Homeworld: Vast Reaches
Tutorial Design
I was the solo UX/UI designer on FarBridge’s development team for the first VR game in the Homeworld franchise. In the later phase of of project, I worked with Meta’s UXR team with the goal of improving player accessibility, specifically the tutorial experience. I observed playtests, synthesized player feedback, and worked with an engineer and level designer to implement the updates to the tutorial in Unity.
FarBridge
~30
Apr 2023 - May 2025
Gearbox Software
Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Steam VR
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The initial series of playtests revealed a consistent trend:
During campaign missions, players were not able to effectively utilize game mechanics that had been presented to them in the tutorial
This resulted in the majority of players not completing the two campaign missions that were included in the playtest, either because they weren’t able to sufficiently deal with the challenges presented in the missions or because they grew too frustrated to even attempt the second mission. Through observation and questioning, I narrowed in on three primary pain points to address…
Pain Point 1:
The tutorial presented too much information to the player while they were still learning the basics
Solution: Focus the introductory tutorial on the player’s tools and controls and relocate more advanced lessons to later campaign missions where they would be more relevant.
I started by listing the mechanics that players would need to play the game, paying specific attention to the ones that I observed playtesters struggling with in the first mission. I then advocated for a more digestible list of skills to teach in the tutorial, while proposing later missions to introduce more advanced concepts.
By spreading tutorialization throughout the campaign as the mechanics became more relevant, the introductory tutorial was able to be focused on teaching controls, resulting in a decreased completion time of about 10 minutes, along with better retention.
Pain Point 2:
Instructions were given exclusively via dialogue, and players had difficulty keeping up with them
Solution: Create custom features that allow the tutorial to communicate visually, rather than relying on text and audio lines.
Input Prompts
Describing which button the player needed to press in dialogue was indirect, and overloaded the player with information. It was especially problematic for players who were new to VR controllers.
Swapping the animated hands out for the controller models and pointing to the required input was more concise and direct.
In-World Objective Indicators
In VR, it is against best practices to take camera control from the player, and in our game set in space, we couldn’t guarantee where the player would be looking, or how far away from the objective they would be.
To address this issue, we added in-world HUD panels that would display in the players view, regardless of where they were looking, and direct them to the object the lesson was related to.
Gesture Demo Pop-Ups
For actions that required the player to execute a physical motion, text descriptions were lengthy, and often open to misinterpretation. A visual representation was much clearer.
I implemented animations in Unity for lessons teaching the player to open the sensors manager, open the command panel, and use the grip based camera controls.
Pain Point 3:
Players weren’t always sure what was required to complete lessons
Solution: Redesign tutorial lessons so the player’s access to mechanics is disabled until reaching the associated lesson, while also giving players concrete goals to accomplish using the current lesson.
While some of this issue could be connected to the pain points described above, observation of the playtests indicated two specific shortcomings with the method of progression in the the tutorials itself.
It was too easy to accidentally meet the requirements of some lessons, causing the player to progress to the next lesson without understanding what action they had done to complete it.
Some lessons did not have any metrics of success that were visible to the player, leaving them to wonder if they were doing something wrong when in actuality, they just hadn’t met the required quota for the action.
With these pain points in mind, I redesigned each of the lessons so that irrelevant mechanics were disabled, and the player had a clear and distinct goal to complete using the mechanic being taught. During this rework of the lessons, I paid careful attention to build gradually on the mechanics, seamlessly leading the player from one lesson to the next.
Results
After reworking the tutorial with new functionality and streamlining it to focus on basic mechanics, players reported having a better understanding of the game’s mechanics. Decreasing the amount of information served in the introductory tutorial did not seem to adversely effect the player’s experience later in the game, as evidenced by the increased percentage of players completing the missions in the UXR sessions. Furthermore, the decreased amount of dialogue and level of detail in the lessons allowed the players to get through the tutorial and into the meat of the gameplay faster.
Before…
Time to Complete Tutorial: ~20 minutes
Playtesters Who Completed All Demo Missions: 1/10
After…
Time to Complete Tutorial: ~10 minutes
Playtesters Who Completed All Demo Missions: 8/8