FTUE what ?

It stands for First Time User Experience.

And i hear you "BUT you already talked about tutorial ! Show me other things". Calm down, young padawan.

Tutorial is a part of the FTUE, but it's an option you have, it's not required. The FTUE is about the behaviours you have to care about when your players start for the first time your game.

A good FTUE means that the player will not leave right away your game because he understand :

• The main goal

• The controls

• And don't feel bored after 3min playing

So i will talk about my experience on 3 games and give you advice about what can be improved. But as i always say : it's only my point of view, as a player, gamedev, and former student.

Escape to be happy

We will start things progressively. When we start the game, most of the time, we reach a main menu (it's not the case for all games, like The Witness for example). In this game, it's interesting, because of the name, we expect something dark and so on, which is well described right away with the menu (picture 1) !

We have a bit of story, and the main goal, even the main enemy. So we handle everything at once, it's nice. And a more subtle thing : the camera is using a Dutch Angle. In cinema, we use this to describe the mental disorder, the lack of confidence, it's used alot in horror films. So choosing this angle for the menu is disturbing and already state the ambiance of the game.

Then you press New game and the true horror starts . No explanations about the controls, no tutorial. I was in FPS view so i guessed WASD controls and it worked. But after 5s, i got a game over in this position (picture 2). So you will ask : but where is the Black entity ? And why you died after 5s only ?

It's because the entity can stab you in the back, and it spawns literally 5 meters behind you, at the same time that you spawn. No time to waste, i guess. Of course, this is very infuriating. Is this bad ? Not really. We are in a surviving game, you have to consider all your environment, and having the chase starting when you spawn means you are in danger at any time, everywhere . So it still fits the style. Of course we are used to horror game taking their time to set up the ambiance, having a slow rythm, then doing crappy low cost jumpscares. Here you are scared all the time, because you can never calm down : your character is too slow when he walks, so you have to press the run button all the time or the entity will beat you.

So for a first time experience, we can tell that the game is deep in a horror style, and try his best to make you feel stressed from the start to the end of the experience. Now let's calm down and leave this place to a more peaceful one.

Heroes of ages past

Here we have a tutorial here. Of course the tutorial helps to learn the basics of the game. This tutorial shows the move controls, and the menu shortcuts. So let's talk about UX : when you choose a shortcut, give them a meaning for the players. And when i say that, i mean : more than choosing the shortcut with the first letter of the words.

• You move with WASD (left hand)

• You fight with the Mouse (right hand)

• Crafting is on C

• Skills are on T

• Inventory is on I

• Stats are on Tab

This is very hard to remember all of these, because they are located far away from each other and in a way you can't rely on the game. You can't reach all of them with your left hand that is the most of the time on WASD. An advice : group them somewhere, and maybe put them in the same order they are shown in the UI, it can help to locate and remember them (ZXCV for example).

And i tell you that because i played monthes after my first try, and i was completely lost and i had to redo the whole tutorial . It will also be cool for disabled people to have everything grouped together.

An other thing : this tutorial doesn't explain how to take objects on the floor. We see a lot of items coming automatically, but these ones don't. So i expected a key to take them : no. I clicked the objects : no.

It's by a total random move that i clicked on the -name- of the object and it suddenly appeared on my inventory. This was not very handy and i even though the game was broken the first time ! Be sure your tutorial explain all the needed controls !

Now this UX thing is said, let's go back to the good things : the game let you the time to discover these controls. It offers a large space with a lot of resources to gather. You are in a nice space cutting trees and cratfing stuff. Then THIS happened (picture 3)

What the heck man :D I was in a my little heaven then tons of monstruosity start to attack me ! To be honnest, the fight is quite easy, but it's very scary for newcomers ! You come in a hurry and have to manage so many monsters at the same time ! After winning this I spent a few more hours to expore the game and in fact, it was a very good experience and I enjoyed to play it !

The games let you free to discover the world and it's an important thing for that kind of games : you need resources for your craft, so you explore, and you are free to move. Then you craft bigger and bigger tools to get more and more stuff to craft again and again. It was a nice choice to let the player alone discovering the world though what he need to progress in the game. Now we used our foot a lot, let's use the car for the final game !

WODEN GP

WODEN GP, a race game with high quality graphics, what can we say about it ?

First of all, let's talk again about UX

I start, the game on my sweet computer, i'm nicely using my keyboard. And all the game show me XBOX Controller buttons for controlling the interface. So at first i belived it was required to use the game, but i don't have this controller this me so i was disapointed. I still tried to use the interfaces with my keyboard : it worked so i was able to play ! Please, show keyboard keys instead of controllers buttons when you detect it's a keyboard in use !

There is no tutorial, in fact, for a race game, it's easy to assume you have to :

• Press forward to accelerate

• Win the race to win the game

And in fact, it's ok to assume player knows things, because there are tons of games and we can base what we show to the player on what we expect the player knows. It's always risky, of course, but it's also a good thing to not add useless informations and slow down the rythm of the game. Here you can go right away on a track and drive, after a bit of story that links all the races together.

Why adding a story in a race game ? It helps the player to feel inside a bigger world than only doing races and races, it set up a goal to achieve. And you can have empathy with other characters. Here your mentor will always support you, after a win like after a fail, so losing a race is less frustrating !

Because about frustration, this game will give you what you deserve ! Wow this game is hard. I have beaten 99% of Burnout 3 with gold medal, but it was not enough for this game, even with the first race (picture 4).

You have to finish first, for every race. And the oponnents are intelligent and they won't give you this place easily. So it tooks me alot of tries to beat the first race. I'm not sure that many players are ready to spend that much time on it and could give up instead. Because when they will check up the tracks of the next races, they can be even more discouraged (picture 5) ! I think there is a balance to make here so the player can find a progression, instead of being asked to be extremely good at the start of the game. I like the game because i like the graphics, the scenery, and it's very challenging. But i'm clearly not good enough to play it for a long time because i always need to redo the same race too many times.

This is a choice to make , in fact. Because as i said : it's my experience, with my own skills. I guess Vijuda did this because for him, it's quite easy. And it can also be easy for other people, who are playing alot of racing games.

That's the point of all this article : the FTUE is good when the players you target feel good with the experience you share with them. There is no magic solution, sometimes asking to press left click for shooting in a FPS is useful, sometimes it's not. Sometimes you want your players to discorver things by themselves, sometimes you don't. All depends on what kind of experience you want for your players. And that's why a FTUE is hard to achieve, because the best way to know if it's good or not is to test, and test again, with real people, that discover your game for the first time.

Conclusion

As i always repeat : don't trust me. Break the rules, experiment by yourself. I'm only here to share thoughts and i do my best to inspire you and reveal things you didn't considered before ! I hope you liked it !

Please give support to the makers @ViJuDa for WODEN GP @HeroesOfAgesPast for Heroes of Ages Past and @KindGamejoltUser for Escape to be happy.

Note : all these games were made with Unity.