Everything in this log so far assumes you know how the game works. You don’t, the first time. You open a tab, you see a street, something red moves, and you have maybe an hour of goodwill before you close the tab and never think about it again. This week was about that hour.
Three things, then go
When you create your survivor, before you can type a name, a few cards tell you three things. Noise brings the dead. You scavenge buildings to live. When you die, you die. That’s the whole briefing. It’s skippable, and after the last card you’re back at the name box with nothing else between you and the street.
I don’t want a tutorial. A tutorial is a fake street with fake zombies where nothing you do counts, and it teaches you that nothing you do counts. The real street teaches better, as long as somebody says three things first.
Goals, not lessons
Once you’re in, a small button sits in the corner with a count on it, and tapping it opens a list. Take your first steps. Enter a building. Scavenge some supplies. Eat something. Arm yourself. Open the map. Check the log. Put down a zombie. Survive your first day. Nine things, and every one of them is something you’d do anyway. The card doesn’t tell you how. It notices when you have, and ticks it.
The order matters. The first four are the loop: walk, go inside, search, eat. That’s the day. Then arm yourself, which is the first thing that makes you dangerous. Then the two tools that make the city legible, the map and the log. Then a kill, and a night. If you’ve ticked all nine you’ve played the game, and the card goes away for good when you say so.
One small change made the eat goal real. A new survivor used to start with a full stomach, so “eat something” was a chore you did to tick a box. Now you start a little hungry. Not dangerously, but enough that the meter is visibly not full, and the first time you find a can of something the goal is a want.
Hints where you are
The other half is a dozen or so hints that fire once, in the moment, and never again. The first zombie you see. The first time one has noticed you. The first time you’re hurt, which is when you need to learn that health doesn’t come back on its own. The first time you’re properly hungry. The first time it gets dark and your sight pulls in. The first time you go inside and find the building panel. Each one is a sentence or two, sits at the top of the map, stays until you say you’ve read it, and has a “turn off tips” link right there for the people who’ve played before.
The rule for a hint is that it has to be about the thing on screen. Not “zombies are attracted to noise” as a fact from a manual, but “that’s a zombie, and here’s what it will do”. If the thing isn’t on screen, the hint waits. Some players will go a whole day without seeing the hunger one, because they ate. Good.
Hints are a crutch, and every crutch I add is an admission that the game didn’t explain itself. The best version of this week is the one where none of it is needed, where the street and the sounds and the meters say everything, and the goals card is a list of things you’d already done. I’m not there, so the tips have an off switch and the card has a remove button.