The tutorial is the game. Many movies adopt an approach of ‘Show, don’t tell’ to communicate information to the audience. Games can go a step further: ‘Do, don’t show.’  Our philosophy for games both educational and traditional is to never push information on the player, always let them pull. The medium of games is unique in allowing the agency of the user to affect the presentation, creating a method of education simply not possible in other media. In games, the players are the explorer, they are making discoveries, and the knowledge and skills they gain from this experience are so much more meaningful because of it.

Learning is the reward. This feeling of discovery, of sudden understanding is a reward that is intrinsically satisfying – a genuine achievement in a medium awash in false achievements. At Strange Loop we design our games specifically to create this ‘Eureka’ moment, an event that happens fully in the mind of the player. By allowing the player to first understand the pieces of the game then requiring them to combine those ideas in their head to create a new understanding, we create the environment necessary to have that experience. Information that would be opaque and irrelevant to a player when forced upon them becomes exciting and meaningful when they genuinely discover it.

“Solving Vessel’s puzzles feels like a 1,000 watt light bulb flicking on in your brain.” – GamesRadar

This approach to game design works equally well when applied to both traditional and educational games, it is simply a matter of choosing the underlying system you’re teaching the player, whether that’s knowledge of a fictional, fantastic world, or an actual process in reality. When it comes to video games, subject matter based on real world information is just as ripe for discoveries as fictional worlds, if not more so.