Sneak peek: Campaign tutorial

Hello everyone!

Besides the talent overhaul we talked about last time, the December update wraps up the tutorial rework introduced earlier this autumn by adding tutorial features integrated into the singleplayer campaign mode. This additional early-game guidance should make it smoother for new sailors to get into traversing Europa’s ocean.

The basic idea of the campaign tutorial is to walk players through a simplified version of the usual campaign loop, explaining the key objectives a bit more than we have in the past. The tutorial is enabled when you begin a singleplayer campaign on the lower difficulties, and can be disabled in the settings when you feel properly trained.

Barotrauma campaign tutorial settings — You can choose to enable or disable the tutorial when starting a new game.

New sailor training protocol

The campaign tutorial focuses on those parts of leading a crew and running a submarine that are important for all crewmembers to understand, so it is not job-specific. In the tutorial, you start at a simplified outpost and are directed to visit the appropriate NPCs to prepare for a mission. Once everything is ready, you’ll set out to complete a mission, with further instructions along the way.

The new campaign tutorial also allowed us to add some new writing to the beginning of the game, to get new players oriented not only to the controls and objectives but the world as well. Combined with the new role tutorials added in the previous update, new sailors now have a more immersive first experience and hopefully enjoy their stay.

Barotrauma new campaign tutorial beginning — New dialogue to immerse the player into the world of Barotrauma.

Additional polishing

Besides adding the new campaign tutorial, we’ve also put some finishing touches on the basic and role tutorials that we added earlier. We’ve added or changed some texts which were missing in the first implementation, added exit popups where tutorials were successfully completed, and done overall fixing and polishing here and there.

Barotrauma new reactor infographic — This new infographic explains how the reactor is used, and it can be opened by clicking the small “help” icon on the reactor interface.

Onwards and downwards

The tutorial overhaul has taken us many months to complete, but now we feel the beginning of the game should be much more approachable… and serve as a stronger narrative onset for what’s to come deeper in the sea. Behind the scenes, we’ve already turned our gaze towards the other end of the campaign, and can’t wait to tell you more about that, in the coming months.

In the meantime, the new campaign tutorial is now playable in the Unstable test version, with a public release to follow in our December update.