GalCiv IV: Supernova Dev Journal #16 - The importance of onboarding

Published on Monday, May 8, 2023 By Frogboy In GalCiv IV Dev Journals

GalCiv IV: Supernova Dev Journal #16 - The importance of onboarding

Long ago we had these things called “user manuals”. I loved reading a good user manual. I’d sit back with my copy of the Civilization manual or the Ultima IV manual and just spend a weekend afternoon reading it.

The days of manuals seem long gone. Gamers expect that the game will walk them through how to play the game and there is a real art form for doing this.

For Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova we are adding not just in game tutorials, but the leadership assistant to help explain what a given screen does and how to use it (and it can be turned off of course).

Here’s the one we’ve added for choosing what ship to build:

…and for designing a ship:

Now, I know if I were to ask those reading this if they prefer these to user manuals, many of you would say “We prefer a user manual!”. And of course, we are going to provide one of those too. But I actually do like these screens because they allow us to keep our game from being “dumbed down” as Supernova is a pretty complicated game.

What do you think?

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Galactic Civilizations IV: Supernova Dev Journals