So have you ever handed a parent or friend who has never played video games before a
controller and tried to teach them to play video games, but regardless of your best efforts
they just walk into walls and eventually give up in frustration?
If so this video is for you, because I'm going to break down how I was able to get
one of my parents to play entirely through Deltarune and how your parents or friends
who have never played games before can do the same.
I'm Etra from Etra Games and this is How Your Parents Can Play a series where I try
to find the best way to teach new players how to play a certain game.
And today we're going to look at Deltarune a friendly RPG where nobody has to die.
Basically what I did is I had my Mom play through Deltarune and noted what problems
we came across.
I then found ways to fix those problems and tested if those solutions worked with a friend
who has also never played video games before.
And there will be Deltarune spoilers in this video since we're going to be analyzing
my Mom's experience with the entire game.
However, we're mostly going to talk about the first hour or so of the game since this
is where most things can go wrong.
But before I start I need to note that if you are planning on teaching anyone how to
play any video game you need to keep in mind something that game designers like to call
FLOW, which is the state in between being too frustrated or bored with a challenge.
Usually, a game gets harder as the player becomes more skilled, which creates a gradually
rising difficulty curve inside this state of FLOW.
The big issue with introducing new players into gaming is that there is so much they
are just expected to know that is never taught to them like what health, stats, menus, and
items are, and because of that a new player can easily be overwhelmed and frustrated before
they even pick up the controller they have never touched before.
On the other side of this, if you introduce every aspect of a game piece by piece with no challenge
they will become bored and disinterested in the game.
Our goal like any Game Designer is to make sure our new player stays in this FLOW state
by introducing them to important information while still giving them a challenge.
And this is why so many people will tell you to never take away the controller and finish
a section for your new player.
This instantly communicates to them that they can't complete the challenge in
front of them, which takes them out of the FLOW state and into frustration probably
to the point of quitting.
So with all that in mind I'm going to throw this difficulty chart up in the corner here
to point out where our new player encountered problems.
Now my Mom's only real gaming experience has been Pong and MarioKart so before we began
I made two detailed instruction sheets.
The first sheet taught her how to use menus.
I gave her that one right at the start because navigating menus is all you do in Deltarune's
odd opening.
I thought just learning the menus first would keep her from becoming overwhelmed, and I
thought the creepy narrative would help keep her at least somewhat engaged.
But after seven slow minutes of menus, I could tell she was already getting bored.
Then was frustrated once her character was "discarded" and her time was wasted.
So we're off to a great start!
After the intro, I handed her the second set of instructions which were about walking and
interacting with objects.
She quickly learned how to walk and naturally learned about room transitions when she followed
Toriel out this door.
All is well for a solid 30 seconds but then we reach a snowball of frustration starting
with this "staircase" that sent her an endless loop, hitting a dead end in the bathroom,
text progressing without her pressing anything, talking to everyone in this classroom except
the person she needs to talk to, not knowing why she can't move in these cutscene moments,
Susie making fun of how slow she walks, and 32 minutes 32 minutes and nothing interesting
has happened in the plot and the gameplay has only been frustrating, and of course I
had to explain what saving was to her right here, which overwhelmed her even more.
On the bright side right after this snowball of frustration, she seemed to enjoy the first
part of the dark world.
Especially stuff like figuring out how sliding works all by herself.
Discovering game mechanics naturally like this helps players get back into the state
of FLOW only if the challenge of finding out "What this does" isn't spelled out to the point
of being boring and can easily be discovered so it isn't frustrating.
And this section of the dark world is full of this game guided discovery which taught
mechanics almost pulled my mom into this state of FLOW.
First, she sees this blob.
Then she encounters a second one but it glows red and starts to attack.
This scene teaches a lot by associating taking damage with this heart, which you move with
arrow keys to dodge white projectiles, which may seem familiar.
This is also a test of your mad walking skillz, and again this usually isn't noticed, but
this "challenge" helped to put our new player right into the state of flow.
I'm pretty certain this teaching was intentional because right after that our player is tested
on facing objects and interacting with them in the form of this simple puzzle.
And finally, we get a chase scene which develops the damage concept introduced earlier.
The spades falling from above help guide your eyes toward this bar with "HP" that depletes
every time you are hit, this, of course, gave my mom a sense of what HP was without saying
a word.
This whole section that secretly teaches new players the games core mechanics while putting
them into a state of FLOW is why I thought Deltarune would be the best game for new players
to learn how to play games.
But then I am proven wrong, with a full five minutes of unskippable dialogue that dragged
my mom into a bit of boredom, and then this happens.
And my mom just sat there for thirty-four seconds in a bit of shock.
I-I think this broke her.
We've have an enemy, allied health bars, Toilet Paper, HP, 5 runic symbols,
and a new text bar.
I guess this is the equivalent of going on the date with Papyrus in Undertale but only
if all those wacky stat bars were vital to your survival, and you only vaguely knew what
the dog radar did.
I knew this would be the most overwhelming section of the whole game, but I believed she
would at least be able to select an action.
However, there was no association from earlier menus to this.
As I finally started to explain what was going on.
Lancer charged at the heart and it seemed like any association she once had with the
heart, damage, and HP were gone.
She was completely off our FLOW chart into the realm of frustrated and overwhelmed.
I simply thought she'd just be a bit confused here, and everything would be cleared up when
battling was fully explained by Ralsei in a minute.
When the mess of the battle was over she said she wanted to stop.
And we agreed to try again in a month.
Yet with her experiencing 37 minutes of frustration with only 8 minutes of this FLOW state this
whole experiment seemed kind of hopeless.
So how do we fix this first batch of problems
in this semi-trainwreck for new players?
Well, the first thing I did for her second playthrough was remove the entire opening
segment up to the classroom since the opening didn't help her with the battle menus and
even learning to walk in this area only served to frustrate her.
Then I edited the text in the classroom to make each character guide you towards talking
to Noelle here clearing up the "talking to everyone but Noelle" problem.
Finally, I modified her controller with a magic ingredient.
The keys were now color-coded for either movement or interaction.
This sped up her base movement speed drastically since she barely needed to look for what keys
to press.
Seriously if you take one thing away from this video have it be that adding stickers
will probably be the most productive thing you can do to help a new player learn how
to play video games since they will spend more time in the game and less time breaking
their immersion to look at their hands.
Anyway with these three changes we got to an interesting part of the story in 7 minutes
instead of 32 minutes, which helped the pace a little bit.
From earlier I learned the hard way that a new player needs to be at least familiar with
the battle system before they encounter it or else they'll go into shock.
It pained me to teach fighting outside of the game, but I gave my mom two more information
packed sheets of paper, which was a bit overwhelming, but not as overwhelming as everything appearing
at once.
Then in Ralsei's tutorial, I showed her where everything was in relation to
the battle chart in front of her and she seemed to loosely grasp the fighting system, which
was MUCH better than the chaos beforehand.
Now we finally got into real battles, which scared me at first, but it actually went really
well.
She only fought opponents instead of trying to spare them probably because it was just simpler
to attack.
I had no objections at this point because I was trying everything in my power to keep
her from being overwhelmed again.
I occasionally suggested strategies and guided her on stuff like defending and healing when
she asked for a refresher.
She kept on improving the actual act of fighting until she was getting perfect hits.
She did so well she actually got through the first area without dying, which was shocking
to me.
But also great for this expirement because
dying would cause a mass amount of frustration.
She was slowly getting into a state of FLOW.
And then we get to this puzzle.
Which I'm going to say it right now, THIS is going to be the most frustrating thing
for new players.
Not Teleportation, the Checker dance, or the Chaos King.
An unskippable button puzzle is probably going to be a more frustrating challenge, and I'll
tell you why.
Do you have that one family member who can play Mario Kart but only Mario Kart for some
reason?
That's my mom.
And if you know any of these only Mario Kart players, you know they NEVER drift.
Why?
Well, it requires two button presses and timing the second button press.
Pressing one button is simple enough, but it seems like pressing two buttons at once
seems to be an alien concept to any non-gamer.
So a new player needs to press two buttons so you can walk diagonally here, and also
needs to time a third button press to dash, all under a strict time limit.
It doesn't go well with my mom who spent her first four minutes not knowing the characters
feet have to be touching the buttons and not just their bodies.
With all that said I'm pretty certain this challenge will be extremely frustrating for
any new player.
However, I don't actually recommend skipping this "puzzle", because after finishing
Deltarune my Mom could drift in Mario Kart.
Now that's either super convenient timing or this game just forced her to learn how
to use multiple inputs.
But you shouldn't just leave your player in frustration.
I'd never usually recommend this but in this particular scenario make sure tell whoever
is playing the game EXACTLY what to do.
Just try to get this frustrating section over with as quick as possible.
Telling them exactly what to do will save them the frustration of trying to figure out
the puzzle in the first place making it an overall smoother experience for the new player.
It took my mom six minutes for each of these puzzles, but most of her frustration was somewhat
relieved once she completed this seemingly monumental task.
The only other fundamental concept of the game left to learn was items when they were
introduced in this shop.
The shop was actually pretty self-explanatory and there weren't any real problems other
than with equipping items that she bought.
This is the only other time where I recommend telling the player exactly what buttons to
press to equip their items.
Since this is likely the only time they'll open the equipment screen in the entire game.
She really didn't have much trouble with the other enemies, but she did say the battles
were getting a bit repetitive.
Probably because she only fought enemies.
Getting through the teleporting rooms proved a solid challenge without getting too frustrating.
Also, this happened.
(gyah((or other anime grunting sound idk)))
(???)
oh?
How is this happening?
How is this- happening?
"I am the Queen of the Universe!"
WELL THEN!
She then fought our almighty lord and savior leg-boi.
And this was the first time she died, and it wasn't cause she was bad at the game
but because she only used the "FIGHT" option.
She quickly found out you had to ACT to win the battle.
And after that, she started incorporating Sparing into her battle strategy.
The only real challenge past that were these Bloxer enemies, which I had to tell her to
spare because otherwise, they were too tough to beat since these things are literal tanks.
The big issue with them is that they lead straight into a boss fight with a long puzzle
before it.
So if your player dies, which they probably will since they had to survive four of these
guys just a few minutes before, they will have to start all the way back here.
I really think Toby Fox just forgot to put a Save Point here, and don't worry we'll
fix that later.
After that, there weren't really any big frustrating moments like earlier.
My mom did say the game was getting a bit boring narratively and I agree that this whole Susie
and Lancer section before the castle stays outstays its welcome a bit and to top it off
it ends with a big chunk of unskippable text.
And to her, there was no payoff in the climactic Susie vs. Lancer battle because she clearly
knew that no one died in this game.
Which, is a fact that is supposed to be hidden from players until the very end of Deltarune.
I actually have a whole video about that which I'll link to at the end of this video.
Anyway She marched up the castle missing a few fun interactions with Susie since she
was almost always dead set on murdering everything.
She had a short and easy encounter with the glorious leg-boi.
And approached my biggest fear for this run.
The Chaos King.
She was doing great in the game so far, much better than I expected, to the point where
it's making me question what difficulty truly is, but this is a HARSH difficulty spike.
And she did good enough on her first try but she only attacked, which was basically futile
since unless you are perfect the King will automatically stop fighting you before you
take his health down to 0.
She had to wait it out, which an Undertale player would probably guess, but since this
isn't how any of the other Deltarune bosses work she would have only survived by luck.
So after her first death, I gave in and directly told her she had to wear the king out.
So she focused on defense and just barely won the battle.
It shocked me that someone who has never played video games outside of Mario Kart and Pong was able
to beat the final boss of Deltarune on their second try.
Or it's not that big of a deal and I'm just salty because it took me three times
to beat him who knows.
Reconsidering the entire concept of difficulty or I'm just bad at the game and salty
Take your pick!
At the end of her run my mom said she enjoyed parts of the game and was actually interested in
playing Undertale, which was my goal from the start.
So it was rough but I would call her part of the project somewhat successful.
Still with all the earlier problems I do have to say Deltarune is NOT the perfect game for
introducing new players into video games, if that wasn't clear already.
but how can we fix the remaining problems so we have
it closer to this imaginary perfect teaching game?
Well after this whole thing with my Mom I invited a friend who has never played games
before over so she could play through the game as well, but before she played I modified
Deltarune to try and fix the problems my mom encountered.
First I got a mod for unlocking debug mode by these lovely fellows so I could make a
save file for my friend that started at Alphy's classroom instead of Hell.
This mod also allowed me to save our new player right before the Clover boss battle.
Next, I edited a moderate amount of text to hint at making certain decisions like stalling
out the chaos king.
Finally, I simplified the originally overly complex guides and cut battling down to four
simple steps with extra info on the main three decisions of attacking, acting, or defending
if needed.
To get all of this just click the link in the description below, and follow the instructions
on screen here to apply this modpack to your game.
All this stuff is written in the description as well so you can just check there.
If you do download this mod I would love to hear of your experience and problems you encountered
in the comments below so I can learn more about teaching new players for future videos
and future projects.
So when our second new player started playing I put the new controls sheet next
to the wonderfully stickered keyboard when she started in Alphy's classroom.
Right before she got to the Lancer fight I used the battle guide I made to teach her
how to battle and then reiterated the battle system with Ralsei's tutorial.
The only parts even close to frustrating for her was learning how to battle and the wonderful
button puzzles I talked about earlier.
When she finally got to the Chaos King she was only two attacks away from winning on
her first try before she died for only her fifth time in the entire game.
So it seems to me Deltarune's difficulty doesn't seem to be a problem for new players.
And if difficulty actually isn't a problem if the core mechanics of a game are taught well.
Feel free to tell me any games that teach their mechanics well and you think would be
great for new players to play in the comments below.
Anyway if you enjoyed this video feel free to check out my other video on Deltarune I
mentioned earlier talking about Why Choice Shouldn't Matter.
If you liked this video consider subscribing to be notified of when I upload new content.
Thank you all for watching and I'll catch you all next time!
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