How to play tutorial how to play tutorial

4 Ways to Teach Your Players How to Play Your Game

We all hate in-game tutorials. When we buy a game, we want to jump straight into the action, not spend ages reading through menus and flowcharts of moves. But we need to know how to play. We need to understand the new rules of each game—after all, if every game were the same, why would we need other games?

And because computer games are so complex, there’s much more to a tutorial than just «use arrow keys and space to shoot». There’s how we interact, our objectives, how the world reacts to us: all this needs to be imparted to the player, and preferably without sitting them down and specifically having to say «spikes are bad».

So we want to get our tutorial out of the way as quickly as possible, right? The thing is, the first few minutes of a game can make or break a player’s experience. Triple-A games have a little bit more leeway, but if you’re making a mobile or web game then you need to get the player into the meat of the game as soon as possible to ensure they’re having fun; otherwise, they’ll just find something else to play.

OK, so we need to make a tutorial, but we don’t want the player to sit through a boring lesson on how the game works. this is a conundrum. The solution lies in how we construct our tutorial: can we make it fun? In fact, can we make it part of the game?

Tutorials can be largely split into three types: non-interactive, interactive, and passive. We’ll look at each in turn.

Non-Interactive In-Game Tutorials

Non-interactive in-game tutorials are, in many ways, a leftover of old game design. The image below is from Infected, a game my team and I made several years back.

The «tutorial» from our game, Infected.

The entire game tutorial is essentially this one image; in retrospect, it was a massive design flaw. When watched people actually play the game, they would hit that screen, their eyes would briefly glaze over, and they would hit Start. For most of our players, they were none the wiser on how the game actually worked.

George Fan, the creator of the fantastic Plants vs Zombies, goes by the rule that «there should be no more than eight words on the screen at any time». Players generally have short attention spans, and are not looking to digest large quantities of information.

While non-interactive tutorials are not necessarily bad, they nearly always break this eight-word limit. If we were wanted to explore this design flaw, we could sum it up neatly as:

This is really the first rule of in-game tutorial design. Players need to understand what’s going on at all times: if you give the player a list of 200 combo moves and special attacks, then chances are they’ll remember two or three and use those for the entire game. However, if you “trickle teach” the player—introduce one concept at a time—then they will have plenty of opportunity to get to grips with each ability.

We’ve used this image before, but its still relevant.

We’ve actually talked briefly about this idea before, under the concept of using achievements as tutorial aids. Forcing the player to complete a level with only a basic weapon might damage the overall “fun level”, but giving players an achievement for doing it makes it optional, and encourages players (especially those who are already competent at the game) to try new strategies and tactics.

Any sort of rank or reward system can be used in this way, such as a star rating or an A+ to F ranking. “Bad” players can complete the level easily, whereas players who adhere to more difficult challenges are rewarded with higher scores. This also allows more hardcore gamers to aim for 100% completion, while casual gamers can still enjoy the game without getting stuck on a difficult level.

Super Meat Boy spreads its «tutorial» over the first half dozen levels. The first level teaches you the fundamentals: moving left and right and jumping. Level 2 teaches wall jumping. Level 3, sprinting. Once the player has understood these basic concepts, the game starts introducing concepts like spinning blades, disintegrating platforms, and scrolling levels.

The first level of Super Meat Boy. Can you handle walking and jumping? Then you’re probably good.

The first level of Super Meat Boy, in fact, is incredibly difficult to fail at. The game uses a technique often referred to as a “noob cave”. Essentially, the player starts in a position from which it is impossible to fail—they need to make progress in order to get to a point where they can die. This gives the player a chance to get to grips with the game mechanics, without feeling under threat of enemies attacking or timers running out.

The “noob cave” technique is something we implemented in Infected to some degree: although it is possible to lose the first level, it requires some effort. The player is given a significant starting advantage (twice as many pieces as the enemy), and the AI is almost non-existent. At high levels, the AI will make calculated moves, but on the first level, the AI will move 100% randomly (within the rules of making a legal move). This means that even if the player has zero idea of how to play, they are still highly likely to win. (Of course some players still managed to lose, but the overall experience was significantly better for our players than our first version, where we simply threw them against an advanced AI that would crush them.)

There are a few ways to implement a «noob cave» in a game, but one effective way is to create an interactive tutorial: a section of the game with locked down mechanics where the player can only perform the actions required to win. This allows the player to «play» the game, without running the risk of losing and getting bored.

Interactive In-Game Tutorials

Allowing player interaction within an in-game tutorial is a good way to teach mechanics. Rather than simply telling the player how the game works, making them perform required actions results in better retention. While you can tell a player the instructions a hundred times, actually getting them to perform game actions will guarantee that they remember and understand.

Forcing the player through the motions in Highrise Heroes

The above image, from Highrise Heroes, is an excellent demonstration of how to involve a player in a tutorial. Although it would be easier to simply display an image of how making a word works, forcing them to go through the actions of actually completing a word ensures they understand this concept before they proceed. The player is locked out of “full” gameplay until they have demonstrated their ability to complete this basic gameplay element. Because you force the player to perform the action, you can be sure that the player is unable to progress until they have mastered this task.

The only drawback with this style is that, if the player is already familiar with how the game works, they can find playing through obligatory tutorial levels tedious. This can be avoided by letting players skip through the tutorial levels—but be aware that some players will then skip the tutorial regardless of whether they’ve played the game before. Andy Moore, creator of Steambirds, has talked about how he went from a 60% to a 95% player retention rate after making the tutorial unskippable.

Background In-Game Tutorials

Background in-game tutorials allow the player direct access to gameplay. While the player can still progress through a “noob cave” area, they are able to (hopefully) do it at a faster pace, and thus get into the «proper game» faster.

Here’s an example:

In VVVVVV, the player starts here, in a safe area where they can work out the controls.

This is the first screen in VVVVVV, which uses a small pop-up to tell the player how to move left and right. As the player is completely boxed off, the only action they can perform is moving onto the second screen, where they are shown how to “jump” over obstacles. From there, they have essentially mastered gameplay—and although moving and jumping could fit into a single room, spacing them out ensures players have mastered each skill and aren’t overwhelmed by masses of text.

The difference between a background and an interactive tutorial can be subtle, as they can both use a similar style. The primary difference is that a background tutorial can be skipped by the player with no effort: everything merely merges into the background.

I saw her standing there, a fantastic Flash game. Try it out, and notice that the game gets you playing even before the main menu has come up.

An interactive or background tutorial is something we should have used in Infected. The entire tutorial could have been taught in three moves (how to move, how to jump, and how to capture), so there wouldn’t have been a significant loss to gameplay if we’d implemented it. Although we were aware of the issue, the tutorial was one of the last things we developed, so good design took second place to just getting the game finished.

No In-Game Tutorial

How do you get cold water from a faucet? Generally, you turn the tap handle to the right. How do you tighten a screw? You turn it clockwise. These things don’t come with instruction manuals—we instinctively know how they work. Or rather, we learn how they work at an early age, and since they (generally) all work in the same way, that knowledge is reinforced throughout our lives.

Games operate on this principle as well. As veteran gamers, we automatically know that we want to collect coins and gain upgrades. Non-gamers might not understand these things automatically, so it’s important to make these things as obvious as possible. (Even if you haven’t played a platform game before, it’s fairly obvious that jumping into fire is not a good idea.)

A player should generally be able to identify the difference between “good” and “bad” objects at a glance, without having to use death as a trial and error discovery method. Shigeru Miyamoto once talked about how he decided why coins specifically were used in Mario:

«Thus, when we were thinking about something that anybody would look at and go ‘I definitely want that!’, we thought, ‘Yep, it’s gotta be money.'»

Plants vs Zombies’ use of «plant» and «zombie» themes helps teach the players without any explanation at all: players know that plants don’t move around, and that zombies are slow moving. Rather than going for a boring «turrets vs soliders» theme, the Plants vs Zombies theme allows the game to be interesting and cutesy, and still impart vital knowledge.

Honestly, it’s really not that hard to work out the basics of whats going on here.

Since players will often “know” how a game plays, we don’t always have to explain everything. When you throw a player into a game, consider telling them nothing—let them figure things out for themselves. If they stand around motionless, then give them a few hints («try moving the control stick to walk!»), but remember that players will generally try to perform basic commands themselves. Because the “basic rules” of gameplay tend to be universal, this means we can assume the player has some familiarity with them; however, it also means that it’s incredibly dangerous to make changes to those basic rules.

Some fledgling games designers decide that doing things “the normal way” is the wrong way, and ignore established rules. The real-time strategy (RTS) genre has suffered from this in the past: while today’s games tend to use a fairly standardised control system (left click to select, right click to move or attack), older games had very little consistency, and would often switch the left/right mouse button controls, or try to bind multiple commands to a single button. If you play one of these old games today, then the bizarre controls can be very jarring, as we’ve since learned a different control set.

Implementing «obvious» controls was the saving grace of Infected: while the player may not have read the tutorial, clicking on a piece immediately highlighted moves the player could make. By giving the player a visual response that clicking on a piece was the «right» move, it let them continue exploring the control system. Our initial versions of the game did not have this highlighting, and we found that adding this minor graphical addition made gameplay much more accessible and obvious, without taking anything anything away.

In Infected, after you select a piece, highlighted squares show you where you can move.

If you want to change traditional gameplay elements around, have a good reason. Katamari Damacy uses both thumbsticks to move, rather than the more traditional setup of using one thumbstick to move and the other to control the camera. While this may cause some intial confusion, the simplicity of the game means that this control system works exceptionally well.

In a similar vein, the web game Karoshi Suicide Salaryman actually demands that the player kill themselves, often by by jumping on spikes. While this is «non-standard» game behaviour due of the game’s reversed theme (die to win), the player’s objectives are always clear.

Games will always change and evolve, but it’s important to understand that when you change things—be it controls or game objectives—the player should not have to relearn everything.

Continual Learning and Experimenting

Its also interesting to note that not providing the player with explicit instructions can actually encourage gameplay through experimentation. In the Zelda series, the player is constantly finding new items and equipment, and must learn how they work. Rather than sitting through a lengthy explanation of “the hookshot: learning how to use your new weapon”, the game just dumps the player in a closed room and says “figure it out”—although the «puzzle» is generally so obvious that the player should be able to work things out instantly.

These rooms are basically noob caves: despite being found halfway through the game, they allow the player to explore how their new toy works within a safe environment. Once the player has worked out the intricacies of their new toy, they are thrown back into the game world, where they can continue puzzling and fighting monsters. By the end of the game, the player is so used to using their new weapons that switching between them to solve multi-tiered puzzles is second nature.

The way Zelda games handle in-game tutorials is also worth noting: for Zelda, the game is the tutorial. With perhaps the exception of the final dungeon, the player never really stops learning; this “trickle teaching” is one of the greatest strengths of the Zelda series. Rather than being given everything at the beginning, the player slowly unlocks the game, so they are never overwhelmed and are always unlocking cool new toys to use.

Plants vs Zombies, again, also uses trickle teaching effectively: in every level, the player unlocks a new plant (and sometimes new stages), and must learn how to use these to defeat the zombie army. The game never overwhelms the player, but always gives them something new to play with. Because the player gets to spend time with each weapon, it encourages the player to select the plants that are most effective, rather than finding a few plants they like at the start and sticking with them throughout the whole game.

Don’t Scare the Player Away

All of this really just says: don’t scare the player away, and don’t bore them away either. It seems like such obvious advice, but it’s remarkable how few games (including triple-A games) seem to be unable to understand this.

One common example of this, a mistake made time and time again, is requiring registration to play online. If you’re trying to get a player hooked, don’t make them wade through forms filling out their date of birth, their email address, and so on—just give them a guest account and let them play. If they enjoy the game, then they’re more likely to sign up for a “full” account. (Tagpro is a online, multiplayer game which does this fairly well: select a server, hit Play as Guest and you’re in.)

It’s fine to make complex games, but realise that humans have poor memories and short attention spans, and do not learn well by being presented with masses of text. If you’ve not played them before, try playing a game like Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Dwarf Fortress, or even Civilisation. If you haven’t been show how to play by someone else, it can be quite daunting to learn how the game actually works. And while these are all fantastic games, they will always have a certain “niche” quality—not because they have learning curves, but because they have learning cliffs, impassible to all but the most determined.

Conclusion

Remember: try make your tutorials fun, rather than a tedious slog. Every game is different, and it might be difficult to implement all of these ideas within a particular genre—but if you can make the first five minutes fun, you can probably hook the player to the end credits.

How to play tutorial how to play tutorial

*SOME THINGS ARE OUTDATED*
A tutorial on how to play the game. With video and images!

*SOME THINGS ARE OUTDATED*

This is a guide on how to play SimAirport!

There will be tips and tricks and I’ll try and do 1 section each day!

If you have any questions please do ask down in the comments, I’ll do my best to answer them. Same goes for the youtube tutorial =)

NOTE: I will add sections pretty much whenever I can, won’t add pictures right away on all of them.
I’m a busy man.

I think before we go too much into the game we should start talking about the goal of the game.

As of now it’s a sandbox game with no real goal like Prison Architect was in it’s early stages, really the only thing you can do for now is make everyone happy and fulfill the goals of the different airlines to make them fly at your airport.

TL;DR The goal is whatever you want it to be for now!
______________________________________________________________________________
This is the menu you are presented with when you start a new game

Instead of having the «unlimited symbol» you can actually see how much money you’ve spent and how much you’re gaining so you have a goal in that regard
______________________________________________________________________________

Currently not in the game:
Random events: Will cause random event’s to happen, like theft, plane crashes, fires etc.*
Tutorial: Starts the game for you with a tutorial that makes this guide useless!

*Just events that I think that might happen, no guarantee

There are different kinds of staff for different kinds of zones that all help you make the airport work.
The following staff is:

Janitors: Cleans up puke and trash and empties trashbins to the garbage zone.
_________________________________________________________________
Workmen: Builds objects, floors, walls, and deliver resources to the things being built.

Staff: The basic staff that will work at the gate or ticketing desks.
_________________________________________________________________
Security: They will work at ID stands, bagage checkers and body/metal scanners. Needs to be in security zone

Food Worker: Works in the kitchen and cafe, takes orders at the cash register and produces the food at the prep table.
_________________________________________________________________
Bagage Handler: This worker handles all the bagage from the bagage conveyors, comes with the bagage trucks from the hangers.

COO: Also known as chief operations officer, is a staff member that needs a functional office to work, he unlocks practical researches.
_________________________________________________________________
CFO Also known as chief financial officer, is a staff member that requires a functional office, he unlocks financial researches.

The number above their head in the staff menu is how many of the staff you currently have.

Alright, so now that you know how the staff works you should probably get to know how the zones which the staff works in work.

Garbage Zone: Should be placed close to a road (Not required) and used by the garbage truck people to pick up all the trash that the janitors collected throughout your airport in this zone.
Can be «upgraded» with garbage bins which will take a 2×1 tile and add 10 «slots» for the garbage bags in it instead of the 2×1 which can hold 2 garbage bags.

Delivery Zone: Like the garbage zone this is also a zone that should be placed as close to a road as possible (Not required) since the delivery people will unload the trucks faster if they don’t have to walk that far.
Can be «upgraded» with shelfs which will take a 2×1 space and add 6 «slots» for delivered resources instead of the original 2.

Pickups: This zone defines where the passengers will get picked up by bus, taxi or private cars, should be placed close to a road (Not required).

Drop-off Zone: This zone defines where the passengers will get dropped off by bus, taxi or private car, should be placed close to a road (Not required).

Ticketing: This zone defines where passengers will get their tickets and drop off their luggage.
Is required for automated ticket machines (Not luggage), and ticketing desks (With luggage) to function, if these aren’t placed in this zone they will not work, since the passengers won’t know which zone is defined for them to get a ticket.

Security: This is the zone that splits your airport up into 2 zones, a secured zone, and a unsecure zone. This is a zone the passengers will have to pass to board their plane after they bought the tickets.
ID Stand, Baggage Scanner and a Metal/Body Scanner is required for this zone to work staffed with security for each of the above.

Restrooms: This is the zone where you place toilets and sinks for the passengers to use.
HINT: Place sinks and toilets at a 1:1 ratio, and make 1 restroom for the unsecured part of your airport and 1 for your secured part of the airport.
Must be enclosed by walls and a door

Baggage Claim: This is the zone where you place your baggage pickup carousels.

Kitchen: This is the zone you will have to connect to your café, your food workers will make the food at the prep table.
HINT: Have 1 prep table for each cash register, and you can have 1½-2 workers per prep table / cash register. So 5 prep tables and cash registers should have around 8-9 workers, depending
on the size of your café and how far your workers have to walk.
Must be enclosed by walls and a door

Office: This is the zone where your COO and CFO will require before they wanna work, room requires a desk and an office char.
HINT: You need seperate offices for each chief in operation.

If there is any of the zones you wan’t more info on please do ask.

So now that you probably have an airport with all the basic zones and objects in them you need to schedule airlines to land at your airport.

To do this you need to click this icon:

After that you will get a screen that will give you the ability to choose which airlines and which flights from those airlines you want to have land at your airport.

These flights when first selected at the different time periods will auto assign a time within those periods, but you can reschedule them within the periods by clicking this icon:

Which will bring you a menu where you can drag the aircrafts to a time you want.

Hint: You probably want to have a 15minute break between each aircraft for each terminal you have.
If you only have 1 terminal do like this:
Aircraft 1 comes in at 4AM and leaves at 6AM, schedule next flight to land at 6:15AM which is where the first aircraft should be arriving to the runway.

15 minute break only works if all passengers gets serviced right away and there are no late passengers (happens at random) so I would suggest using 30 minutes. Which will still make you able to fit in 3 flights within 1 time period for 1 terminal.

The Many Ways to Show the Player How It’s Done With In-Game Tutorials

With so many games to play, getting the player up to speed on how to play your game very quickly and in the most entertaining way possible is almost essential to keeping their interest. In this article we’re going to take a look at the different ways to teach the player how to play your game.

Introduction

With the rise of digital distribution, the free-to-play business model and the explosion (both in quality and quantity) of the mobile and social marketplaces, there are now more video games being made than ever before, and most of them cost way less than sixty bucks.

Let’s take a look at different ways of tackling this, from worst to best, and see what we can learn from them.

Method: No Tutorial

This is the worst kind of tutorial. As I was saying earlier, digital distribution is becoming more and more common, and what that means is the death of the paper manual.

In fact, even many boxed releases no longer come with an instructional manual, rather choosing to include what can best be described as an advertisement pamphlet with bonus legal notices and game credits. This means that if your game is lacking explanation, the player needs to find sources outside of their purchased product to understand what’s going on. This is terrible.

It’s Not All Bad.

A recent example is the indie gem Fez which had a complicated sub-game based around decoding an alphabet using clues found around the environment. This was an extremely challenging puzzle that created some interesting discussion online, all of which would have been lost with the inclusion of an obvious in-game explanation.

. But It’s Not All Good, Either

Based on the context surrounding the stat (for example it is most commonly seen on items with the prefix sorcerer) one can assume it has something to do with magic damage, but there is no way for the player to know for sure without looking outside the game for information.

To make matters worse, the online game manual supplied by the developers and the Prima Official Game Guide both claim the stat to do different things. This is incredibly confusing and could have easily been avoided with a simple in-game explanation.

Though this particular example deals with just a small part of the entire experience, it demonstrates how confusion on the player’s part can be incredibly annoying. When this blunder happens on a grander scale, like when core mechanics are not properly explained, it can sap all of the fun out of an experience.

So, unless your game is designed to keep the player in the dark, please include a tutorial.

Method: Tutorial by Exposition

This is the easiest type of tutorial to implement (not counting the tutorial that doesn’t exist) and one of the least effective. The tutorial by exposition is any tutorial which consists of telling or showing the player how something is done outside of actual gameplay. This includes, but is not limited to, the likes of text explanations prefacing gameplay and the traditional “controls” screen.

As I said earlier, this type of tutorial is not very effective, and can even cause more confusion than it does clarity. Why? Because once gameplay starts people typically won’t remember what they just read.

I’m sure many of you have already experienced this while playing a demo for a game. Often demos will forego the game’s usual tutorial and thrust you into the middle of a more interesting part of the experience, with your only guidance frequently being a picture of the controller labeled with player functions on the loading screen.

This. Never do this.

As anybody who has experienced this first hand can attest to, this diagram serves almost no purpose as very few people can commit its contents to memory in a reasonable amount of time. Players then mostly resort to either experimentation to figure out what’s going on or have to constantly consult the controls screen, both of which seriously hurt the game’s pacing.

Context

This leads us to the biggest issue with this tutorial type: context. Mechanics and controls for games can often be quite numerous and complicated, but the player is typically eased into them through the context of relevant gameplay scenarios. Attempting to present the player with most or all of the information up front will simply lead to them not understanding or not remembering most of it.

The two ways games with this tutorial type typically tackle this issue is to either present particular information only when it is relevant, or to allow their tutorial to be constantly revisited by a menu. Both of these approaches are annoying and hurt pacing by constantly stopping gameplay.

A good example of this is just about any Devil May Cry game which, like any other beat-‘em-up, has a move list. Constantly needing to pause the game to look at this menu and remember the commands required for certain moves is really annoying. Unfortunately, this type of thing can be difficult to avoid, as walking the player through the use of every possible move would be extremely tedious.

«Pick Up and Play» Games

However, like all things, this type of tutorial does have a place in the world. I’m talking about games with simple controls that put a focus on being easy to pick up and play. Fighting games fall into this category, as it wouldn’t make sense to have your friend run through a lengthy tutorial section for them to be able to play with you.

This, on the other hand, is pretty slick.

This type of tutorial system can also be seen working beautifully in all of the Mario Party and WarioWare games, with the instruction screen prefacing every minigame being simple enough to almost instantly read, yet still putting everyone on the same (albeit slightly confused) playing field.

Method: The Tutorial Room

The tutorial room is a section of gameplay that walks the player through the actions they need to know in order to play. This almost always takes place in a separate area or level not seen in any actual gameplay, and is quite frequently optional.

Think about it like an interactive version of the tutorial by exposition. When thinking about tutorials, the tutorial room is inevitably what comes to mind first as it was arguably the most used tutorial type during the last console generation, and is also one of the only types of tutorial which is often actually called a tutorial in-game.

The video above shows off the tutorial for Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony, an indie scrolling shooter made by Final Form Games. This specific tutorial perfectly depicts the essence of the tutorial room and why it can be an effective way of showing a player how your game works. The tutorial is short, everything you are told is clearly demonstrated and you are instantly ready to enjoy the game post tutorial.

This mechanical simplicity means that the tutorial room is able to stay short, and all of the information it presents can easily be committed to memory.

This success found using the tutorial room method isn’t guaranteed, and the video above of the tutorial in Bionic Commando (the 2009 one) serves as a great example. The obvious difference between this tutorial room Jamestown’s is in the complexity of the mechanics; Bionic Commando definitely has much more to teach the player, and therein lies the problem.

The tutorial room in Bionic Commando is simply not a very interesting teacher. It attempts to teach many different mechanics and techniques one after another, leading to a longer-than-ideal tutorial section. This makes it difficult to keep the player’s attention during this boring section of gameplay, increasing the chance that they will skip the tutorial altogether and learn absolutely nothing at all.

Avoid «Use It, Then Lose It» Tutorials

Though length is a notable issue, the tutorial room in Bionic Commando is best suited to demonstrate the absolute number one flaw with this type of tutorial: it’s very poorly suited to games where the player gains new abilities throughout gameplay. The moves you learn to perform near the end of the tutorial in Bionic Commando (specifically the kiting and throwing moves) are not actually abilities you start off the game with.

Yet this is exactly what happens in every Metroid game, and nobody complains about it there. Why is that? The difference is that in Metroid games the use of the abilities themselves is not what the player gets excited about, but rather the places they can go and the things they can use with their new abilities. In fact, knowing what abilities you’ll find later allows players to keep mental notes of the areas they should expect to revisit.

Basically, the tutorial room works in Metroid (note that it is a game with complicated mechanics) because it’s baked into the design of the game itself.

Strategy Games

However, like every tutorial type, there is one particular genre of game for which the tutorial room proves to be extremely effective: the strategy game. Strategy games are all about tactics, knowing what situations are advantageous for you to be in, and then going about getting those situations to occur.

I’m learning and having fun!

These games frequently include a Challenge or Scenario mode, which acts as a glorified series of ultra-specific tutorial rooms, presented under the guise of puzzles. Strategy games of all types do this, from the real-time juggernaut StarCraft 2 to the more casual turn-based hit Hero Academy. There are few ways more elegant than this to present very specific gameplay scenarios to players without feeling contrived, let alone actually making it fun.

Though far from perfect, the tutorial room can definitely work if its strengths and limitations are properly taken into account.

Method: The Contextual Lesson

Now we’re getting into the good stuff. The contextual lesson is basically a system where the one tutorial room is chopped into little pieces and inserted organically throughout the gameplay of a title. The easiest way to explain what I mean by this is to just look at an example.

Here we have the opening section of Uncharted 3, and starting at the 5:35 mark we can see the contextual lesson in action. The gameplay is briefly paused (it’s worth noting this is not always the case in a contextual lesson), and instructions on what buttons perform the action immediately required pop up on screen. You can see this is very much like one tiny part of a tutorial room.

Now apart from just showing off what a contextual lesson actually is, the opening of Uncharted 3 also serves to beautifully illustrate its potential. The tutorial is unbelievably short, because it only presents what you need to know at the specific moment it pops up, and has essentially no impact on the flow of the game as it is a part of the gameplay itself.

This is achievable even in relatively complex games because the information is doled out in small pieces throughout the entire experience. Some games for example, might include these types of tips during almost the entire length of the experience, as you slowly accrue more skills and encounter new environmental obstacles even up to the very end. This is an almost direct solution to what I said was the biggest problem with the tutorial room: badly handling the introduction of new abilities or mechanics.

Another great advantage of the contextual lesson can be seen in its name; by its very nature it always provides a perfect example of gameplay context surrounding what it is teaching, leading to minimal confusion.

Drawbacks

However, this system does have some major drawbacks, and these are mostly based around implementation. For a very linear game, properly executing the contextual lesson is not incredibly difficult: one need only present the relevant information once and not allow the player to progress until they demonstrate their understanding. For example, in the Uncharted 3 video above, the game will simply wait for you to press the square button to punch, not letting you progress through the game until you have done it.

The contextual lesson can end up being a very slick tutorial or an annoying pest most players will turn off.

Where things become more complicated, however, is in more open-ended games where the player has many different options when it comes to tackling challenges.

Say you wanted to show the player that you can shoot an explosive barrel to kill the enemy standing beside it, so you highlight it for them and show a little tooltip on the bottom of the screen letting them know what’s going on.

Now let’s assume that the player will fail to notice these cues and end up shooting the guy in the head and not learn that you can blow up red barrels. This will occasionally happen, so what do you do about it? Do you force the player to shoot the barrel? Do you present the player with the tutorial every single time he encounters a barrel until he does shoot it?

Depending on how you answer these questions, the contextual lesson can end up being a very slick tutorial or an annoying pest most players will turn off, and a tutorial that is turned off is a tutorial that is teaching nothing at all.

Assume the Player Is Not a Fool

I personally have an opinion on this that I think is contrary to the ultra-accessible path modern gaming seems to be taking. I think that, provided you are explaining a feature unessential to game progression, a level of player intelligence must be assumed.

Finally, for the love of all that is holy, do not repeatedly explain things the player undoubtedly already knows if they have progressed to where they are in your game. I’m looking at you, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and your endlessly repeating tutorials on collectibles and how losing all of your health means dying.

I know. I already have 37 of them.

There is also another thing worth noting about the contextual lesson, it is not a good idea to use it in games where the focus is on the immediate use of a wide range of abilities. Fighting games and beat-’em-ups are a great example of this, to start a player off with only one attack, or many attacks that are each demonstrated individually is not something anybody would consider fun.

Now, this whole section may have appeared to be incredibly negative, but that’s only because the contextual lesson is so obviously effective that its flaws are really the only thing interesting to talk about. The contextual lesson is awesome; use it whenever you want, you have my blessing.

Method: The Thematically Relevant Contextual Lesson

The thematically relevant contextual lesson isn’t entirely its own tutorial type, but rather a subset of the regular contextual lesson we just looked at. It’s a contextual lesson presented in a thematically relevant way during gameplay, rather than the usual overlay used.

This includes things like arrow keys being carved on the back of a cave wall at the beginning of a platformer, or the spacebar and a little jumping guy being drawn on the wall before a platformer’s first ledge, or even squad mates telling you how to take cover when you enter your first firefight. This kind of tutorial is awesome because it’s incredibly easy to implement and feels really slick, with instructions blending seamlessly with the gameplay experience.

This is a thematically relevant contextual lesson (from Spelunky)

There is one major downfall to this method, however: it only really works for games with intuitive, simple or commonly used mechanics. If your game is presenting something very abstract, something that the player has never seen before, or really anything that requires thorough or detailed explanation, it’s very difficult to present this type of information in a thematically relevant way without it feeling forced.

It’s often less dangerous to the player’s immersion for you to break the fourth wall and use some kind of overlay than it is for the player’s companion go on some long tangent explaining something they have no business knowing, or to be running into a castle full of traps only to find signs everywhere explaining exactly how to get through a bunch of them.

Another noticeable issue for this tutorial type is that it isn’t frequently thematically relevant to explain the same thing to the player multiple times, so either simple mechanics or a knowledgeable player base is key.

This is also a thematically relevant contextual lesson. No way! (From The Binding of Isaac)

This tutorial type can be so smoothly integrated into the gaming experience, it almost feels like there is no tutorial. Which brings us to the best tutorial type of them all.

Method: No Tutorial

Just as it’s the worst tutorial type, having no tutorial at all is also the best, and this has everything to do with the inherent nature of video games. As an interactive medium, video games, just like any other type of game, are at their core about overcoming challenges (although of course there are exceptions).

The interactive nature of a video game experience almost always demands some type of adversity for the player to overcome, be it through skill, luck, logic, competition or even narrative understanding. If we play video games for fun, as most of us do, it then goes to say that the enjoyment we get from tackling and overcoming these challenges is a primary reason for our participation in the activity, and the fun we derive from it.

What does this all have to do with having no tutorial? Well, everything. A tutorial fundamentally serves as an explanation of the rule set found in your game, showing the player the tools they have for overcoming the obstacles presented to them, as well as the form the obstacles are likely to take. Just like in any other type of game, the fun in video games comes from actually playing them, rather than learning how each game works.

However, due to their guided nature, video games present an opportunity unseen in most other forms of games: the ability to include the teaching aspect as part of the game itself. That’s where not having a tutorial comes in.

Without a tutorial, your game allows the player to discover the ruleset on their own, allowing any challenges they overcome to feel like their own accomplishments rather than simply following the step-by-step rules they have been given. This potential for player discovery and fulfilment is what brings this tutorial type to the forefront of my list of tutorials, as well as its ability to present the player with interesting gameplay without delay.

This Isn’t New

Designing a game that is completely understandable without any kind of exterior guidance is a difficult feat, but one that has been done before. In fact, many old games, all using very simple input methods, were able to this with great success.

This type of teaching in older games was relatively easy, partly because of the game’s simple mechanics, but mostly because of the simple input methods given to the player. Nowadays, with complicated console controllers and a keyboard full of buttons, a certain level of player knowledge as to the functioning of basic video game commands is required to make this work. The player must, for instance, know that WASD is what they should be using to move, or they’ll spend way more time than is ideal trying out every key on their keyboard before accomplishing anything.

It’s Great for Explaining Game Mechanics

Where the tutorial that doesn’t exist has not lost its power, though, is in the explanation of mechanics. Even in relatively complex games, with expert level design and clear UI it is absolutely possible to teach the player everything they need to know without ever telling them directly.

Instead of going through an example and attempting to explain this through text, I’ll simply urge you to watch the above video of Egoraptor’s analysis of Megaman and Megaman X, which perfectly demonstrates what I’m talking about here. You’ll see in this video how the complete lack of negative thematic impact, the immediate ability for the player to jump into gameplay, and the incredible potential for player satisfaction elevate “no tutorial” to be the absolute best tutorial, provided you and your design can pull it off.

Conclusion

Visual Novel RPG

[Tutorial] [VNR] How to play any japanese VN and understand it

VNR is a very cool program that can translate any visual novel text automatically for you so you can play it even if you know nothing about japanese and still understand a lot of the content.

Here is a tutorial on how to set it up and enjoy it.
Also check the Textextractor tutorial, it is lighter and has a simpler setup.

The features

VNR is a program that can attach to a visual novel and translate the text and a lot of more things. If you used agth, ith and other text hookers before you’ll be glad to kown that VNR has a game database that automatically gets you a working /H code so you don’t have to worry about it.

Users can submit a translation for any text on the novel and in the absence of that it can automatically use google translate, baidu, babel and a lot of online translators to make a translation for you.

Also, in the image above, note that the machine translated line has “Liselle” underlined… this is another cool feature, VNR has a shared database of phrases and words that can be used specifically for a novel(like names and terminology) or general phrases that appear a lot.

Finally, if you can understand a little bit of japanese or are trying to improve it you can set up mecab to make the kanji display furigana above it, making it so if you click on the kanji a dictionary will popup. It also has text-to-speech to read the japanese for you want it.

And if you want a more imersed experience, you can set so VNR automatically displays the translated text into the game instead of the japanese. This can also work with some interface elements and gameplay menus.

Finally there is also comments, users can submit comments that will popup in the screen at specific dialogs. Its cool to read peoples thoughts at the scene sometimes, but for some reason 99% of the comments are chinese and the other 1% are korean so I usually disable them.

Installation

Installation is very simple, just download and execute the program.

And here is the site to create your user http://vnr.aniclan.com

I don’t see any real benefit to creating a user as you can do anything, including submitting subtitles as a guest. But I created one anyways.

This site is not actually the original one, the original host for this program disappeared a year ago and this vnr.aniclan changed the program host to its own new databse. Luckly it seems there were backups as there are tons of older subtitles there. But some of the program features like the forum, or VN reveiws don’t work anymore and will show as “could not connect to server”.

Setups, personalization and starting a novel

The first time you start the program the default settings are not very good. Firstly… it changes your cursor to a wierd arrows and enables subtitles from any language to show up. So it’s important to configure it at least once.

This program works as a dashboard for your novels. It’ll register the novels in a pseudo-desktop and you can start the novels from there in the future if you want.

By default if you have the program open and start a novel it’ll automatically detect the novel, link it with its database and add it to his dashboard automatically.

But first, some configuration.

If you ever lose track of VNR it should be hidden in the taskbar bellow.
So, click anywhere on the dashboard with the right click and go to preferences.

On the UI, disable the “Custimize mouse cursor” option… I don’t even know why that is a thing.

I’ll list the important settings:

Account: Set your language, if you ever submit a subtitle it’ll be on the language is set on the account setting, also, you don’t really need an account to change this.

Embedded:(optional): Select the box “Use VNR’s build-in hook instead of ITH if possible” to make it translate in-game like the second image.

Translation->translators: This is where you select which machine translation you’ll use. Some of them might not work. Anyways, just use “Google.com multilingual translation service”. If you have an offline translator like LEC or Atlas you can use it instead, just set the location on “Locations->translators” and enable them on the last boxes.

Translation->dictionaries: This is really important for those who want to improve their japanese, select “Display japanese furigana above game text”. Bellow are options to select if you want higarana, romanji above the kanji or even romanji above all text.
Just make sure to install mecab so this can work https://sourceforge.net/projects/mecab/
After installing mecab you can go to “Downloads->dictionaries” and download some dicts so it can better display kanji meaning when you click on the words… totally optional.

i18n: Select which languages to block… So you don’t get random french and german subtitles.

Text-To-Speech(optional): Select which voice that will read text to you if you want. There are a lot of online text to speech, including google’s. Some of them don’t work, so click the play button to text if they work first if you want to use this.

Launch: You might want to disable “Automatically detect running game”. Or it’ll try to register any games that you open.

There are a lot of other options and custimization that you can do but this should cover the basics so you can have a good experience.

Starting the game

If you start the visual novel with the default setting to automatically detect games you’ll see a Icon of the game on your dashboard that you can double-click and start the game later.

If for some reason it didn’t detect the game you can open the game, and click the grey “rocket” icon inside the dashboard, it’ll ask you to detect the game by clicking on the game-windows and its done. The game will be added to you dashboard for future use.
You can “Edit” the icon to display a more readable name, it’ll be the japanese game name by default.

After starting the novel with VNR if you mouse over the side of the windows a small menu will show up. If you click the “option” it’ll display some settings like wether to display machine translations, user subtitles, comments, etc.

If you click “Sub” it’ll display a small bar bellow the window that you can submit a translation, it’s very easy and fast. Just note that the translation will be for whatever text is showing currently.

“Speak” is used to automatically read the text to you. There are a lot of options to make sure that only narration are spoken or wether you want the japanese or translation to be read. You can even set so each character on the novel will be read with a different text-to-speech bot if the novel doesn’t have voices and you feel like it.
Also, you can middle click on the line to make it speak too even without this option.
Note: preferences text-to-speech needs to be enable for any of these to work.

Conclusion

Hope this helps you to enjoy more japanese novels.

I’ll be waiting to see more english comments and subtitles on novels from now on.

PS: I’ve already submited some subtitles here and there. Let’s slowly translated novels together \o\.

Update: Setting up the text

I forgot to add this and I saw a lot of people asking so I’m updating it here.

Some games might not show any translated text, get the wrong text to translate or even display gibberish numbers and letters. In most cases this is just VNR getting the wrong defaults and can be very easily configured.

Most visual novels, including recent releases work fine with VNR even without needing Hcodes.

Right click anywhere in those blue buttons on the left side of the game windows and select “Text Settings”. It’ll open a new window.

The text that’ll be translated is indicated by the blocks on the lower part. At first there might be none so you’ll need to play the game and when it detects some text it’ll appear in those blocks on the lower part.

Find the block that better corresponds to the textbox and select it as “Dialog“. This will be the text that’ll be translated.

You can also choose “other” in case you’re playing an RPG novel. Sometimes itens descriptions and other informations are displayed on a separated box. “other” basically means that if the box with “dialog” is not updated, it’ll show up the box with “other” that was updated(there can be more than one, it’ll just pick up the first).

Those red checkboxes above can correct some texts when the japanese characters comes in doubles. It’ll detect it and remove the repetition.

Lastly, some rare games might come with gibberish text like the image above. This is because VNR is reading the text in the wrong encode. By default VNR will open with Japanese Shift-JIS encode but some games like this one uses UTF-16.

To fix that just click the dropbox(upper arrow) and select UTF-16 to see if the text now shows up correctly.

After adjusting everything. Don’t forget to “Save” uptop. The changes are already in effect but if you close this window without saving it’ll revert back.

You just need to do this once per game because VNR will save the configuration for you. Except some rare games that change the text thread address changes everytime.

Hope this can solve some of your problems.

PS1: When a game has an HCode registered on VNR and you launch the game displaying “Can’t initialize HCode” on those popups, pressing the rocked button on VNR to resync the game after its already running can make vnr input the HCode again correctly.

PS2: In extremelly rare cases(old games) when no text are showing in the threads and the game has an option for “removing antialiasing on the text”, removing the antialiasing can make it display the text thread correctly. I’ve only seen this on a couple of old doujin games.

Tutorial: How to Play

Master Page [ ]

This page provides all of your Master information on your account. This information includes, but is not limits to, your Outing win/loss ratio, amount of food owned, a power-up legend, etc.

Contents

Outings (お出かけ) [ ]

The host accompanies the girls to various places and get into «conflicts» with other groups of girls and generally have fun. Rewards are handed out at the end based on points earned on the map. All maps cost Stamina.

Maps can be selected via the selection screen. Following the map selection (of which there are 25 variations), the player chooses their «Outing Companion» group.

Players can «Return Home» half-way through the outing, however, they will not receive as many rewards as they would receive should they finish the whole outing.

Movement Energy [ ]

One of the key parts to the Outings is the Movement Energy in the top right. If it runs out, you’re instantly sent back home and don’t clear the map. Manage your movement wisely and get as many rewards as you can. When your girls come to an intersection, you can choose which way to go.

There are a speed up toggle (yellow) and a navigation toggle (green) under the Movement Energy bar. Clicking the speed up toggle makes the map movement go faster, but you won’t be able to Return Home half-way when this toggle is on. Turning on the navigation toggle makes your girls autopilot towards the end, but you will not get to choose which way to go at turns! Use it wisely.

Earning Rewards and Points [ ]

Players gain rewards based on the points they gathered after going through the map. For most maps to get maximum rewards all you’ll need to do is get 3 «Perfect Victory» (which means defeating every girl in a conflict, if any girls are left up you’ll just get a normal victory and earn less points). Clearing the map (making it to the goal after gathering all special items on the map) also seems to double your points.

Conflicts [ ]

The fights last for up to 3 rounds, during each round the girls take turns in attacking each other (in order from highest to lowest speed).

Fight ends when all girls on one side are down or when 3 rounds pass. Whichever team has the most members at the end of the round wins.

Cheering [ ]

The player can help influence the fight by using their Master Actions button.

The button can only be used three times per battle.

Personality Types [ ]

The game also uses a rock-paper-scissors style type system. The five types are: Cute ( ), Passionate ( ), Cool ( ), Pure ( ) and Devil ( ). Their strengths and weaknesses are as follows:
— Cute is effective against Passionate, ineffective against Cool.
— Passionate is effective against Cool, ineffective against Cute.
— Cool is effective against Cute, ineffective against Passionate.
— Pure and Devil are both effective against each other.

Monster Skills [ ]

Each girl also has at least one skill that come in one of three wonderfully named flavors. Skill 1, Skill 2 or Skill 3. The slot they take up determines the nature of the skill:

Skill 1 are offensive skills. They activate when that girl is attacking, and range from hitting multiple times for a lower damage multiplier to hitting multiple girls.

Skill 2 are defencive skills. They activate when that girl is being attacked and either reduce the incoming damage or completely cancel the attack.

Skill 3 are buff skills, debuff skills, or taunts. They activate when the round starts and gives stat boosts to affected girls. They can boost speed, attack power or defence power. They will effect in one of three ways; just that girl, all girls of the same type or all girls on your team. Debuff skills will reduce the stats of the entire opposing team for one round. Taunts will force a number of girls depending on the skill to target the taunting girl when it is their turn to attack.

Daily Outings (曜日) [ ]

In the main Outing menu there’s a second tab which is the daily Outing tab. It gives you a choice of 3 outings that change depending on the day of the week, giving special rewards but far reduced Master experience. On the list from top to bottom they are listed from highest to lowest level, with higher level maps gives you higher rarity material. The schedule is as follows:
Monday: Cute type Strengthening Material
Tuesday: Passion type Strengthening Material
Wednesday: Cool type Strengthening Material
Thursday: Devil type Strengthening Material
Friday: Pure type Strengthening Material
Saturday + Sunday: Affection creams

Monster Musume (モン娘) [ ]

This is the screen where you check the status of your girls, pick which girls go in your groups and strengthen them.

Players start with one group, however, additional groups can be bought from the Cash Shop.

Group Composition (編成) [ ]

The first tab is Group Composition. You can have up to 5 girls in a group. Clicking 変更 brings up the list of girls to choose from, scroll through and get who you want, the list can be sorted by various factors like Rarity, Personality Type. When you’ve found the girl you want, select them then hit the orange button at the bottom to clear the group.

The first member of first team shows on your main page.

Residents (住人) [ ]

The second tab is a list of all the girls currently living at the player’s home. The 詳細 button on each profile brings up more details on the girl in question.
Each profile reveals the girl’s experience level, stats, Stamina levels and available skills.

Fusion (合成) [ ]

The third tab allows the player to pick a girl they want to level up and fuse other girls to her.
Put the base girl on the left, «Fodder girls» on the right. Players gain an extra 50% experience by using «fodder girls» that are of the same Personality Type as the base girl.
Fusion costs food of the same type that would normally be fed to the base girl, the amount of which increases with the girl’s exp level.

Red tab (Strengthening) allows the player to increase character stats, the green tab allows the player to increase character’s maximum level through fusion with multiple copies of the same character.

Trainers [ ]

There exists a special kind of monster girl that can not be placed in player groups. They exist only to serve as «fodder girls» for the Fusion process, ルドル (Rudoru, a kobold) and リアド (Riado, a Dryad). They can’t be placed into a normal party but they do special things when fused to a base girl. Rudoru gives a ton of experience when used in Strengthening, the amount of which is determined by her rarity level and her type. Here’s the list for her:

Type	Normal Exp	Same Type Exp
	1,000	1,500
	3,000	4,500
	5,000	7,500
	10,000	15,000

Riado enhances the skills of base characters. Next to her name is スキル and then a number from 1-3. That number indicates which skill Riado will enhance when fused. Players can only fuse Riado with a girl that has the corresponding skill. Increasing skill levels does not increase the potency of skills but their proc rate.

Change of Residence Request (転居依頼) [ ]

The fourth tab allows the player to exchange girls for food. Don’t like a girl and don’t have the resources to feed them to another girl for experience? Use this! You get resources in return for it.

Food (食事) [ ]

Feed your girls. They only need to be fed once they’ve gone on an Outing, make sure to feed them every time they come back. Select the girl(s) you want to feed then hit the orange button at the bottom right. You can also use the button above that to select all the girls. Different girls need different foods and in different amounts. Carnivores eat meat, herbivores eat vegetables and omnivores eat bread.

Shopping (お使い) [ ]

Send groups of girls out to get food. Only groups other than Group 1 can be sent, and each errand can have only one group on it at a time. The rewards listed for each errand are for each girl in the group.

As of a recent update, some players may have noticed that there’s a secondary set of shopping trips(Require that you reach level 20) associated to each time interval. The secondary shopping trips offer significantly more resources (such as a 10 minute trip offering 36 resource per girl involved and another 10 minute trip that offers 86 resource per girl involved), but all of your girls must be at least level 20 or higher to qualify for the secondary shopping trip. There is a third shopping trips(Require that you reach lvl 40) that offer EVEN MORE resources(a 10 minute trip will give you 180 resources(per girl involved)), but all of your girls (in the group) must be at least level 40 or higher to qualify for the third shopping trip.

Affection (お世話) [ ]

Touch girls, receive affection. An interesting mechanic that gives both plot and stat boosts. This uses special items called affection creams, that come from both requests and from the Sat/Sun Daily Outing maps. The items come in three tiers: Care cream (Bronze), Ultra Care Cream (Silver), Special Care Cream (Gold). The first two only come from quests and maps, but the last can be bought in the ruby shop too.

Select a girl and then hit the orange button. You’ll go into a screen with a special CG of that girl. Three things of note first up, top right button takes you out of the screen. Bottom left is the affection meter, when the circle around the outside fills you gain 1% affection.

When you’ve selected an item to use you will have 10 clicks with which to raise points with your girl. There are three kinds of outcomes you can get when you click:

What you’re trying to do is find the Great Touch area each time, using how many hearts as a guide to see how close you are. The Great Touch area will change every time so have fun with this mini game.

There are two reasons to do this as I mentioned earlier. The first is the Drama Scenes. These happen at fixed affection levels for each girl, and change from girl to girl. You get a little scene where your girl is cute as a button for a while. These can be reviewed any time from the Girl Library. Second reason is a stat boost. The amount you gain is determined by both the girl and by the affection level. These boosts are a flat amount based on affection level, and not a percentage based boost. Be sure to raise the affection of any girl you’re going to use a lot in outings!

Refreshing (リフレッシュ) [ ]

Stamina Bar Reduced (left) and Full (right)

Lock five girls down in a spa for 6 hours to let them relax. While the girls can naturally relax over time, after the 6 hours in the spa the girls will be in the «High Stamina» state, pushing them past the Stamina cap of 100 to 200, which they can not reach otherwise.

Girls regenerate stamina at a rate of approximately 5 Stamina per 5 minutes. To overcharge a girl past 100 Stamina, they must stay in the Spa for the full 6 hour maximum duration. They will instantly jump from 100 to 200 Stamina at the end of the 6 hours, it doesn’t increase over time as it does below 100 Stamina. Put girls in here when you’re going to bed or work and use that extra Stamina when you get back to the game.

Requests (お願い) [ ]

«Requests» are ongoing quests that the player can endeavour to meet to gain awards. They come in two types, One-Time quests and Daily quests.

One-Time Quests (ワンス) [ ]

One-Time Quests are straight forward. Do the required action once, get rewards. The first few you’ll see from Suu are to raise a girl to specific affection levels (25%, 50%, 75% and 100%). Next will be one to complete a new Outing map. After that are a series of quests for doing various things such as: Clear Outings, Feed girls, Strengthen girls, Clear errands and Raise affection. They come in 5/10/20/40/60/80/100/200 brackets and give increasing rewards as you go higher. The player’s progress carries over with each quest, so when you feed girls 80 times in one quest you will find yourself at 80/100 for the next tier.

Daily Quests (デイリー) [ ]

The request, requesting girl and reward combination changes every day. Also, you can get a ruby from a daily quest every Saturday and Sunday.

Reward Collection (クリア済み) [ ]

The third tab you see just has all the quests that are cleared and waiting for you to collect the rewards.

Gacha (ガチャ) [ ]

How you get new girls! Or ones that aren’t just fodder at any rate. There are four kinds of Gacha, each with a different cost.

The rate of rarity drops are as follows: R: 90.0% HR: 9.0% SR: 1.0% [rates may change during promotional events]

Premium Gatcha (プレミアムガチャ) [ ]

Costs 5 rubies a pull, guaranteed chance of at least a Rare girl. You can also spend 50 rubies for a 10+1 pull, with one Hyper Rare girl guaranteed. The best way to get strong girls. They can also cost DMM Points as well.

Ticket Gatcha (チケットガチャ) [ ]

Use tickets to get girls. 1 ticket = 1 pull.

There are also limited-time tickets during events:

BOX Gatcha [ ]

Costs 300 DMM points a pull. You can also spend 2500 DMM Points for a 10+1 pull, with one Hyper Rare girl guaranteed. There are a certain number of girls in these gatchas and every time 1 girl is acquired, she is removed from that BOX until a SR girl is won. Upon gaining a SR girl, the BOX is reset and becomes full again. There are always 2 SR girls in each BOX.

Accessory Gatcha [ ]

Costs 5 rubies a pull, instead of girls this particular gatcha gives you accessories. You can also spend 50 rubies for a 10+1 pull, with one Hyper Rare accessory guaranteed.

Cash Shop (ショップ) [ ]

Buy items with rubies including resources, affection cream and stat/exp boosts. Here’s the list in the order they appear:

Rubies (ルビー) [ ]

The cash of the game. While the player can earn Rubies while playing through the game, players can also buy rubies through the Ruby Shop. In order to buy rubies, you need DMM points. 1 DMM point = ¥1. [1]

Now that you have your DMM points they can be purchased in 6 different packs, more expensive packs giving you better deals:

1 x Ruby = 100 DMM points (100 per Ruby)
5 x Ruby = 500 DMM points (100 per ruby)
11 x Ruby = 1,000 DMM points (90.9 per ruby)
35 x Ruby = 3,000 DMM points (85.7 per ruby)
63 x Ruby = 5,000 DMM points (79.4 per ruby)
132 x Ruby = 10,000 DMM points (75.7 per ruby)

Medal Shop [ ]

Buy items with medals including tickets, stat/exp boosts, fodder girls and Love Burst items. Whenever a currency-type outing event is active, the main coin shop will appear in the second tab instead of the first. Here’s the list in the order they appear: