The legacy console editions of Minecraft have always done a good job in my opinion as a tutorial. It's hard to skip it (or at least was for me) and it really walks you through the basics. Then you have the choice of learning more or just... going out and playing minecraft
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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Plants vs Zombies
For all the faults Nintendo embody, they know how to make tutorials, especially with the Mario series. You may think "there are no tutorials in Mario" but that's part of it. Nintendo's design formula for making stages for Mario games consist of "introduction, escalation, complication." First they throw a new mechanic at you, maybe the stage has rotating cylinders you need to stay on top of to progress, and not fall down. Then they up the difficulty a bit, adding more factors to the gameplay like introducing enemies that you have to dodge simultaneously. Then finally they turn the new concept up to 11 towards the end, by making you have to juggle both the new mechanics and some other modifiers, perhaps having to fight a boss at the same time, or perhaps requiring some more advanced platforming maneuvers to progress. That way a stage can be a tutorial, and you don't even realize it.
Hard agree, BOTW in particular was spectacular. The Great Plateau.
When you finish the tutorial bits and it's like "you need to go over here" and the map just opens up and you realize this game is FUCKING HUGE 🤌
Kind of tangential but I've always found the start of fallout 3 (the iconic scene where you exit the vault) to be a lesson in game design. Here's a completely open world but I can guarantee in ten minutes you'll be at the entrance of megaton. No direct prompting, just subtle framing and environmental clues.
The best tutorials are ones that are fun to play both on your first time and subsequent playthroughs
Something like portal, hollow knight or hades
The original Portal game does a good job of this. The first several puzzles are essentially tutorials that still manage to feel fun and interesting.
I'm here to say Portal as well, specifically because, once you really look for it, you realise that about 90% of the game is tutorial. Like, seriously, basically everything leading up to "The cake is a lie" is teaching you the skills you need for the final sequence. It's a massive tutorial followed by one level of actual game, and it's beautiful, precisely because you don't even notice that the tutorial hasn't ended.
A lot of the game before you escape the testing track, minus maybe the point you are told about momentum jumps, feel like one big tutorial without even realizing you're in one. It's done very well.
Portal 2 imo. Stephen Marchant makes everything better
Stephen Merchant.
Correction not to be an asshole, but because looking up Stephen Marchant brings up a different human
When I played through Portal in dev commentary mode, I was surprised at the time to realize they're basically trying to teach you things through the whole game (or at least heavily signpost). Made me realize a lot about game design, and design in general.
Super Mario Bros.
The first level literally is designed to progressively teach you everything you need to know how to play the game and it doesn't even have a single line of text to do it.
Although I do have to say it is a bit funny that Dark Souls' tutorial is just some messages on the ground and the first one tells you how to move. But you have to move over to it to read it in the first place.
Driver for ps1. I'm not sure though if I'm sarcastic.
I can tell you what the worst tutorial is.
It's Monster Hunter World.
I’m going to guess with near certainty that Monster Hunter World was your first Monster Hunter game if you think THAT tutorial was the worst hahaha
Yeah, it was. Trying to play, and it keeps stopping you with multiple full screens of text.
I don't think they understand the concept of tutorials tbh.
I started on the first PSP game and it was heavily more obtuse, with almost zero direction, tutorial, hints, anything hahaha. It got a LITTLE better with later “old style” games but it was still pretty obtuse. World NEEDED a tutorial that explained every little detail and held yer hand, otherwise new players would be hella turned off by the game and it wouldn’t have blown up like it did.
Pokemon games also routinely come close.
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There's a lot of videos and articles like this one discussing how Stage 1-1 of Super Mario Bros for the NES is a cleverly designed tutorial for the core game mechanics.
Yeah, this is still the GOAT 🐐.
Dead cells, there are people out there with hours of gameplay that haven't completed the tutorial.
Technically I don't think there's a tutorial level per say as much as there is a tutorial set of levels, but Baba Is You.
The game starts off with only the controls on how to move and teaches you about how you can change the rules of the level to beat it if it isn't possible normally, without explaining anything. Just from you exploring and testing different things. The only other time you'll ever see any other form of level hint is maybe in the level names or if you end up in a position where you have to undo or restart the level from breaking the " [ object ] is you " rule in some way.
Amazing game. I remember hearing folks describe it, before I ever played. I couldn't get my head around the concept. Then you play, and all the rules just make sense.
I want to shout out Left 4 Dead's game instructor for smoothly teaching new players the game even while they're playing with others. Get more ammo here. Use adrenaline to do stuff faster. Give Nick your pills. Rescue is coming - defend yourself! Then, once you've played enough, the help messages gradually become less frequent.
I'll also shout it out for being my favourite implementation of HUD markers in any game. The icon pulses into view close to your crosshair, then flies over to the thing it's pointing at. If it goes off-screen, the marker returns next to your crosshair, with an arrow indicating which direction to look in to see it again. A lot of other games have marker icons just suddenly appear at the spot and they crawl along the edge of the screen if the item is off-screen. The way L4D does it really draws my eyes.
Hopefully once HL3 is released we get a L4D3
Is this where we bring up the old Mega Man X Sequelitis video again? Chances are the best tutorial is the one you don't even realize is a tutorial. There was also a trend that I first noticed around the time of Gears of War where the tutorial would not only be built into the story so that you wouldn't feel like it was chore, but they'd also give you the opportunity to just skip it.
absolutely not Warframe.
Yeah haha. They made the tutorial slightly better nowadays, but your still getting thrown in the deep end after the Vor quest line.
Outer Wilds has a very elegant diagetic tutorial in the form of a museum and, well, a training ground, whole game is really a multi layered tutorial with scaling level of complexity.
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Breath of the Wild. It's integrated so smoothly you don't even realise it's a tutorial. It seemlessly transforms into regular gameplay.
My mom really though the Plateau was gonna be the entire game lol. When the game gave her a paraglider she was like "oh there's gonna be more?"
I think the Great Plateau is roughly the size of OOT's entire world, so if she only played classic titles that may feel reasonable.
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Dark Souls since it doesn‘t stop you in your tracks much. I dislike tutorials that stop you and make you read walls of text or force you to input/click exactly what it wants you to.
Dark Souls has a good tutorial because it lets you skip it? That's your bar for a good tutorial?
Souls games are terrible at even explaining what the buttons do. Every blind lets play I've seen it is like 30 minutes before the player even discovers they have estus or what it is for.
If I don't want to play the tutorial and I get absolutely blasted, then I gotta walk my sorry self back to the tutorial like the idiot I chose to be. I like to press all the buttons and figure stuff out on my own, its part of the exploration process.
I don't hate when certain gameplay elements are forced, but when I am given that impression I expect the whole game to be like that. The tutorial in Dark Souls promised me the game wasn't going to hold my hand the whole time by letting me completely skip the tutorial, and then it kept that promise. It didn't hold my hand. And I think that was great. Meanwhile Call of Duty tutorials hold your hand the whole time, and then your hand keeps getting held for the whole game. Also good.
The tutorials I think are bad are ones that fail to properly communicate important features of the game. If I choose to skip that part it is no fault of the game.
For example, Helldivers 2, which I enjoy greatly, has a tutorial that fails to teach the player what the Galactic War means, anything about the various mission types, or especially how to deal with supply lines and reinforcement routes. What happens in the players spend a lot of time and effort doing the wrong thing expecting the right result, a result they can never achieve because the game never actually told them how to do it. There isn't a bestiary where players can read about various enemies and their weak spots, you just have to trial and error figure it out, or have someone else that did that already tell you.
Yes, I prefer a game that lets me figure things out on my own through gameplay instead of popups. You are (arguably) forced to engage with the game‘s mechanics to beat the level, it has parries, environmental hazards, ambushes all in it without huge punishment in case of failure. I take the aha moment of using estus over „press square to heal.“ I‘m aware that others might need more guidance, but I didn’t and hence it‘s a great tutorial for me.
I wouldn‘t mind replaying the tutorial even now after having done it dozens of times already. It doesn‘t feel like one, I’m already playing the game and having fun, immersed in its world. So my bar is: The best tutorials don‘t feel like tutorials at all.
I was coming here to mention Dark Souls. It's an excellent example of how to make a tutorial not feel like a tutorial. Either you take the time to understand what the game is telling you or not, up to you. Don't care about going through the entire tutorial area? Just beat the boss and start the real adventure.
The one that sticks out in my mind is the original BioShock. Spoilers if you haven't played it.
Bioshock
The first thing that happens is a voice over the intercom asks, "Would you kindly pick up that weapon." And of course you do it, or the game does not progress. The voice is very polite and resonable, helping you navigate this dank maze of horrors. "Would you kindly open that door?" "Would you kindly kill that monster?" The calm manners contrast starkly against the modern horrors you're experiencing in the game. Of course every request seems like a great idea at the time, and of course the game ends if you fail.
Then halfway into the game, you finally meet the man behind the voice and he explains that you are a mind-controlled slave, conditions to obey any command that begins with "would you kindly..." He's trying to destroy the tyranny of the system and commands you to kill him, sacrificing himself to free you from the control phrase. The "tutorial" seemed like it was just helpful instructions, but you didn't really have a choice, did you? The majority of players just followed those instructions without question, never considering whether they were good choices or moral actions. And could you say no? Without the wrench, you can't survive the first attack. Without opening the door, you remain in the first room forever. Your world is pre-ordained and tightly controlled. How much free will do you have in the game and outside of it? At what point do you stop making decisions and start following orders? And when can you stop again?
I was going to mention Bioshock too, but what I love about it is the voiceovers never pause gameplay. The worst tutorials are the ones that make you sit through cutscenes that are longer than you want to sit through.
I hate to break it to the both of you but... that's not a tutorial.
Tribes: Vengeance's campaign story is basically one giant tutorial (and a great one at that) on how you move and play in multiplayer.
Too bad that the game didn't take off at all back then, now there's just small communities that get together once in a while :l
Blood Dragon. Best tutorial ever
Love that the protagonist is as annoyed by it as the player
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The first level of MegaMan x and good springs in fallout: New Vegas are really good examples of how to convey info to the player about how the game works and what you can do without pulling you out of the game itself into a separate tutorial
cyberpunk was nice. It had both an optional that really specifically laid things out and then in addition the first gig more casually does it. I seem to recall harry potter being so integrated that I can't remember it. I find a lot of games just sorta give popups that you can say stop to and then it basically just starts simple so you can learn the stuff without it seeming much like a tutorial. skyrim is sorta annoying in that its unskippable and you can't do a save before locking in a race that is after it like you could with oblivioun. So they went a bit backwards. Elden rings was completely skippable but it was also just pants. The tutorial is crazy easy compared to most games and does not prepare you at all for the brutal real game. Baldurs gate was unskippable but its pretty fast and did not really feel aweful to redo as its much like any quest in the game.
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