Some people here complained that FaceIt (http://www.mrio-software.com/faceit-beta2.zip) (screenshot (http://www.mrio-software.com/faceit_beta1.jpeg)) is too hard. Since the game is designed to be very easy (it's a variety of the click-three-matching-thingies genre), that got me worried.

The only explanation is that the instructions are not 100% clear - that's supported by the fact that many of these people later said that when they "got it" and their brain "clicked", they found the game easy, as it should be; and by the fact that my mother has no problems playing it.

But I can't afford to lose the people that don't "get it" instantly - therefore, I need a tutorial in addition to the "how to play" screens.

What I don't know is whether to make it interactive (click here, very good, now click there, see? three redheads, and they disappeared) or non-interactive (even moving the mouse pointer and playing a "click" sound).

The advantage I see for an interactive tutorial is that I can force the player to pay attention instead of not reading, clicking OK, and then wondering what's going on. I think "forcing" is positive in this case.

What do you think?

For this audience, I don't believe you can force them to do anything. :) They don't like to read much and they want to get started playing the game (and having fun) as quickly as possible. If they can't, they just move on to the next free/trial game.

If you feel you need an interactive tutorial, it may be that the core gameplay is too complex (or not obvious enough, or whatever) for this particular gaming audience (note: I'm making some assumptions about your audience based on the type of game and seeing BBB up on BFG).

Most of the other game's of this style use more of a solid color approach for the items for a reason--they're super easy to identify for matches.

I've only looked at the screenshots and read some of the feedback for your game...but it may be that trying to match details of a face requires too much concentration to hit the same "fun-factor vibe" of similar style games.

I don't disagree that it's possible that this game could hit a new vibe that's even more fun if it's tweaked and/or explained perfectly. You'd probably want to try a few different options and that gets as much feedback as possible from "real" players of this genre.

If your mom has no trouble, then there's hope. However, when you had her play, did you just sit back and watch her learn the game...or did you give her some helpful hints to get her started--or even give her a description of the game prior to testing? Make sure all your tests are done without saying a word if possible.

Good luck with the game,
-Scorpio

Originally posted by Scorpio
If you feel you need an interactive tutorial, it may be that the core gameplay is too complex (or not obvious enough, or whatever) for this particular gaming audience (note: I'm making some assumptions about your audience based on the type of game and seeing BBB up on BFG).
It's a match-three game, designed for the match-three audience. Specifically, one of the goals of this game is to get it into at least one of Real, Yahoo, and the other big distributors.
Most of the other game's of this style use more of a solid color approach for the items for a reason--they're super easy to identify for matches.
I know, and you should be able to play this one in that way, too - hair colors are only four, and very visible (although they're not as distinguishable as green, red and blue).
I've only looked at the screenshots and read some of the feedback for your game...but it may be that trying to match details of a face requires too much concentration to hit the same "fun-factor vibe" of similar style games.
Not really... I can play it in background mode (in fact, I often fire it up to test something I just implemented and end up playing!), and we tried to improve the "detail" matching by making more distinctive features (the new mouths, not shown in the screenshot).
I don't disagree that it's possible that this game could hit a new vibe that's even more fun if it's tweaked and/or explained perfectly
That's the point... I want to figure out how to explain it perfectly :)
If your mom has no trouble, then there's hope. However, when you had her play, did you just sit back and watch her learn the game...or did you give her some helpful hints to get her started--or even give her a description of the game prior to testing? Make sure all your tests are done without saying a word if possible.
I tried to make the test as "pure" as possible, I said almost nothing, I just set back and watched her play. She did need a couple of very short tips and I'm not sure if I gave her an example - it was enough for her to understand. Therefore, I want to make a tutorial which mimics that tips and comments as closely as possible.
Good luck with the game,
Thanks a lot!

One technique that we've only recently implemented in our (soon to be released!) game, was to code a module that sat silently in the background while the game was running, and just tried to detect 'odd' player behaviour.

In our case, it 'listened' for maybe a dozen different scenarios. For instance, if some joystick moves are detected but no joystick mappings have been defined, it just thows up a hint box etc. telling the player how to get to the 'controls' menu.
Others listened for specific gameplay related scenarios, gave opinions on why the player had just died etc..

The idea was to mimic the developer-looking-over the shoulder role most of us take on when giving demos to family members!

Not sure if this would work for Face-It (haven't even downloaded it yet), but might be worth considering...

I haven't tried Face-It, but from the screenshot and discussion I think I think I have a good notion about how it plays. As I see it your game is similar to all the other color-matching games, but with one big difference: there are several things that you can match, not only one attribute like color. If you just state that difference VERY clearly so that nobody can miss it, most of the people you're targeting should have no problems figuring out the gameplay. Or so I hope, god knows how rooted they are in the old gameplay that they know from sooo many games before...

Originally posted by Carrot
[...] to code a module that sat silently in the background while the game was running, and just tried to detect 'odd' player behaviour.
[...]
Not sure if this would work for Face-It [...]
Excellent idea! I think it would work, and it would be pretty easy to do, too (Is the player staring at the screen for more than 10 seconds? Is the player double-clicking groups that clearly don't match?)

I'm a little afraid of unleashing the next Clippy upon the world, though ;)

Originally posted by BitBoy
As I see it your game is similar to all the other color-matching games, but with one big difference: there are several things that you can match, not only one attribute like color. If you just state that difference VERY clearly so that nobody can miss it, most of the people you're targeting should have no problems figuring out the gameplay.
Good point. Draw from what they already know and state the differences.

BTW, I love the look of your site!

Originally posted by ggambett
BTW, I love the look of your site!

Why, thank you! I worked late last night on getting a somewhat complete version of the webpage up. Today the finalists of the IGF Student Showcase are supposed to be announced. I wanted the webpage to look good in case I got some visitors from the link at IGF. I also wanted to have a working newsletter signup, in case some of the visitors are interested enough to sign up for further info. You do what you can to snare them! ;)

If they would just annouce the finalists already, I'm tired of waiting by now!

Originally posted by ggambett
I'm a little afraid of unleashing the next Clippy upon the world, though ;)

I think Clippy only really annoyed "power users". The casual audience may find it cute and refreshing. I say "Release Clippy 2.0!" Just make it really easy to turn it off. :)

Don't dis Clippy. I was the programmer who handled his AI for Word and Powerpoint back in '97. He was pretty advanced for his time, but you're right, he pissed off the power users. But we found many new users who loved him. If you've never seen the other characters they were pretty cool. For the Japanese version of office there was a Japanese secretary and a Dolphin. I thought the secretary was a bad idea when I showed one of my managers what she looked like when you resized her box. She looked like she had been beaten up. Not a very desirable look.

Holy crap, you made Clippy? Well I never.

I would say make a short, interactive tutorial (Click on the 3 readheads - okay?) or, do the scanning for weird behavior bit.

If people don't understand this game, if it's too complex and radical for them, if the rules can't be explained quicly enough... well... the only conclusion you could come to is that the ultra-casual market is actually made up of people with severe intellectual handicaps!

Not saying it isn't true mind you.

I say "Release Clippy 2.0!" Just make it really easy to turn it off.
It is... that's what the Show Mr. Hint Tutorial checkbox in the Options screen is for.
Don't dis Clippy. I was the programmer who handled his AI for Word and Powerpoint back in '97.
Ooooooops :eek: Sorry...

I hereby nominate myself for the "most embarrasing comment in the forums", 2004 edition :)
If people don't understand this game, if it's too complex and radical for them, if the rules can't be explained quicly enough... well... the only conclusion you could come to is that the ultra-casual market is actually made up of people with severe intellectual handicaps!
I don't care, as long as their credit card balance is higher than their IQ :)

Hi- my colegue downloaded Facelt and I gave it a try- Klicked for a minute but could not figure out how to match three-
Sometimes i would be shure i have a match but nothing, and sometimes i would try to figure out why i matched something that i tough had no similarity-
I think you really need to work on a way to clarify what is a match and what is not- This way I just got frustrated and droped the game...
Playability and clarity sometimes come at a cost of visual apeal- but this is a good and very often necessary_ tradeof-

hope this helpes
:)

I have to say that if you look at the latest Nintendo games (Mario Party, Paper Mario, etc), they usually have a tutorial to go with the game.

Check out Black & White for a bad way to go for a tutorial. The very first land IS the tutorial, and unfortunately for people who have already played the game, there is no way to skip it. I don't want to sit here and learn the controls because I already know them, so just let me play the damn game!!!

So yeah, you have to figure out how to put the tutorial in there. I would suggest making a separate section for it so people can skip it if they don't want to re-learn the gameplay. Maybe have it show up as the default option for the first time the person plays, but later make it a second or third choice.