Mechanics Monday: Tutorial Mode

Video game "Tutorial Mode"The excellent Shut Up & Sit Down board games review site sporadically releases podcasts; one of them discussed, among many other things, the question “What can board games learn from video games?” Good question, and the obvious parallel question runs “What can exit games learn from video games?“. Especially because, arguably, the answer could be the same.

Many video games have tutorial modes which briefly introduce the mechanics of the game, often one at a time, often by making players learn through doing them. Not many board games have such a tutorial mode and there is an argument that that could be as good, or better, a way to learn a game’s rules than a rulebook. So the question is: could the same principle be used by exit games? Could an exit game start with a tutorial mode… or, perhaps, a tutorial room?

A tutorial room might have as few as three or four puzzles and be designed to be beaten within low single digits of minutes. It could be extremely small and would be designed to be extremely easy to reset, if work is needed to reset it at all. It would help the less confident teams out so that they might hit the ground running when they go into the “real” room. It could help people learn what they’re required not to do for safety reasons. It would offer a perception of extra value. Lastly, it could be used to… not mislead, but explore design choices that were deliberately not incorporated in the real room.

Yesterday, this site discussed Dr. Scott Nicholson’s white paper, which has been updated since the last post with even more content. One particularly interesting suggestion in it is that hiding information by writing it in ink that might only be seen using a supplied blacklight is something of an exit game cliché in this day and age. Perhaps it might be appropriate to use this mechanic in a tutorial room and not actually in a main room, in that case.

On the other hand, given that exit games have thrived already without needing tutorial rooms, perhaps this is a solution in need of a problem. It may well be that part of the thrill is exploring the possibilities for the first time in your first room, being dropped into it and discovering for yourself what you can do. Perhaps a tutorial room could be an optional extra for the most marginal and least confident participants.

Returning to the overarching question of what might be learnt from video games, Dr. Nicholson also writes: Since escape rooms are hoping to meet the needs of many different player types, they should allow the players the ability to set their game mode. This will provide a way for a group of players to communicate to game staff what kind of game experience they are seeking. ((…)) Facilities with a human gamemaster can easily adjust the difficulty of the game experience by giving more frequent or more cryptic clues. ((…)) Another tip to take from videogames to enable a better player experience is to allow teams to switch to an easier mode while playing the game, so that if they are frustrated, they have a way to resolve that frustration before the game is over. There is some established practice in this regard: De Code Adventures of Canada offers a choice of three levels of difficulty in this regard, though it’s not clear whether the extremely sensible “jump down a difficulty level while the game is in progress” option is possible.

One way for an exit game to conclude, which wouldn’t be appropriate for many themes but could be hard to beat thematically for others which nod more directly at video games, would be for the countdown clock to count down to zero and then display the familiar “GAME OVER” motif. People would expect that. However, if beneath “GAME OVER”, there were to be a secondary message of “CONTINUE?” and then an additional short countdown timer, that would surely play with a few sets of expectations, maybe in just the right way!

4 thoughts on “Mechanics Monday: Tutorial Mode”

  1. I’m also fond of rooms with ascending levels of difficulty for the puzzles. When done appropriately, it’s essentially ‘teaching’ players about the room. It’s what I consider one of the major pro’s of a linear/sequential design

  2. Not sure I agree with many of the options posed here. I can see the benefit of a 10-minute minigame set up at, say, a convention to entice people to get interested in the genre. But once you’ve paid your money to travel to and play an exit game, you might as well play an exit game. I can’t see what benefit a tutorial would give over a full-length (if easy) game.

    Good operators will already ‘choke’ the number and rapidity of clues according to how well the team is doing. This is something of the ‘dirty secret’ of exit games that causes so many tight finishes. Expert players will already know that they can do things like ask for a maximum of 5 hints and choose when to take those hints.

    Some sites walk the players through the rest of the solution if a team fails – this gives a decent sense of conclusion without compromising too much the time needed for turning over the room for the next reset.

  3. I prefer the human GM approach. At least when it’s done right (and y’know, not like the one room where we on the final puzzle with twelve minutes to go and the GM decided we needed a ‘hint’, called us and explained the entire solution).
    I’m actually less fond of the games which are “you only get X clues and you have to ask for them” or “each clue is a time penalty”. I (and I’d wager the vast majority of players) am more interested in having a good experience than proving ourselves smarter than other players. Though with human GMs you can outright say “don’t give me clues to puzzles unless I ask, but do tell me if I’m trying to solve a puzzle that’s impossible because I missed a clue somewhere.”
    Other thoughts: lots of rooms have things in common, but some are different. I remember with 6 rooms under our belt our team floundered hugely first time Escape Rooms London, because, without spoiling anything… well, the verbs are different.

    What else can exit games learn from video games? Have you played Gone Home? Very light puzzles, very heavy story, but the entire thing could be created in the real world as a room escape/installation theatre. Only economic realities prevent that from actually happening.

  4. I thought about having a tutorial room as a full room. Bill it as ‘Detective’s training room’ or something, then embrace the fact that you’re doing puzzle after puzzle, guided by the story in the room (and possibly by the host), to teach people how common tropes work and what to look for in a room. I’ve met a few people who feel they should do the easiest room on offer first, to get to grips with the ideas, so this would support that without ‘wasting’ a theme/story that could be used in a more sophisticated/advanced way.

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