Rich Snider

As part of creating Refraction Remix we set out to redesign the way the game taught users to play. I was responsible for designing the systems the game used to teach users the new and existing mechanics. I split the problem into two parts: an updated on-boarding experience (also know as tutorials) and a hinting system. For the hinting system, our goal was to create a system that would be:

• Always Accessible
• Easy to Find
• Comprehensive
• Not Obstructive

We accomplished this through the use of just-in-time hints.

In Halo, players are reminded how to pick up a weapon whenever they stand on top of one. The game displays a small hint on the screen that tells the user to hold some button to pick up the weapon. This hint tells the player they can do something, instructs them how to do it, is displayed only when relevant, and is out of their way if they want to ignore it.

One of the great parts about this kind of hint is that it can be used throughout the game to remind players how to pick up a weapon in case they haven’t played in a while. As a result, designers don’t need to rely on players remembering what they were taught in an upfront tutorial. Instead, they can remind them of important information and controls throughout the game, but only when the information is needed.

We used a system of just-in-time hints in Refraction Remix to remind players of what each of the game pieces did. For all game pieces such as benders, splitters, adders, asteroids, and ships we created short animations to explain the mechanic visually. We also added a brief message to explain the big idea the player needed to know. We set these hints to display on the bottom of the piece bank, which was generally unused space. For the various pieces, the respective hint would appear whenever the player hovered over a piece.

For example, many pieces can be rotated to change where the input(s) and output(s) are located. In-game, a hint appears whenever the player hovers over a rotate button. The hint features an animation showing the rotate button being clicked and a bender piece rotating around in a circle in 90° increments. It also has a short message that reads: “click the rotate button to turn the piece clockwise.”

We also used just-in-time hints to explain a variety of special situations. For example, in levels that have multiple ships, players may go to the next level once one or more ships are powered. We tell them this through a hint which appears whenever one or more ships is powered.

Players can also cause an “infinite laser” by bending the output of an adder piece back into the adder. In the original Refraction, we had the adder piece ignore its output laser. But with hints in Refraction Remix, we allow an infinite laser to occur and call it out to the player.

Since multiple of these situational hints could occur at the same time, and the player could hover over a piece at any time, we included a priority order that the hints would display in. Only the highest priority hint would be displayed. We gave the highest priority to hover hints because we wanted the game to always respond to what the player was doing. We then prioritized the level finished hint over problem hints like the infinite laser so that players could always finish the level if they were able.