Don't Spook the Newbies: Five Steps to a Game Onboarding Plan

First published as an Acagamic Tip Tuesday on acagamic.com. Edited for this archive.

Onboarding decides whether new players stay, enjoy your game, and come back. Good onboarding raises player retention and satisfaction. Yet many designers start on it too late, close to shipping, so it ends up an afterthought. Plan it during pre-production or at the start of production instead. The five steps below follow what Celia Hodent, who worked on Fortnite, described in a recent interview.

Onboarding is how new players learn to play. Done well, it lets them pick up the mechanics, rules, and systems naturally, without confusion or overload. Players learn the game by design rather than stumbling through trial and error.

1. List what players need to learn

Make a list of everything players need to know to enjoy the game. Include simple ideas, like how to move and attack, and complex ones, like how to customize a character or how the different currencies work. Leave out a core idea and new players may quit before they see what your game offers.

One of my favourite games, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, starts with movement, jumping, and attacks, taught through tutorial messages and context-sensitive prompts. On the Great Plateau, players then learn to climb, glide, and use the Sheikah Slate to freeze water or move metal objects. The game also teaches crafting and cooking, and it introduces its currencies, Rupees and Mon.

Hollow Knight also starts with moving, jumping, and attacking, taught through environmental clues and a few prompts. Deeper in Hallownest, players learn to wall-jump, dash, and spend soul energy to heal or cast spells. The game teaches its currency, Geo, and its charm system by letting players explore and experiment.

2. Sort concepts by difficulty and importance

Look at the game as a whole. Which concepts will players master easily, and which will take effort? Keep basic controls as simple as possible. Then decide which concepts matter most for progressing through the game. Put the hard, important concepts at the top of your list so the team spends its onboarding effort there.

Celeste, a demanding platformer about climbing a mountain, sorts its concepts well. Early levels teach jumping, dashing, and climbing with controls that are easy to learn, so players feel competent fast. Later levels add moving platforms, spikes, and wind. These are harder, and they are central to the game’s challenge.

3. Plan when to teach each concept

Teaching everything at once confuses and frustrates players. Schedule when each concept appears, so players can absorb one idea before the next arrives. Spacing out new ideas also gives returning players something fresh each session.

Portal paces its teaching superbly. Each test chamber teaches one portal concept and lets players practise it before the next chamber raises the difficulty. The game also alternates new concepts with breathing room and humour, so players can absorb ideas and experiment without overload.

4. Teach the why, not only the what

Onboarding means more when players understand why a concept matters, not only what it is. Situations that make players care about learning a mechanic help them stay with the game and remember what they learned. Players who understand how systems connect also try new strategies.

Jonathan Blow’s The Witness does this well. Players wake on a strange island full of puzzle panels, with no explicit tutorials. They learn the rules by exploring, spotting patterns, and experimenting. Later puzzles demand a deep grasp of everything learned so far. The motivation is the why: players want to solve the island’s mysteries. The game sticks with you.

5. Watch players and adjust

Keep track of which tutorials help and which elements confuse. When something doesn’t work, change it, perhaps with clearer instructions or a more interactive tutorial. Give players a way to tell you how well they understood the game after onboarding, and use that feedback to keep improving.

Klei Entertainment did this with Don’t Starve. In the summer of 2012, the studio released a free beta on the Chrome Web Store to gather feedback before launching an expanded paid version. Klei found that most new players struggled with the game’s early difficulty and lack of guidance, so it added tutorials to teach the mechanics. The team kept talking with its community during and after launch, monitored forums and social media, and adjusted the game based on what players said.

Your onboarding checklist

Start your onboarding plan in pre-production or early production. List the game’s concepts and rank them by difficulty and importance. Space out new concepts so players never face too much at once. Build situations that show players why each concept matters. Then watch players and keep adjusting.