Deep Dive: Making a manual for every learning style with The Banished Vault
Deep Dive: Making a manual for every learning style with The Banished Vault
Deep Dive: Making a manual for every learning style with The Banished Vault
By Nic Tringali
December 21, 2023
Summary
Astronaut: The Best, how the developers of Meet Your Maker avoided crunch by adopting smart production practices, and how the team behind Dead Cells turned the game into a franchise by embracing people-first values.
In this edition, Nic Tringali, director of The Banished Vault, tells us about the decision to make a manual for the game and how it was designed to accommodate multiple learning styles.
The Banished Vault, a strategy game of exploring space on an interstellar gothic monastery, is designed around a manual.
The manual is an integral component of the game, and we made it to better teach players and alleviate many production issues around tutorials.
The Game Concepts portion of the manual explains all the various components to the game, and forms the basis of the self-directed trial and error method of learning.
While we're careful to signal that this is unnecessary, it's certainly possible! The overall structure of the manual is designed to be read normally, with the tutorial scenarios preceding the game concepts so that players will definitely know the scenarios exist before choosing to read the whole manual.
To wrap up, the studio is very happy with how the manual has come out, both as a method of teaching players the game and in its own right as a supporting text.
Reference
Tringali, N. (2023, December 21). Deep Dive: Making a manual for every learning style with The Banished Vault. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/deep-dive-the-banished-vault-manual