FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
Informing the Player about Challenges
Video games normally tell the player directly about some challenges, called explicit challenges, and leave her to discover others on her own, which are called implicit challenges. In general, games give the player explicit instructions about the topmost and bottommost levels of the hierarchy but leave it to her to figure out how to approach the intermediate levels. The topmost level includes the victory condition for the entire game, and games tend to present their overall victory condition explicitly. They may also state an explicit victory condition for each level.
Normally, the game's tutorial levels teach the player explicitly how to meet the atomic challenges. (For more on tutorial levels, see the discussion on that topic in Chapter 12, "General Principles of Level Design.") Unless you provide completely self-explanatory gameplay and controls, you should always include one or more tutorial levels in your game or an explanation of the controls and how to use them to meet atomic challenges.
You should always tell the player about the victory condition or she won't know what she's trying to accomplish. You don't have to tell the complete truth, however. In storytelling games, you usually want to keep the outcome a surprise. Many stories start by telling the player one thing, but plot twists along the way deepen and complicate matters. She may change or meet a goal only to find it replaced by another, more important goal. Detective stories, in particular, are famous for this. (Don't do it more than three or four times in any one story, though, or the player will start to become irritated about being repeatedly lied to. Detectives are also
famous for getting irritated about being lied to.) Be sure that the player gets whatever information she needs to think she clearly knows the victory condition so she's never left without any motivation.
