouded with negative thoughts about the game.

For comparison, my fourth game: Buttons Up! Didn’t really require a big onboarding or tutorials on how the game functions. It was very easy to get going and understand how to proceed. And because of it, it’s still standing with a massive median playtime of two hours and forty minutes on Steam.

For Mining Grounds, I made the same mistake as I’ve made with most of my games: It’s too complex.

Steam post image To be honest, I thought yet again that I’m making something simple and clear. But it seems I still have a lot to learn from a design perspective, how I build the core for my games.

Even though I still think that Buttons Up! Is too simple for my taste, I feel that it’s the game I need to learn from even more.

Because of this, I’ve decided that my game nine will be a sequel. For the first time, I’m going to make a game from one of my previous games. And that’s Buttons Up 2!

I want to try and extend that idea, but only a little. I want to see if I’m able to stretch that idea to make it feel fresh, while preserving its core.

In case you want to help me with the design: Maybe go play Mining Grounds demo on Steam and let me know in the comments how the on-boarding could be more interesting, appealing or more clear?

See you in the next one!