Tutorials: More Roguelikes should have them

[RaustBD]

Roguelikes are awesome games, but they're just so outlandishly inaccessible. But really, making them more accessible wouldn't require any dumbing down at all. It would really amount to just putting in a cheap tutorial that runs the player through the commands and when to use them.

Why do so few roguelikes have them?

[Ancient]

As a roguelike developer tutorial level feels for me almost like wasted coding. After all if you can get a game by tutorial you could learn it through standard mode equally well. Turn based mechanics assure that you can access help anytime without hurry. I played tutorials for Xenocide, POWDER and Stone Soup out of curiosity but when picking new roguelike I prefer to take a glance at readme.txt. Takes less time while giving more information.

[Fenrir]

Like Ancient said, most roguelikes come with a list of keys, and you can usually get at it with '?'. I'd hardly call that "outlandishly inaccessible".

[corremn]

I am adding a tutorial to SewerJacks. I have a readme file, a hints file and online help via the '?' key, still people wonder why they die to a giant rat in the first level.  Some games need tutorials some dont.

The big RLs should have them, because they are the ones that new players will generally experience first. If people do not understand something they will move one quickly, leaving the world of roguelikes behind, and continue playing something like Icy Tower.  We need to capture the audience and hook them as quick as possible, a tutorial is just one answer.

[Krice]

still people wonder why they die to a giant rat in the first level.

Usually first level enemies are easy and giant rats have been in that role always. When you change that people are going to think what is wrong.

We need to capture the audience and hook them as quick as possible

It's disappointing to die to a giant rat in the first level. It's not capturing.

[Krice]

Like Ancient said, most roguelikes come with a list of keys, and you can usually get at it with '?'. I'd hardly call that "outlandishly inaccessible".

I think Dwarf Fortress has keyboard command list, but it was a game that I couldn't play, because I didn't know what the hell was going on. Of course, you can learn to play anything, but the user interface is an important factor in the playability of the game.

[jim]

Agreed.

Alternately, someone could come up with a good "getting started" guide that at least explains the roguelike conceptually to folks who've never tried one. My girlfriend was totally bewildered for years at the "squiggle game" I played before I managed to sit her down and explained the interface for long enough to make her see how it all fit together as a game of imagination and strategy. Now she favors kobold assassins in Stone Soup.

Anyone know if a great example of that exists, actually?

[RaustBD]

ToME and CastlevaniaRL both have EXCELLENT tutorials, as do POWDER and Stone Soup. I found these a since posting this.

But it seems that the most complicated ones, with the largest amount of functions and systems, don't have a tutorial, and just expect you to read a manual. Dwarf Fortress, and games of similar intricacy, really should have a tutorial that actually physically walks you through the various important factors.

[Vanguard]

Mage Guild has a nice tutorial too.