Building a tutorial

Hello and thanks for taking a look at Hi Wave. This latest release is mostly polish as well as a new tutorial system. I had a friend play the previous release and it showed me that game's mechanics are not super obvious. Hi Wave does have a "How To Play" section but players may not read that. So I needed something else. I could have forced players on their first time playing to look at the How To Play section but that would be a frustrating experience. Players don't like to be told explicitly what to do, they like discovering how things work. So instead I came up with a list of tasks the player will see when they first start playing. These are goals that will teach the player how the mechanics of the game work, not by explicitly showing them but encouraging them to perform actions which will demonstrate how the game systems work.

So now you have tasks on the left with a counter showing how many times you need to perform them. There are no instructions on how to do any of this, but it informs the player of things they can do. My hope is that players are encouraged to try to figure this out, either through experimentation or maybe this will get them to read the How To Play section in the menu. Progress on these tasks save between plays and once you complete them all, this menu goes away. I hope everyone likes this new addition and don't find it to be too much of a nuisance!

There is another smaller addition and it's one you will see right when the game comes up. Most modern games, even indie ones, have some sort of start up splash screen telling you who made it. I have finally added my own to the startup of Hi Wave.

I know not everyone loves these especially when they cannot be skipped so I made sure you can click right through this. It's short, and maybe including a message about the monetary value of the game will alleviate some of the anger that comes from being shown a startup message?