#I don't have the skill nor time nor knowledge nor technology to actually make an edit to this audio but yall know what i mean right

[yrrtyrrtwhenihrrthrrt]

The comic dynamic is literally that one audio like

Ballister, to Nimona: Shut up!! I am going to murder Ambrosius fucking Goldenloin I swear to god

Ambrosius, entering the room fully armed and with Bad Intentions and 14 men behind him: Hello hi I'm so happy to see you!!!

Ballister, literally sword-fighting him and absolutely forbidding Nimona from harming him while she cackles in the background: Heey, oh my God--

[angelizs]

Everytime I see someone say Idia wouldn’t know what a period is I always wonder whether they know he has to do stuff at his parents company which is literally about health /nm

hi anon!! I've actually never seen anyone saying this, but that might be because I'm very new to the fandom and haven't seen much Idia content so far. I agree with you, tho, I think him (and most of the boys at NRC too) would definetly know what it is!

wait I'll put this under the cut it's time for my (not so in depth) Idia analysis!!

ok so first things first, fair warning: this is my own personal interpretation and it might not be a 100% correct, anyone is allowed to disagree!

another fair warning: I've only caught up with the english server so far so I haven't read the Ignihyde chapter yet, which means I still have a lot to see about Idia, but I don't wanna get spoilers so I'll be going with the knowledge I have from the main story, events and vignettes.

the thing with Idia is that, at a surface level, he's just another Gamer Nerd TM stereotype that's a shut-in with no friends nor social skill and yada yada, and that's what some people might take him for, especially at first glance. I've seen people saying he'd be those misogynistic gamers that have never seen a girl in his life or the ones that think you absolutely have to prove you know everything about a game to be a fan of it. and I know that's all in good fun of course but! I don't agree with it at all!

in my point of view, yes Idia is very introverted and reclusive and he's socially awkward, but that doesn't mean he's that stereotypical gamer, which is what makes him so interesting in the first place! he breaks those expectations you have for his character and shows a lot more depth than this label! I'm not saying he doesn't play into the role at all, but I think he's very well written to break some common patterns.

like! he's such a sweet older brother! he might love his games and his alone time and his room, but he loves Ortho more than those things and would go out of his comfort zone for him (like in the recent Wish Upon a Star event which is one of my favorites btw). he gets very talkative and almost sassy when speaking about something he likes! (like in Azul's school uniform vignette). and yes he can be selfish and headstrong and rude (like in the Ghost Bride event), as is expected for a student of NRC, but that doesn't eliminates his positive traits.

where am I going with this and how does it even ties into the question? it's because in those gamer stereotypes, you'd expect him to not know anything about afab people that isn't in one of his games and have no friends to tell him otherwise. but I think he (and most at NRC) is very educated and would know, you know, basic biology. plus I actually wasn't aware his family's company is about health (I thought it had smth to do with technology, since as I mentioned I haven't read the chapter yet), but since that's the case it's even one extra motive for him to know about it.

like, it's definetly not on top of his mind and he probably never has given it any thought but he does know, it's just not something he has do deal with on a daily basis.

TL;DR: I agree with you anon, Idia is very interesting and there's more than what meets the eye to him, so he doesn't fall into a clear cut stereotype that people often take him for!

[ganymedesclock]

So I recently checked our your We Hallowed Few fanfic and it's really interesting and enjoyable so far. If you don't mind, do you think you could tell me what each character is supposed to be (their race and such?)

Thank you very much for your time and interest in Hallowed! I’m not totally sure if I’m correctly interpreting their question but, here goes, talking about inspirations and motifs on the main characters.

As far as race goes I tried to keep that relatively standard to this fantasy world. So the characters’ names aren’t just legacies from canon. Shiro is still, functionally, Japanese. I say “functionally” because I’m not saying “in Hallowed, a world with fantasy everything else, there is just the entire unchanged nation of Japan and I just maybe changed the name”. I’ve never really liked the “fantasy nation just thinly veiled adaptation of [x] real-world country” since I feel like that can lead to bad roads. However, Shiro is canonically Japanese, and that, like him being canonically disabled, is something I wanted to retain, so I did.

More specific notes on Hallowedverse characters, their capabilities, and their sorta walks of life to follow under the cut.

Shiro

My concept on Shiro in Hallowed is that the Arusian crown was there for him sort of the way the Garrison seems to have been in canon. For one reason or another he didn’t really have parents, so he was trained as a page then a squire and became a knight because he wanted to do good in the kingdom. In Hallowed we’re shamelessly operating off high fantasy’s concept of knighthood rather than real feudal history so Shiro’s no landed noble, nor is he of particularly aristocratic background. Except for the whole “was mysteriously spirited away for a year of his life and might be undead now” thing, he’s a guy of pretty humble background.

That said, he has distinguished himself positively among his peers- in the chapter that debuts Allura and Thace I did have them discuss that he’s actually a knight captain in rank, so, modest leadership position. In contrast to canon he’s a little more stable but also a little more... prone to hiding his issues since again, the crown and the Order of the Lion was there to pick him back up again after his escape. This is a Shiro who wasn’t sprung from Garrison custody by the rest of the team the way he was in canon, so on the one hand he’s given a stabler environment to get his feet back under him, but on the other, missing hand, he also has gone a good while without any answers, so he boils out to still pretty stressed, but in different ways.

I’m honestly really amused that Monsters and Mana gave Shiro a sword-and-shield fighting style almost exactly like his Hallowed self because it just feels really vindicating, like, “I called it!” That said Hallowed Shiro is more of a horseback fighter. That gives him more mobility, a better vantage point, and, likewise, the ability to better coordinate a battlefield.

Ultimately for Shiro, at least, hollow Shiro- not the one Keith’s used to- I went for this very classic knightly vibe because it just fits him so well. This is exactly what Shiro would want to be. For a person of such a strict sense of morals and such a powerful drive to right wrongs, the Knight In Shining Armor is an incredibly powerful symbol and living in a world where that’s normal would be just as captivating to him as it’s shown to be in canon.

Keith

Keith is a lot more of a vagrant than his canon self and he’s a little more self-sufficient and withdrawn. Because of Shiro’s situation, Keith didn’t have nearly as much of that steadying presence but he was able to travel, and familiarize himself with the wilderness. It’s helped him hone his senses more but he’s also more of a defeatist about interactions and other people.

Especially because unlike in canon, this version of Keith has a much more refined sense of “otherness”. He’s known he’s not like most people, not quite like his father, not really like anyone around him. Honestly, certain amounts of Keith play into changeling lore, not that he was switched at birth but this sort of... nonhuman entities that live among humans and can “pass” but only mostly.

Hallowed Keith’s whole fighting style is basically that he goes ‘swhink’ real fast. That blood sword of his basically can punch right through most conventional metals and most things behind it, so the fact that he’s a malnourished kid with absolutely zero armor or even a healthy amount of body fat who the average well-fed adult could grab by the ankle and swing means that it’s a damn good thing he’s light on his feet.

Maybe, someday, this kid will get decent armor. Not shoes, though. He’s pretty obstinate about those.

Lance

It’s kinda fun that the guy who doesn’t really canonically have “destiny” powers most of the time be one of the only people with nonhuman lineage. Technically he’s still a pretty normal person, though; there’s a lot of people in the islands Lance calls home with mer ancestry so really all it is, is adding some fantastical color to his family which is already really important to him. In a setting where everyone’s bumping elbows in the same planet rather than separated by the expanse of space, there’s going to be a lot of interrelation and in some places, shared culture.

And Lance is an ideal person to explore that, since he’s kinda got that broader sociological lens as a Leg Pilot. He’s a good way to explore worldbuilding because his story is rooted a lot in who he is and where he comes from in a wider sense. In earlier drafts of the story he was a more conventional selkie-like merfolk who could shed his scale skin to grow legs, but I ended up focusing his nonhuman traits down to just his throat, just his voice.

I talked about this a bit in the replies on the work itself, but how Lance’s “charm” works is he’s able to encourage emotions in people. It’s not mind control, but influencing how people feel for a short duration. He uses this with his, Hunk, and Pidge’s show to have everybody on the edge of their seat, but ultimately if I was giving Lance a power, I wanted it to be a very social one, something very focused on other people.

Lance isn’t really a liar or a manipulator- we’ll see other people with similar powers who are a lot more exploitative with them, but in Lance’s case, he’s got a real art for positive emotions and persuasion because that’s just kinda what he likes and focuses on. He loves people and wants them to be happy.

Weapon-wise, Lance is a longbow archer. This is not only a reflection of his canon marksmanship, but the longbow is a weapon mastered over a long time and it speaks to something I don’t think people often appreciate quite enough in Lance’s character: that as someone who’s very pointedly not a prodigy and by his own admission makes a lot of mistakes, almost everything Lance is good at is a product of his diligence and hard work. 

Keith might be almost supernaturally light on his feet and the refinement of those skills snuck by without him paying attention, but Lance can drop someone he can barely see over the horizon with a well-placed arrow because he’s been running around with a child’s toy bow about as long as he’s been able to stand up straight and practiced until his fingers bled from the string.

Hunk

Hallowed Hunk I honestly didn’t plan as much as he was a natural product of his environment. In canon the team has a lot of conveniences born by the advanced technology around them but in Hallowed it’s a lot more low-tech. There’s food supplies to worry about, and someone’s got to cook it, and they need the tools to cook, and they need money, and someone needs to keep the cart in one piece and feed the horses and Blue.

Hunk is a practical problem-solver so he really kinda thrives in this. He starts out a little more obviously brash and assured as a result, but really, he’s in the same place his canon self starts, it’s just that Hallowed Hunk gets to feel like more things are in his area. He’s been traveling with Lance for a while, and while Lance is the furthest thing from helpless, Lance is also kind of a dreamer and very people focused and slightly inattentive, so Hunk might’ve started picking up slack to make things run smoothly but after a while he’s just kinda taken ownership of the operation.

I knew I wanted to conceptualize Hunk as an alchemist because I tend to in fantasy settings, but not so much as the aristocratic sage in the tower. Hunk’s alchemy is a product of him being, again, that practical person and also intensely personally curious, and he’s not a flirt like Lance, but he does like people. As he says himself, he’s running on a lot of old family recipes refined with self-taught tricks which sets a fun contrast between him and Pidge, where both are really knowledgeable, but Hunk’s knowledge is very much that of the working man’s, and since his working life has been more interesting than most’s, that’s a wide knowledge base.

While this wasn’t shown off much in the first fight the team got into, it’s worth noting that Hunk’s weapon of choice is a hooked staff. Again, Hunk is someone of practical problems and solutions, and roughly, the way he views a battle is as a series of problems that will happen very fast and need to be managed. He doesn’t have nearly as much focus on hurting his opponent as he does controlling the situation, and with his arm strength it’s very easy for him to use that hook to hoist around friend and foe alike.

The reach of his weapon and the explosives and incendiary devices he can pull off if he’s given the time to prepare make him a very daunting person to cross indeed, so he’s not exactly suffering from not having a sharpened edge on his weapon.

Pidge

People often make Pidge a full-tilt actualized wizard which isn’t awful but I think it often sort of overestimates her resources. Pidge, to me, is always this very clever but also very fifteen-year-old who’s running on just what she can carry with her, determined and ambitious but limited.

So in Hallowed, she’s got a lot of magical talent but not much training, she’s got a lot of formal studies that were very theory because in direct contrast to Hunk, Pidge has that aristocratic background. Her family wasn’t complacent, but, there’s a lot Pidge never learned to do because she never needed to. And leaving that comfortable life behind wasn’t something she regretted, but, there’s a reason she started traveling with Lance and Hunk.

Specifically I wanted to feature Pidge being kind of a chameleon, inspired directly by the Enola Holmes books with Nancy Springer. Originally I had her with this brooch that let her change her appearance but Pidge’s actual disguise magic is pretty minimal- she can change her eye colors, and the rest is makeup, wigs, fake teeth, costuming elements. She originally had a very specific practical reason for wanting to disguise herself, but, again, compared to canon she was doing this for a while- so it kind of became fun, and an exercise in self-expression.

That said, some of Pidge’s skills are a little odd for just a duchess’s daughter, which is why Hunk assumed Pidge was on the lam from some kind of criminal past. Let’s just say Pidge is not the average “runaway princess” narrative.

Other Shiro

The other Shiro was modeled first and foremost off s3e5 in canon. So he’s got the long hair, kind of ongoing fatigue problems, he’s quieter and more irritable than Knightly Shiro but a lot of that is just... he’s dealing with a lot. He’s constantly exhausted and while he feels, much like Knightly Shiro, called to do something important, he’s fighting uphill against his own body which is in a very fragile state.

Knight Shiro is kitted out by the crown, so he’s really well-equipped and has helpful things to keep him healthy and in good shape, while Other Shiro is using things that he took from the underground, and from the galra, which, while useful, were never designed with his comfort or even longevity much in mind, which is part of why he’s doing so badly.

I honestly thought it would be kind of fun to have two versions of Shiro who are both sympathetic but both, for different reasons, in different ways, seem sinister, and play on the fears or aspersions I saw people raise during clone theory. Knight Shiro is based on how, in s3e6 when Shiro “cleaned up” there were a lot of accusations about how he just. rebounded so easily and perceiving him as insincere or even creepy because he’s just, everything’s neat and tidy. Knightly Shiro is really straitlaced and friendly aesthetic and he went missing for a year, lost an arm, and was branded by practically demons but it’s fine, everything’s fine, he’s here to help, and it’s basically just a survival mantra for him because not being fine raises terrifying deep questions that he’s not really in a position to answer.

Ghost Shiro however, we’ve seen kind of an overly positive / accepting light of him through Keith but he is one freaky guy, I’ll tell you that. There’s a reason he avoids most people, and the snippet of his conversation with Lotor and the unnatural writhing of shadows, his black stone hand... Ghost Shiro was based a little off of “the champion” in canon and some of my personal meta / speculations around that. He was cast into the darkness and emerged, survived, because he made that darkness his own power. And part of that is his agreement with Lotor.

Lotor

There’s only so much I’ll say at this point about Hallowed Lotor because he’s rather deliberately kind of an enigma. There’s a good question if the person Shiro’s dealing with is actually who and what he claims to be, especially since he’s not claiming particularly much. The fun of dealing with shapeshifters who don’t appear to have any one particular default form- and he really doesn’t. Being a magpie is just his equivalent of slipping into comfy pants at the end of the day. Hitch a free ride on whoever you’re talking to and call it good.

Lotor and Shiro are shown in many regards to be able to kind of see eye to eye, and the idea of Ghost Shiro, who doesn’t really have a lot of resources since his Other is kinda taking up that narrative niche, turning to him for help struck me out of nowhere as the logical conclusion. Hallowed Lotor being a shapeshifter, he’s at both much greater and much lesser freedom than he is in canon. He and the generals don’t get to move together as a cohesive team very often, they’re more scattered, but instead he has this handful of people, Shiro included, who he can kind of draw a bead on and come back to. Ghost Shiro is pretty used to him popping up at odd intervals.

Which is fun, because it fits with Lotor’s modus operandi- Zarkon and Haggar tend to be rather obvious in the intensity of their assertions, but Lotor’s the little guy and he fights like a little guy, and in a more whimsical fantastical environment you can play with that. End result? Lotor is a lot of people’s shoulder devil. He likes to help and does appear to have some genuine sympathy for the people he bargains with, but he’s also got an agenda. And it’s not really super clear how much of either wins out in any given situation.

And poor Allura and Coran are still total mysteries at this point. We’ll get to them. Y’know. Eventually.

[gh-0-stcup]

Yeah, from the further discussions people are asserting that many humans are fundamentally incurious. The kind of exploration you and I would consider fundamental to navigating the internet and technology in general is getting framed as a "skill". The theory is that this skill is no longer being taught because kids are assumed to be tech savvy.

Personally, the more I read, the more I disagree. Children from my generation were actively discouraged from being on the internet. We were taught to very strictly follow the teacher's instruction when using programs or navigating files. The internet was a very dangerous place, full of predators who'd kidnap, rape, and/or murder you if they got a hint of your identity. You'll break the computer if you mess around with the wrong files.

We were actively discouraged from exploration and curiousity when it came to anything computer related. The kids who ended up becoming knowledgable about computers were largely self taught. Those who ended up frequenting the internet did so on their own, often without their parent's permission or knowledge.

The internet has always been about self-directed and self-motivated exploration. It's not a type of education being lost but an inherent personality type/mindset. The internet used to be primarily used by a particular demographic. Now it has a wider userbase and some of the new people are struggling with things the older demographic never had real issues with because they don't naturally tend towards the same kind of curiosity.

Yes, AO3 was confusing for me at first. Every website was. But that was never an actual barrier, not for me nor the many other people who made the internet a hobby.

I honestly don't think this is something that can be taught. It can be encouraged, but if somebody genuinely lacks the urge to click around they aren't going to get it.

It's a little mindblowing to think users won't check an about page, FAQ, or site map when they first go in a website. But consider the kinds of sites "normies" (for lack of a better word lol) were attracted onto the internet for. Social media apps that are heavily simplified. A giant pop up tells you to make an account or log in if you aren't. You are then taken immediately to content chosen for you by an algorithm, with little to no exploration or input needed.

For many younger people, this represents the entirety of their experience with the internet. Those who spend a large amount of their free time on these types of apps may assume they have a higher level of tech literacy than they do. It's understandable to be a bit confused when faced with something new, but if that confusion is a genuine barrier to navigating a perfectly standard website - it's a you problem.

I honestly think this is just about impossible for most long-time AO3 users unless they spend a lot of time reading Wattpaders’ complaints or something.

AO3 is so incredibly intuitive to the specific community that built it that the un-obviousness of what the fandoms by media type index is is completely invisible.

People have either been on AO3 so long they’ve forgotten what it was like to be new or they were never new in that particular way in the first place.

[oumakokichi]

I don't know if you already talked about it, or I just couldn't find it, but I heard that Gonta's translation/localization wasn't really accurate and he doesn't talked in "hulk speech" in the original, so I wonder how did he talked then? there it is much difference?

Gonta’s localization definitely wasn’t very accurate to theoriginal Japanese. It’s… oh boy, how to put it. From the moment that it wasrevealed in the first trailer NISA released for ndrv3, I and a lot of othertranslators felt that it was perhaps thesingle worst decision taken in the entire game. I believe toning down Gonta’sdialogue to be “Tarzan speech” or “Hulk speech” skewed many things about hischaracter.

After having finished the localization, I still stand bythat opinion. Of all the mistakes or errors in the localization, I feel thatGonta’s “Tarzan speech” is still the worst, even moreso because it wasdeliberate, rather than accidental. Intentionally choosing to omit or alterthings about his character in a way that makes him seem considerably differentfrom his original counterpart in the Japanese version of the game just doesn’tsit well with me. It feels to me as though Gonta’s translator simply wantedGonta to “match” what they perceived his character as, rather than translatingwhat was actually there directly.

The most important thing to note is that in the originalversion of the game, Gonta does not talk in any noticeably “stupider” fashionthan his classmates. He is certainly naïve and trusting, prone to fall forothers’ lies; he’s also unfamiliar with many terms related to technology orelectronic advancements, because he grew up in the forest removed from societyfor such a long time. But his Japanese is perfectly fine, very much in linewith what you would expect from a typical high schooler of his age. Thisreflects something very central to his character—that he’s not nearly asunintelligent or dumb as others, and even he himself, perceive him to be.

In the original, Gonta refers to himself exclusively in thethird-person, which I think is perhaps one reason the translator thought itwould be comparable to change his speech to “Tarzan/Hulk speech” (i.e. “Hulkangry!! Hulk smash!!”). But that’s hardly a fair decision, considering bothAngie and Tenko also exclusively refer to themselves using third-person. WhileTenko’s speech is perhaps a bit more polite than the other two, all three ofthem nonetheless talk in a generally similar fashion, so using the “third-person”excuse as a reason to change only Gonta’s dialogue makes no sense.

Referring to oneself in the third-person is, in fact, muchmore common in Japanese than it is in English. It’s even common for some peopleto switch between referring to themselves in the third-person, and byfirst-person pronouns. All in all, it’s far less strange of a practice thanmany English-speakers would think, and it typically has no bearing on acharacter’s intelligence.

Also worth noting is the fact that Gonta’s grammar, tense,and general vocabulary are all completely unaffected. He doesn’t talksimplistically, nor does he struggle to string his sentences together in theoriginal version of the game. If that had been the case, then I could’veunderstood deciding to localize his speech in a comparable way—but in fact,Gonta is pretty polite and well-spoken, which fits his overall image ofbecoming a “gentleman,” even if he feels his physical size and backstory don’t.

The localization of Gonta’s speech does his character a lotof harm for pretty much the entire game, but I feel like the chapter where itdid the most damage was the chapter where Gonta himself gets the mostscreentime: Chapter 4. Chapter 4 subverts both the players’ and othercharacters’ perception of Gonta as someone who was well-intentioned and sweetbut ultimately “not very useful.”

The reveals that Gonta is not only smarter and moreperceptive than anyone, even himself, gives him credit for, but also moredesperate to contribute to the overall group, are much harder to grasp in thelocalization, as pretty much all of his dialogue tones down how smart heactually is. In the end, most of the reason why the players are tricked intothinking that Gonta “isn’t very smart” is because the other characters andGonta sort of gradually lead you to that assumption, by calling him an “idiot”or asking why he’s “so dumb.”

But whereas there were plenty of hints in the originalJapanese proving that Gonta was, in fact, quite knowledgeable in his own areaof expertise and in practical, hands-on experience, the original plays up the “dumbTarzan-man who grew up in the woods” routine so much that it’s nearlyimpossible to discard it. It makes it very hard, in my opinion, to realize justhow much he actually contributes to the class trials or how perceptive heactually is, because the translation itself treats him as though he’s an idiot.By comparison, the original dialogue only ever has Gonta call himself stupid,rather than ever acting as such.

In hindsight, it’s easy to see what I mean about Gonta beingfairly perceptive. Due to his eyesight, he notices the “tiny bugs” around thecampus quicker than anyone. He also comments on the state of the stars outsideafter the Chapter 2 trial, noting that they must be “very far away” from hishome, since he doesn’t recognize any of the constellations. Clearly he’sfamiliar not only with entomology, but also has a firm grasp of astronomy and avariety of other skills, all due to his experiences.

He also arguably contributes more solutions to the classtrials than major characters like Momota or Himiko. In Chapter 2, for instance,Gonta was the first person to catch on to the way the ropeway could’ve beencreated; his suggestion about tying the two ropes together was perfectly on-point.In Chapter 3 again, he was incredibly knowledgeable about the state of thefloorboards in the empty rooms and the way in which the see-saw trick might’vebeen carried out. These things clearly show that he’s not stupid, but rather naïve and simply unfamiliar with some of thethings his classmates treat as normal (like technology).

In the localization, though, even these contributions to theclass trials are hard to take note of. Gonta’s speech is simplified so much tothe point that even when he’s talking about very rational, understandablethings that are easy to make sense of, he still comes across as unintelligent. Itjust feels like such a break from his original character, where there were somany signs that he was trying to participate in group discussions and beingleft out only because other characters’ perception of him, as well as his ownself-perception. His problem was never that he was actually an idiot, butrather that everyone, including himself, thought of him that way.

This is precisely why the other characters have so muchtrouble believing that Gonta could possibly have been the culprit in Chapter 4.Not only do they think he was too nice to ever hurt someone, but they also allemphasize that he “wasn’t smart enough.” But the Chapter 4 post-trial makes itemphatically clear that while Ouma led Gonta to the flashback light and showedhim “the truth of the outside world,” Gonta himself willingly went alongwith  Ouma’s plan and made the conscious decisionto kill another person. It’s something the AI Gonta accepts full responsibilityfor, and it’s a pivotal point of his character—that despite the fact that therest of the group didn’t think him capable of it or smart enough to do so, hewas fully capable of making his own decisions.

The localization makes it much, much harder to come to termswith this reveal, though. In the original version of the game, it’s certainlydifficult to reconcile the idea that someone as kind and compassionate as Gontawould ever kill someone else, but it becomes evident through the sincerity andemotion in the post-trial (both with regular Gonta and with AI Gonta) that he’stelling the truth, especially about the “truth of the outside world.”

The localization’s “Tarzan-speech,” by contrast, takes almostall the sincerity and emotion out of those speeches. It’s very hard to takeGonta’s claims of responsibility in the localization seriously when histranslation makes it seem as though he’s barely even capable of takingaccountability for his own actions. It’s infantilizing, and in my opinion itcompletely misses the point of everything about his character that was used tosubvert people’s expectations in Chapter 4.

Gonta is as kind, caring, and generous as it gets. He’sperhaps not the brightest—but he’s certainly not dumb. His problems manifestfrom a lack of self-confidence, reinforced by how other people perceive him. Hedidn’t grow up in society like a normal person, so he’s unfamiliar with thingsthat everyone else takes for granted, and his eagerness to please means that he’snaïve and quick to fall for other people’s schemes. But in the original versionof the game, it was so much easier to pick up on the fact that he was neveractually “stupid” or “useless,” while the localization treats him… well, prettymuch like a pet.

It’s sad, really; Gonta doesn’t get a lot of time to shineoutside of Chapter 4 and what little time he did get was pretty hard to enjoydue to those bad localization decisions. There are plenty of other decisions inthe localization I don’t agree with or would’ve changed personally, but I stillfeel that Gonta’s is the worst simply because it ruins the point of his entirecharacter and it’s a decision that is used consistently throughout 4 out of 6chapters. No other decisions in the entire game ruined a character sothoroughly, so I really, really wish they had translated his speech properlyand shown more of what he was actually like rather than just trying to play upthe Tarzan tropes.

I hope I was able to clear up your questions, anon! I’vewanted to talk about Gonta’s localization for a while too, so thank you forgiving me a chance to do so.

[symbianosgames]

The best games are a slow steady learning process.

They teach and guide while they entertain and challenge. They push players to improve steadily — to master a mechanic not by forcing you to scale a metaphorical wall, but by compelling you to climb a series of metaphorical steps. 

This does not necessarily mean they have great tutorials — indeed, many games with awesome learning curves throw you straight into the experience proper. Nor does it mean that they have to dumb down their design. It's simply a matter of crafting progression systems that allow the player to get a handle on the fundamentals early and then to grow and improve at every stage after that. 

It's not easy to pull this off. To give you some guidance as to how you can execute a brilliant learning curve, we asked several designers to tell us what games they think do it well.

None of the seven examples that follow are easy games, but all of them meter their difficulty with a well-considered learning curve. 

From the moment the player wakes up in protagonist Chell's minimalist living quarters, Portal gently prods her forward. As Global Game Jam co-founder and Rochester Institute of Technology assistant professor Ian Schreiber notes, "the entire game is basically a tutorial on how to beat it, except it expertly frames the learning as gameplay." Portal challenges by crafting puzzles around new mechanics and new applications of existing mechanics.  

It allows all the time players need to get comfortable with the controls or to think about how to solve the next puzzle, and it scales the difficulty by simply incrementing the complexity.

What you learn in completing one puzzle is needed to figure out the next one, and you have environmental cues that indicate what you need to learn or do (though not how to do it). Some cues are subtle such as the position of sentry turrets, while others are obviously instructional like the warning signs at the entrance to each test chamber. And thanks to these cues there's a clear progression from using portals to walk through a wall to using them for high-speed platforming. 

TAKEAWAY: You can simultaneously teach and challenge players at the same time if you weave the learning experience into the environment and level design.

All of the Burnout games do a fine job of introducing faster cars and tougher races and challenges at a comfortable pace. But one deserves special praise.

"I absolutely loved Burnout 3," says Corey Davis, design director at Rocket League developer Psyonix. "The pace of acquiring more powerful cars lined up really well with my mastery of the boost system, crashing opponents, and track knowledge." 

Each new car is just the right amount faster and stronger than the previous one to maintain an even challenge level and not pull the player out of their depth. The crafted tracks and frantic high-speed tussles with rival racers grow more intense as the player progresses, and there's a rewarding and fun experience for anyone to find — veteran racing junkies, casual fans, and newcomers alike.  

TAKEAWAY: You need to constantly test players and push them to execute tougher maneuvers as they improve their mastery of the core mechanics, but there's a fine line to straddle here if you want to keep both inexperienced and experienced players engaged from start to finish.

Much like a real instrument, Guitar Hero offers an intensely satisfying learning curve. It arguably even outdoes a real guitar in this respect, as it provides more useful feedback and gave the player ways to play along to their favorite songs regardless of skill level — the chosen difficulty level affects the number of notes to play and fret buttons to hit. It also adds an extra layer of progression by dividing songs into a "setlist" of increasing difficulty — so the challenge ramps up song by song as well as by difficulty level. 

Davis praises this design decision. "I never felt like it was cheap; it felt purely like I needed to get better," he says. And the feedback loops both on the screen during play and intrinsic to the challenge of mastering the twin difficulty systems combine beautifully with the simple joy of making music — of mastering hit rock songs. 

TAKEAWAY: Multi-tiered learning curves can let players control their own challenge level and rate of progress, and also provide a clearer indication of how much harder the next stage will be.

To someone who's heard about but not played the infamously-difficult Dark Souls, it may seem like a strange inclusion in this list. But extreme challenge and a good learning curve are not mutually exclusive. "The difficulty escalates very nicely," says Red Hook Studios creative director Chris Bourassa. 

"Just as you start feeling overwhelmed, you find yourself back in Firelink Shrine," he continues. "It's a clever use of the town hub as a thematic downbeat, and works like a chapter break in the game. As you catch your breath, you can look forward to a meaty jump in difficulty as you set off to the next area, followed by another smooth curve."

Cthulhu Saves the World designer Robert Boyd made a similar point in his 2012 analysis of Dark Souls' design

TAKEAWAY: High difficulty does not necessarily equate to a too-steep learning curve, as Dark Souls exemplifies.

Bourassa also praises the learning curve of real-time strategy/action-RPG hybrid Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. Specifically, he was drawn in by its tension between threat and empowerment. It gives the player confidence to try things and to experiment with new combinations of strategies thanks to a steady trickle of loot and new units. "I always felt confident heading into the missions," says Bourassa, "even when that confidence was misplaced." 

The smaller-scale structure of Dawn of War II's campaign missions in comparison to traditional RTS games helps, too. Short missions with small groups of units battling other small groups (and little or no base building) reduce the need to master micro-management and instead allow the player to learn and adapt as the situation demands. The skirmish multiplayer mode doesn't share this well-balanced learning curve, though, as it's too different to the campaign for knowledge transfer and new players tend to get annihilated. 

TAKEAWAY: A good learning curve balances danger or challenge with player empowerment; it gives the player a taste of both failure and victory and makes either feel like a learning experience.

Ironcast is the rare genre-mashup game that gets the blended elements to fit together. It's a Puzzle Quest-inspired tile-matching puzzler with a touch of roguelite adventuring and steampunk-themed resource management and mech-bot warfare.

Bourassa notes that while it looks straightforward at first, it's actually a deeply layered experience. "They do a lot of interesting things with the mechanics at all levels," he says, "and I found the meta-game quite engaging." 

The player gathers resources from the tile-matching mode, which they soon learn how to use to engage in full-on turn-based mech combat that involves a range of abilities and strategic and tactical decisions. If they lose a battle, it's game over, but certain upgrades and unlocked mech pilots remain so that they can still feel a sense of progress. All the game's complexity is metered out in such a way that you have time to get comfortable with new mechanics before your skill with them is tested. And the upgrades enable new strategies rather than simply incrementing the power of your weapons and shields.  

TAKEAWAY: You can ease players into complexity and surprise them at the same time by starting simple then repeatedly upping the stakes and stripping back the layers underlying the gameplay systems.

The original Super Mario Bros remains a masterclass in game design, and a big part of that is the expert manner in which its difficulty ebbs and flows — a small spike at the beginning followed by a gentle upward curve that has additional spikes at the end of each of its eight worlds (as Mario nears and then battles the world boss). 

It's also a great example of how to teach a player without tutorials. "It introduced most of the core concepts in World 1-1," says Schreiber. It didn't explicitly explain anything, but rather left the player to explore and discover the mechanics simply by trying things.

You may not go into the game knowing that enemies die when you jump on their heads and that blocks with question marks on them give coins or items (or what those items do), but you can stumble on these concepts within seconds and extend your understanding of how they work over the duration of the game. 

TAKEAWAY: Classic games still hold great lessons in game design, and Super Mario Bros in particular is a shining example of how to quickly introduce the core concepts and then playfully explore their permutations over the rest of the game.

There's no point developing a great game mechanic if only a tiny percentage of players can figure out how to use it. If you're striving for challenge, be fair, and remember to allow players some time to acclimatize to their new-found skills. You need to both give your player the appropriate tools and teach them how to use these tools before you ask them to scale a cliff or make a seemingly-impossible leap. 

If you're not trying to make a difficult game, remember that great learning curves should have small spikes along the way to challenge players and test their mastery of the mechanics or to introduce new mechanics. 

Most importantly, consider that teaching people how to play your game is not just a matter of telling them what to do and then leaving them alone. Nor is it about micro-managing their experience. You need to let them play and experiment and to ensure that when they fail they can understand why. Mistakes and successes alike should improve their mental models of how your systems work. And they should drive your players to get better at your game, not to walk away. 

Thanks to Corey Davis, Chris Bourassa, and Ian Schreiber for their help with putting this article together.

[symbianosgames]

The best games are a slow steady learning process.

They teach and guide while they entertain and challenge. They push players to improve steadily — to master a mechanic not by forcing you to scale a metaphorical wall, but by compelling you to climb a series of metaphorical steps. 

This does not necessarily mean they have great tutorials — indeed, many games with awesome learning curves throw you straight into the experience proper. Nor does it mean that they have to dumb down their design. It's simply a matter of crafting progression systems that allow the player to get a handle on the fundamentals early and then to grow and improve at every stage after that. 

It's not easy to pull this off. To give you some guidance as to how you can execute a brilliant learning curve, we asked several designers to tell us what games they think do it well.

None of the seven examples that follow are easy games, but all of them meter their difficulty with a well-considered learning curve. 

From the moment the player wakes up in protagonist Chell's minimalist living quarters, Portal gently prods her forward. As Global Game Jam co-founder and Rochester Institute of Technology assistant professor Ian Schreiber notes, "the entire game is basically a tutorial on how to beat it, except it expertly frames the learning as gameplay." Portal challenges by crafting puzzles around new mechanics and new applications of existing mechanics.  

It allows all the time players need to get comfortable with the controls or to think about how to solve the next puzzle, and it scales the difficulty by simply incrementing the complexity.

What you learn in completing one puzzle is needed to figure out the next one, and you have environmental cues that indicate what you need to learn or do (though not how to do it). Some cues are subtle such as the position of sentry turrets, while others are obviously instructional like the warning signs at the entrance to each test chamber. And thanks to these cues there's a clear progression from using portals to walk through a wall to using them for high-speed platforming. 

TAKEAWAY: You can simultaneously teach and challenge players at the same time if you weave the learning experience into the environment and level design.

All of the Burnout games do a fine job of introducing faster cars and tougher races and challenges at a comfortable pace. But one deserves special praise.

"I absolutely loved Burnout 3," says Corey Davis, design director at Rocket League developer Psyonix. "The pace of acquiring more powerful cars lined up really well with my mastery of the boost system, crashing opponents, and track knowledge." 

Each new car is just the right amount faster and stronger than the previous one to maintain an even challenge level and not pull the player out of their depth. The crafted tracks and frantic high-speed tussles with rival racers grow more intense as the player progresses, and there's a rewarding and fun experience for anyone to find — veteran racing junkies, casual fans, and newcomers alike.  

TAKEAWAY: You need to constantly test players and push them to execute tougher maneuvers as they improve their mastery of the core mechanics, but there's a fine line to straddle here if you want to keep both inexperienced and experienced players engaged from start to finish.

Much like a real instrument, Guitar Hero offers an intensely satisfying learning curve. It arguably even outdoes a real guitar in this respect, as it provides more useful feedback and gave the player ways to play along to their favorite songs regardless of skill level — the chosen difficulty level affects the number of notes to play and fret buttons to hit. It also adds an extra layer of progression by dividing songs into a "setlist" of increasing difficulty — so the challenge ramps up song by song as well as by difficulty level. 

Davis praises this design decision. "I never felt like it was cheap; it felt purely like I needed to get better," he says. And the feedback loops both on the screen during play and intrinsic to the challenge of mastering the twin difficulty systems combine beautifully with the simple joy of making music — of mastering hit rock songs. 

TAKEAWAY: Multi-tiered learning curves can let players control their own challenge level and rate of progress, and also provide a clearer indication of how much harder the next stage will be.

To someone who's heard about but not played the infamously-difficult Dark Souls, it may seem like a strange inclusion in this list. But extreme challenge and a good learning curve are not mutually exclusive. "The difficulty escalates very nicely," says Red Hook Studios creative director Chris Bourassa. 

"Just as you start feeling overwhelmed, you find yourself back in Firelink Shrine," he continues. "It's a clever use of the town hub as a thematic downbeat, and works like a chapter break in the game. As you catch your breath, you can look forward to a meaty jump in difficulty as you set off to the next area, followed by another smooth curve."

Cthulhu Saves the World designer Robert Boyd made a similar point in his 2012 analysis of Dark Souls' design

TAKEAWAY: High difficulty does not necessarily equate to a too-steep learning curve, as Dark Souls exemplifies.

Bourassa also praises the learning curve of real-time strategy/action-RPG hybrid Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. Specifically, he was drawn in by its tension between threat and empowerment. It gives the player confidence to try things and to experiment with new combinations of strategies thanks to a steady trickle of loot and new units. "I always felt confident heading into the missions," says Bourassa, "even when that confidence was misplaced." 

The smaller-scale structure of Dawn of War II's campaign missions in comparison to traditional RTS games helps, too. Short missions with small groups of units battling other small groups (and little or no base building) reduce the need to master micro-management and instead allow the player to learn and adapt as the situation demands. The skirmish multiplayer mode doesn't share this well-balanced learning curve, though, as it's too different to the campaign for knowledge transfer and new players tend to get annihilated. 

TAKEAWAY: A good learning curve balances danger or challenge with player empowerment; it gives the player a taste of both failure and victory and makes either feel like a learning experience.

Ironcast is the rare genre-mashup game that gets the blended elements to fit together. It's a Puzzle Quest-inspired tile-matching puzzler with a touch of roguelite adventuring and steampunk-themed resource management and mech-bot warfare.

Bourassa notes that while it looks straightforward at first, it's actually a deeply layered experience. "They do a lot of interesting things with the mechanics at all levels," he says, "and I found the meta-game quite engaging." 

The player gathers resources from the tile-matching mode, which they soon learn how to use to engage in full-on turn-based mech combat that involves a range of abilities and strategic and tactical decisions. If they lose a battle, it's game over, but certain upgrades and unlocked mech pilots remain so that they can still feel a sense of progress. All the game's complexity is metered out in such a way that you have time to get comfortable with new mechanics before your skill with them is tested. And the upgrades enable new strategies rather than simply incrementing the power of your weapons and shields.  

TAKEAWAY: You can ease players into complexity and surprise them at the same time by starting simple then repeatedly upping the stakes and stripping back the layers underlying the gameplay systems.

The original Super Mario Bros remains a masterclass in game design, and a big part of that is the expert manner in which its difficulty ebbs and flows — a small spike at the beginning followed by a gentle upward curve that has additional spikes at the end of each of its eight worlds (as Mario nears and then battles the world boss). 

It's also a great example of how to teach a player without tutorials. "It introduced most of the core concepts in World 1-1," says Schreiber. It didn't explicitly explain anything, but rather left the player to explore and discover the mechanics simply by trying things.

You may not go into the game knowing that enemies die when you jump on their heads and that blocks with question marks on them give coins or items (or what those items do), but you can stumble on these concepts within seconds and extend your understanding of how they work over the duration of the game. 

TAKEAWAY: Classic games still hold great lessons in game design, and Super Mario Bros in particular is a shining example of how to quickly introduce the core concepts and then playfully explore their permutations over the rest of the game.

There's no point developing a great game mechanic if only a tiny percentage of players can figure out how to use it. If you're striving for challenge, be fair, and remember to allow players some time to acclimatize to their new-found skills. You need to both give your player the appropriate tools and teach them how to use these tools before you ask them to scale a cliff or make a seemingly-impossible leap. 

If you're not trying to make a difficult game, remember that great learning curves should have small spikes along the way to challenge players and test their mastery of the mechanics or to introduce new mechanics. 

Most importantly, consider that teaching people how to play your game is not just a matter of telling them what to do and then leaving them alone. Nor is it about micro-managing their experience. You need to let them play and experiment and to ensure that when they fail they can understand why. Mistakes and successes alike should improve their mental models of how your systems work. And they should drive your players to get better at your game, not to walk away. 

Thanks to Corey Davis, Chris Bourassa, and Ian Schreiber for their help with putting this article together.

[symbianosgames]

The best games are a slow steady learning process.

They teach and guide while they entertain and challenge. They push players to improve steadily — to master a mechanic not by forcing you to scale a metaphorical wall, but by compelling you to climb a series of metaphorical steps. 

This does not necessarily mean they have great tutorials — indeed, many games with awesome learning curves throw you straight into the experience proper. Nor does it mean that they have to dumb down their design. It's simply a matter of crafting progression systems that allow the player to get a handle on the fundamentals early and then to grow and improve at every stage after that. 

It's not easy to pull this off. To give you some guidance as to how you can execute a brilliant learning curve, we asked several designers to tell us what games they think do it well.

None of the seven examples that follow are easy games, but all of them meter their difficulty with a well-considered learning curve. 

From the moment the player wakes up in protagonist Chell's minimalist living quarters, Portal gently prods her forward. As Global Game Jam co-founder and Rochester Institute of Technology assistant professor Ian Schreiber notes, "the entire game is basically a tutorial on how to beat it, except it expertly frames the learning as gameplay." Portal challenges by crafting puzzles around new mechanics and new applications of existing mechanics.  

It allows all the time players need to get comfortable with the controls or to think about how to solve the next puzzle, and it scales the difficulty by simply incrementing the complexity.

What you learn in completing one puzzle is needed to figure out the next one, and you have environmental cues that indicate what you need to learn or do (though not how to do it). Some cues are subtle such as the position of sentry turrets, while others are obviously instructional like the warning signs at the entrance to each test chamber. And thanks to these cues there's a clear progression from using portals to walk through a wall to using them for high-speed platforming. 

TAKEAWAY: You can simultaneously teach and challenge players at the same time if you weave the learning experience into the environment and level design.

All of the Burnout games do a fine job of introducing faster cars and tougher races and challenges at a comfortable pace. But one deserves special praise.

"I absolutely loved Burnout 3," says Corey Davis, design director at Rocket League developer Psyonix. "The pace of acquiring more powerful cars lined up really well with my mastery of the boost system, crashing opponents, and track knowledge." 

Each new car is just the right amount faster and stronger than the previous one to maintain an even challenge level and not pull the player out of their depth. The crafted tracks and frantic high-speed tussles with rival racers grow more intense as the player progresses, and there's a rewarding and fun experience for anyone to find — veteran racing junkies, casual fans, and newcomers alike.  

TAKEAWAY: You need to constantly test players and push them to execute tougher maneuvers as they improve their mastery of the core mechanics, but there's a fine line to straddle here if you want to keep both inexperienced and experienced players engaged from start to finish.

Much like a real instrument, Guitar Hero offers an intensely satisfying learning curve. It arguably even outdoes a real guitar in this respect, as it provides more useful feedback and gave the player ways to play along to their favorite songs regardless of skill level — the chosen difficulty level affects the number of notes to play and fret buttons to hit. It also adds an extra layer of progression by dividing songs into a "setlist" of increasing difficulty — so the challenge ramps up song by song as well as by difficulty level. 

Davis praises this design decision. "I never felt like it was cheap; it felt purely like I needed to get better," he says. And the feedback loops both on the screen during play and intrinsic to the challenge of mastering the twin difficulty systems combine beautifully with the simple joy of making music — of mastering hit rock songs. 

TAKEAWAY: Multi-tiered learning curves can let players control their own challenge level and rate of progress, and also provide a clearer indication of how much harder the next stage will be.

To someone who's heard about but not played the infamously-difficult Dark Souls, it may seem like a strange inclusion in this list. But extreme challenge and a good learning curve are not mutually exclusive. "The difficulty escalates very nicely," says Red Hook Studios creative director Chris Bourassa. 

"Just as you start feeling overwhelmed, you find yourself back in Firelink Shrine," he continues. "It's a clever use of the town hub as a thematic downbeat, and works like a chapter break in the game. As you catch your breath, you can look forward to a meaty jump in difficulty as you set off to the next area, followed by another smooth curve."

Cthulhu Saves the World designer Robert Boyd made a similar point in his 2012 analysis of Dark Souls' design

TAKEAWAY: High difficulty does not necessarily equate to a too-steep learning curve, as Dark Souls exemplifies.

Bourassa also praises the learning curve of real-time strategy/action-RPG hybrid Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. Specifically, he was drawn in by its tension between threat and empowerment. It gives the player confidence to try things and to experiment with new combinations of strategies thanks to a steady trickle of loot and new units. "I always felt confident heading into the missions," says Bourassa, "even when that confidence was misplaced." 

The smaller-scale structure of Dawn of War II's campaign missions in comparison to traditional RTS games helps, too. Short missions with small groups of units battling other small groups (and little or no base building) reduce the need to master micro-management and instead allow the player to learn and adapt as the situation demands. The skirmish multiplayer mode doesn't share this well-balanced learning curve, though, as it's too different to the campaign for knowledge transfer and new players tend to get annihilated. 

TAKEAWAY: A good learning curve balances danger or challenge with player empowerment; it gives the player a taste of both failure and victory and makes either feel like a learning experience.

Ironcast is the rare genre-mashup game that gets the blended elements to fit together. It's a Puzzle Quest-inspired tile-matching puzzler with a touch of roguelite adventuring and steampunk-themed resource management and mech-bot warfare.

Bourassa notes that while it looks straightforward at first, it's actually a deeply layered experience. "They do a lot of interesting things with the mechanics at all levels," he says, "and I found the meta-game quite engaging." 

The player gathers resources from the tile-matching mode, which they soon learn how to use to engage in full-on turn-based mech combat that involves a range of abilities and strategic and tactical decisions. If they lose a battle, it's game over, but certain upgrades and unlocked mech pilots remain so that they can still feel a sense of progress. All the game's complexity is metered out in such a way that you have time to get comfortable with new mechanics before your skill with them is tested. And the upgrades enable new strategies rather than simply incrementing the power of your weapons and shields.  

TAKEAWAY: You can ease players into complexity and surprise them at the same time by starting simple then repeatedly upping the stakes and stripping back the layers underlying the gameplay systems.

The original Super Mario Bros remains a masterclass in game design, and a big part of that is the expert manner in which its difficulty ebbs and flows — a small spike at the beginning followed by a gentle upward curve that has additional spikes at the end of each of its eight worlds (as Mario nears and then battles the world boss). 

It's also a great example of how to teach a player without tutorials. "It introduced most of the core concepts in World 1-1," says Schreiber. It didn't explicitly explain anything, but rather left the player to explore and discover the mechanics simply by trying things.

You may not go into the game knowing that enemies die when you jump on their heads and that blocks with question marks on them give coins or items (or what those items do), but you can stumble on these concepts within seconds and extend your understanding of how they work over the duration of the game. 

TAKEAWAY: Classic games still hold great lessons in game design, and Super Mario Bros in particular is a shining example of how to quickly introduce the core concepts and then playfully explore their permutations over the rest of the game.

There's no point developing a great game mechanic if only a tiny percentage of players can figure out how to use it. If you're striving for challenge, be fair, and remember to allow players some time to acclimatize to their new-found skills. You need to both give your player the appropriate tools and teach them how to use these tools before you ask them to scale a cliff or make a seemingly-impossible leap. 

If you're not trying to make a difficult game, remember that great learning curves should have small spikes along the way to challenge players and test their mastery of the mechanics or to introduce new mechanics. 

Most importantly, consider that teaching people how to play your game is not just a matter of telling them what to do and then leaving them alone. Nor is it about micro-managing their experience. You need to let them play and experiment and to ensure that when they fail they can understand why. Mistakes and successes alike should improve their mental models of how your systems work. And they should drive your players to get better at your game, not to walk away. 

Thanks to Corey Davis, Chris Bourassa, and Ian Schreiber for their help with putting this article together.

[symbianosgames]

The best games are a slow steady learning process.

They teach and guide while they entertain and challenge. They push players to improve steadily — to master a mechanic not by forcing you to scale a metaphorical wall, but by compelling you to climb a series of metaphorical steps. 

This does not necessarily mean they have great tutorials — indeed, many games with awesome learning curves throw you straight into the experience proper. Nor does it mean that they have to dumb down their design. It's simply a matter of crafting progression systems that allow the player to get a handle on the fundamentals early and then to grow and improve at every stage after that. 

It's not easy to pull this off. To give you some guidance as to how you can execute a brilliant learning curve, we asked several designers to tell us what games they think do it well.

None of the seven examples that follow are easy games, but all of them meter their difficulty with a well-considered learning curve. 

From the moment the player wakes up in protagonist Chell's minimalist living quarters, Portal gently prods her forward. As Global Game Jam co-founder and Rochester Institute of Technology assistant professor Ian Schreiber notes, "the entire game is basically a tutorial on how to beat it, except it expertly frames the learning as gameplay." Portal challenges by crafting puzzles around new mechanics and new applications of existing mechanics.  

It allows all the time players need to get comfortable with the controls or to think about how to solve the next puzzle, and it scales the difficulty by simply incrementing the complexity.

What you learn in completing one puzzle is needed to figure out the next one, and you have environmental cues that indicate what you need to learn or do (though not how to do it). Some cues are subtle such as the position of sentry turrets, while others are obviously instructional like the warning signs at the entrance to each test chamber. And thanks to these cues there's a clear progression from using portals to walk through a wall to using them for high-speed platforming. 

TAKEAWAY: You can simultaneously teach and challenge players at the same time if you weave the learning experience into the environment and level design.

All of the Burnout games do a fine job of introducing faster cars and tougher races and challenges at a comfortable pace. But one deserves special praise.

"I absolutely loved Burnout 3," says Corey Davis, design director at Rocket League developer Psyonix. "The pace of acquiring more powerful cars lined up really well with my mastery of the boost system, crashing opponents, and track knowledge." 

Each new car is just the right amount faster and stronger than the previous one to maintain an even challenge level and not pull the player out of their depth. The crafted tracks and frantic high-speed tussles with rival racers grow more intense as the player progresses, and there's a rewarding and fun experience for anyone to find — veteran racing junkies, casual fans, and newcomers alike.  

TAKEAWAY: You need to constantly test players and push them to execute tougher maneuvers as they improve their mastery of the core mechanics, but there's a fine line to straddle here if you want to keep both inexperienced and experienced players engaged from start to finish.

Much like a real instrument, Guitar Hero offers an intensely satisfying learning curve. It arguably even outdoes a real guitar in this respect, as it provides more useful feedback and gave the player ways to play along to their favorite songs regardless of skill level — the chosen difficulty level affects the number of notes to play and fret buttons to hit. It also adds an extra layer of progression by dividing songs into a "setlist" of increasing difficulty — so the challenge ramps up song by song as well as by difficulty level. 

Davis praises this design decision. "I never felt like it was cheap; it felt purely like I needed to get better," he says. And the feedback loops both on the screen during play and intrinsic to the challenge of mastering the twin difficulty systems combine beautifully with the simple joy of making music — of mastering hit rock songs. 

TAKEAWAY: Multi-tiered learning curves can let players control their own challenge level and rate of progress, and also provide a clearer indication of how much harder the next stage will be.

To someone who's heard about but not played the infamously-difficult Dark Souls, it may seem like a strange inclusion in this list. But extreme challenge and a good learning curve are not mutually exclusive. "The difficulty escalates very nicely," says Red Hook Studios creative director Chris Bourassa. 

"Just as you start feeling overwhelmed, you find yourself back in Firelink Shrine," he continues. "It's a clever use of the town hub as a thematic downbeat, and works like a chapter break in the game. As you catch your breath, you can look forward to a meaty jump in difficulty as you set off to the next area, followed by another smooth curve."

Cthulhu Saves the World designer Robert Boyd made a similar point in his 2012 analysis of Dark Souls' design

TAKEAWAY: High difficulty does not necessarily equate to a too-steep learning curve, as Dark Souls exemplifies.

Bourassa also praises the learning curve of real-time strategy/action-RPG hybrid Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. Specifically, he was drawn in by its tension between threat and empowerment. It gives the player confidence to try things and to experiment with new combinations of strategies thanks to a steady trickle of loot and new units. "I always felt confident heading into the missions," says Bourassa, "even when that confidence was misplaced." 

The smaller-scale structure of Dawn of War II's campaign missions in comparison to traditional RTS games helps, too. Short missions with small groups of units battling other small groups (and little or no base building) reduce the need to master micro-management and instead allow the player to learn and adapt as the situation demands. The skirmish multiplayer mode doesn't share this well-balanced learning curve, though, as it's too different to the campaign for knowledge transfer and new players tend to get annihilated. 

TAKEAWAY: A good learning curve balances danger or challenge with player empowerment; it gives the player a taste of both failure and victory and makes either feel like a learning experience.

Ironcast is the rare genre-mashup game that gets the blended elements to fit together. It's a Puzzle Quest-inspired tile-matching puzzler with a touch of roguelite adventuring and steampunk-themed resource management and mech-bot warfare.

Bourassa notes that while it looks straightforward at first, it's actually a deeply layered experience. "They do a lot of interesting things with the mechanics at all levels," he says, "and I found the meta-game quite engaging." 

The player gathers resources from the tile-matching mode, which they soon learn how to use to engage in full-on turn-based mech combat that involves a range of abilities and strategic and tactical decisions. If they lose a battle, it's game over, but certain upgrades and unlocked mech pilots remain so that they can still feel a sense of progress. All the game's complexity is metered out in such a way that you have time to get comfortable with new mechanics before your skill with them is tested. And the upgrades enable new strategies rather than simply incrementing the power of your weapons and shields.  

TAKEAWAY: You can ease players into complexity and surprise them at the same time by starting simple then repeatedly upping the stakes and stripping back the layers underlying the gameplay systems.

The original Super Mario Bros remains a masterclass in game design, and a big part of that is the expert manner in which its difficulty ebbs and flows — a small spike at the beginning followed by a gentle upward curve that has additional spikes at the end of each of its eight worlds (as Mario nears and then battles the world boss). 

It's also a great example of how to teach a player without tutorials. "It introduced most of the core concepts in World 1-1," says Schreiber. It didn't explicitly explain anything, but rather left the player to explore and discover the mechanics simply by trying things.

You may not go into the game knowing that enemies die when you jump on their heads and that blocks with question marks on them give coins or items (or what those items do), but you can stumble on these concepts within seconds and extend your understanding of how they work over the duration of the game. 

TAKEAWAY: Classic games still hold great lessons in game design, and Super Mario Bros in particular is a shining example of how to quickly introduce the core concepts and then playfully explore their permutations over the rest of the game.

There's no point developing a great game mechanic if only a tiny percentage of players can figure out how to use it. If you're striving for challenge, be fair, and remember to allow players some time to acclimatize to their new-found skills. You need to both give your player the appropriate tools and teach them how to use these tools before you ask them to scale a cliff or make a seemingly-impossible leap. 

If you're not trying to make a difficult game, remember that great learning curves should have small spikes along the way to challenge players and test their mastery of the mechanics or to introduce new mechanics. 

Most importantly, consider that teaching people how to play your game is not just a matter of telling them what to do and then leaving them alone. Nor is it about micro-managing their experience. You need to let them play and experiment and to ensure that when they fail they can understand why. Mistakes and successes alike should improve their mental models of how your systems work. And they should drive your players to get better at your game, not to walk away. 

Thanks to Corey Davis, Chris Bourassa, and Ian Schreiber for their help with putting this article together.