Hey guys, y designed a very diferent game for J2ME's mobile handsets... and i'm looking for the best way to teach the player how to play without scaring him/her. Any ideas? I know two of them: interactive and passive. Interactive may be to long and just read ain't a solution either. Thanks

Offer both?

I personally prefer the interactive one, that way I can play and learn at the same time. If you feel that this approach may be too long, just put in a skip feature. ;)

I think this highly depents on how complex the game is and how firm the players are with standards in the genre. Most FPS-Games wont tell me what WSAD is used for. Most games for childs or puzzle-games using WSAD for movement should tell the user how they have to move.


I (personally) hate it to read manuals. I usually dont even like interactive tutorials. Most times i just start the game, try something out and start the tutorial later or use the manual/FAQ to find out how some special features work.


I think the best would be offering different things. (Usually you dont have/want to invest the time to make all of them.)

Manual (I have met people who have read the whole manual before even starting a game o.O)

FAQ (Some quick help is sometimes very usefull)

Interactive Tutorial - If the game is too complex, the first steps should be in a world where not everything is possible. If you start a Tutorial with a text like "Here you see your 50 Different Buildings and the 30 different types of ressources" then you did something wrong...
And always offer the option to skip parts of the Tutorial.
I hate it when they want to teach me how to scroll or zoom while I just wanted to know how something in the late game works.

Sometimes its just enough to put a "Help" feature direct into the game. So maybe you learn the basics in a small tutorial, and learn the rest while playing and sometimes using "F1" (or something similar)

I always read the manual before starting a game (that's what it is there for). It is easy enough to skip the pages about how to scroll or zoom.

I truly hate interactive / tutorial type systems. I even hate it when a message pops up the first time I pick up some item or hit a new type of challenge or whatever, especially if it stays on the screen for more than a couple seconds (or worse yet needs input to go away).

So I'd say offer both.