11/06/22 - Onboarding the player

Warning: ugly placeholder UI in this devlog. This will be made pretty in a later update.

One feedback I've received for Infinite Treasure so far is "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do". This is a fair statement given that there are no instructions in the game. I originally believed I could make a game that explains its rules by showing rather than telling. I nudge players towards the correct behaviours using animations and sound, but it's still not obvious what the objective is. In one of the game's two modes, Relax Mode, there is no objective! The idea is simply to mindlessly collect items and... relax. For that mode, I will be leaning more into the relaxation side of things in future iterations.

For now, I've taken a small step towards "onboarding" a new player and reducing their confusion upon entering the game. I've simplified the main menu for new players so they have just two options to choose from, each representing a feeling that they want to get from the game:

1. "I want to relax" -> this takes the new player to the first level of Relax Mode

2. "I want a challenge" -> this takes them to Challenge Mode

This replaces the main menu when starting the app for the first time. The main menu is more noisy and can only be accessed after you've played the game a bit:

When playing the game itself for the first time, I've added an "onboarding modal" that gives a summary of how to play the game. This is very much "tell, don't show" and isn't my ideal onboarding experience, but I think it's better than nothing. I might add a more visual onboarding experience later where the player is guided step-by-step through the different parts of the game via tooltips and highlighters. That said, my aim with Infinite Treasure was to make it simple enough that hand-holding through its mechanics wouldn't be necessary. Perhaps this assumption is naive while my game is still so unrefined.

Here's what the onboarding modal looks like for Relax Mode - it'll stop appearing at the start of a level once the player has collected 3 stars:

And here's Challenge Mode's onboarding modal - this is disabled once the player has completed one level: