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It feels a bit odd writing a post about tutorial progression and the easier dungeons, mainly because most of this blog’s readership consists of dedicated fans who already know a thing or two about clicking around single-screen dungeons. Still, it’s a game aspect which we find absolutely vital — keeping both beginners AND veterans in mind.<\/p>\n
The freeware version of DD didn’t sport much more than a rather basic tutorial, quickly introducing core concepts and murdering the player a few times with some goats before tossing them into the deep end of a “normal” dungeon. Even when they’re provided with a quiet 20% monster strength reduction (at least until the first victory), some beginners still feel rather overwhelmed<\/a> by the whole experience. So obviously we have to make things a little easier in the commercial version.<\/p>\n But how do we do this without boring experienced players too much? It’s a tricky situation which we think we have a solution for.<\/p>\n Teaching people how to play the game properly is difficult in itself. DD is a little too complicated to explain simply and concisely. Most of the gameplay (and indeed, a jolly good portion of the fun) lies beyond simple how-tos and canned examples, dependent on a player’s patience and willingness to explore the system themselves.<\/p>\n While Unity DD will see a return of the standard murder-by-goat tutorials, we’re also trying to construct a few starting dungeons with slightly less explicit “training wheels”, giving players tailored situations with fewer monsters, easier bosses and one or two glyphs which are specifically designed to work in synergy with one another, creating a “soft puzzle” situation which has different goals and values depending on the sort of player you are:<\/p>\n BEGINNER:<\/strong> enjoy a moderately challenging dungeon using a reduced set of the typical monsters, spells and characters that will be encountered over the course of the game. You’ll still receive help in the form of occasional, un-intrusive hint signposts (an elegant tutoring device which is gaining popularity in randomly-generated games), but for the most part: it’s all you, baby! You should successfully complete this scenario after a couple of tries at most, and will be able to bask in your achievements and newfound game knowledge afterwards. As a bonus, you may just be clever enough to figure out how the provided glyphs work with each other and maybe exploit one or two monster weaknesses intelligently. Maybe you’ll even be tempted to buy and explore an unlock or two in the kingdom screen when you’re done — not absolutely necessary, but it can’t hurt to experiment with a different character or dungeon preparation! Either way, you’ll walk away knowing one important fact: DD certainly isn’t an easy game, but you’re already taking your first steps towards mastering it.<\/p>\n