Goal
Ensure players always know what goals or objectives they’re supposed to be working toward at any point during gameplay.Overview
Remembering current objectives is hard for many reasons — memory or attention conditions, distractibility, or just not having played the game in a while. Every player benefits from being able to look up:- What they should do next
- How far they’ve come
- What the story so far is
Scoping questions
- Does progress require completing tasks (visit locations, talk to NPCs, take specific actions)?
- Does progress require collection (
4/4 keys, crafting prerequisites)? - How many things must the player remember at once, and for how long?
- Is a long ongoing narrative critical?
- Are the environments large and complex?
Implementation guidelines
Reviewable tasks and objectives
- Players can review current tasks and objectives at any time. Descriptions are clear and prescriptive (
Unblock the obstructed laser, notFix the thing). - Include a log-style list of everything completed to date, ideally separated by main vs side quests.
Directional guidance
- Offer optional waypoint or path markers, hints, and directional cues when the player has made no progress after a period of time.
- Guidance features may be included as part of difficulty presets.
Progress descriptions
- Give clear numeric progress toward prerequisites (
15/20 skulls collected,3 of 5 hidden switches found) plus overall area-completion percentages.
Interruption control
- Notifications and side-quest prompts not related to the current objective can be postponed or suppressed by the player.
Narrative recap
- Provide a way to revisit the game’s narrative — replay cutscenes, view a written summary, or auto-show a “story so far” on launch.
Descriptive saves
- Save files include a screenshot, timestamp, location, and brief summary of progress and objectives.
Tutorials
- Provide gameplay tutorials that explain or demonstrate core mechanics.
- Tutorials are interactive (playing through mechanics in a real or simulated context) or provided as video demonstrations.
- Static control-scheme screens are not tutorials.
- Tutorials are available on-demand at any point in the game, even after completion.
- Provide subtitles for tutorials with voiceover, narration, or dialogue.