I'm a big advocate for a "self guided tour" experience with gaming. Recently I played The Witness. This game had zero hand holding, only visual clues on what you might need to do to open the next door. I loved how I have to figure out everything myself.
However The Witness is a pure puzzle game and has a very simplified world with only one goal. For a more complex (or I should say, with more elements) world, it's not as easy to "cue" on everything.
So imagine a game where you are given a clear goal but to reach the goal you need to find a way. But there's no mission system and no magic marker on the map to tell you where to go. You are given just a journal that's updated every time anything important takes place, and a task list that tells you clearly what to accomplish. You just have to figure out the "how".
On one hand, this system requires a learning curve. Players may not know what to do in the beginning, and ignore the journal and task list, just want to see action right away. They will run into enemies, get murdered and quit.
On the other hand, without explicit hand holding, when the player figures out how to accomplish the goal either through critical thinking or trial-and-error, there's a sense of discovery and accomplishment, "oh that's what this thing is for!"
The challenge is how to initially make the player interested in doing all the critical thinking and exploration. You know, before you make me do all that "work", give me a reason why I should do it, rather than just letting me have fun right away with some action.
How much hand holding do you think is required to properly "initiate" the player into the world? Do you think this game did well in explaining the game's background story and giving player a reason to "dig deeper"?
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