I have never used a tutorial to get game mechanics explained. I explored the mechanics even if it ment I'm a fool at the beginning, I enjoyed the actual exploration and discovery.
But it depends on a game, some games catch up a player immediately, or have a smooth GUI to introduce the ability from distance at least, becouse players explore HUD, GUI, menu etc.
Valve was good at "invisible tutorials" ...
Now that I think about it, Quake 2 and Inside didn't have a tutorial levels ether ...
I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
@braindigitalis As far as I remember Fallout 1 starts with the "lead guy in the vault" explaining the situation to the player and than the game starts with the player out of the vault, in a cave fighting rats.
I'd like to mention Braid and The Witness too! I don't have all the links at the moment but there are some youtube videos with Jon Blow where he discusses his view on these kinds of things. This one for example might be a bit interesting:
Super Sportmatchen - A retro multiplayer competitive sports game project!
Warcraft/WC2/StarCraft/WC3 all had campaigns that essentially acted as a tutorial. The first mission was about harvesting resources and establishing logistics. Then you would incrementally be exposed to more and more units and buildings in each new mission. First mission you have just grunts/footmen. Second mission you get spearmen/crossbowmen - ranged infantry. Third mission you get defensive towers. Fourth mission cavalry units. And so on.
Which type are you looking for? The invisible tutorial or the absent tutorial?
Portal is probably the best example of an invisible tutorial. There really is no end to the tutorial in that game, even the final boss scene introduces new elements. Lots of other games blur the lines between tutorial and play with campaigns that add new elements one at a time. Just hiding a feature behind a level cap is a great way to ensure players explore the game features in a specific order.
KSP, Factorio and Dwarf Fortress all come to mind as games with absent or insufficient tutorials. I've needed to look up external tutorials and wiki just to make sense of the menu options, let alone actual game play. A lot of heavy simulation games fall into this category.
As others have mentioned, there's a different between Braid's style of invisible tutorials, and the mere absence of tutorials.
One game I enjoy, that doesn't have a tutorial and could've used one, is King's Field. King's Field starts you off with alot of ways to die surrounding you, and you just kinda got to put your shoulders up and force your way through the repeated dying until you get a grasp on how the game works. It would've been better off teaching you through visual cues about the environment, enemies, and gameplay.
Contrast that with games like the original Metroid, where the game deliberately forces you, by the way the level is laid out, to go left instead of right, to teach you that the side-scrolling in this game works in both directions, unlike most other side-scrolling games of that era.
Of bigger budget titles The Witness is an interesting example. It does have "tutorial phases" for its variety of puzzle types, which essentially present you with a series of increasingly difficult puzzles of a single kind. However, it performs next to no hand holding, which essentially means that you'll find yourself staring at a small set of symbols and trying out various combinations in order to figure out the logic behind them.
Frankly I love The Witness' approach to puzzle solving - the game mechanics themselves are puzzle that you need to work out through trial and error and deductive thinking before you can go on to solve actual more complex puzzles.
