Check it out. Placeholder splash screen:
Amazing, right? Still, it stops the game from starting music immediately, which was bugging alpha testers.
More importantly, I’ve spent most of today totally redoing the tutorial. Fight Back is quite a mechanically complicated game, and it’s doubly cursed by being so fast-paced there’s no time to experiment with things. That means it needs quite an intrusive, structured tutorial to make as much sense as possible on the first run.
Here’s a shot of the pre-game tutorial, which by itself is longer than the previous tutorial was. It introduces almost all the game’s concepts, though, except for metagame stuff and what happens when you die.
The problem with death is, killing the player in a contained tutorial is going to feel unfair and be hard to explain. So I don’t. That means I can’t explain it until later:
The first time you die, the game drops into slow motion and explains what the hell just happened.
It’s quite intrusive but it does get the point across. I feel like I’ve failed because I can’t communicate how the game works intuitively in the normal pace of play, but I guess clarity trumps minimalism! Now to stick it in front of some people, see how it playtests and refine it.