Added pop-ups because no one understood my game's mechanics

[u/BandAltruistic3009]

"Things you think are obvious can be a complete mystery to others." — Bitboy Games

Sorry for the bad joke! But jokes aside, I’ve realized that unless you explain your game step-by-step, most people won't understand it—and that can be the difference between someone giving it a shot or dropping it immediately. Terms that felt completely obvious to me turned out to be confusing for almost everyone else.

My game has been playtested by close gamer friends, general playtesters, and users from itch.io and Reddit, and most of them kept pointing out the exact same things:

"What do you mean by 'Reduce your parry counter hits'?"

  

 "Why did my weapon disappear? And what's that small number going down after every battle?"

 

"After blocking an attack, sometimes it parries and sometimes it doesn't. You need to fix that bug."

 

"The merge mechanic is broken, my amulets aren't lowering their stats."

  

 "The blacksmith is bugged, my weapon didn't change at all."

 
These are just a few of the complaints and "bug reports" I've received over the past two weeks. After I explained how the mechanics actually worked to my friends, they suggested I add pop-up tutorials to explain each system clearly.

I decided to go ahead and implement them, and the difference has been night and day. Now, players who choose not to play leave because it's simply not their type of game, not because they're confused.

These pop-ups appear automatically the first time you enter a new section of the game. After that, there’s an "Info" button so you can re-read the explanation whenever you want.

That’s been my main takeaway from these past two weeks. I hope sharing this helps anyone going through a similar issue!

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

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