The New Player Experience

Hello. While laying on my bed, thinking about the new DLC, my train of thought got to the new player experience of Crypt of the Necrodancer. The more i thought about it, it came apparent to me, that the game is very good at making new players stay playing the game.

When you start up the game, you are greeted with the beginning cutscene, which explains the plot of the game. The plot is easy to understand, and creates intrest in the story. Eventhough you don't know anything about the game, the cutscene is "hyping up the game" by introducing the main gameplay element, constantly moving to the beat, to the player and giving Cadence a reason to be in the crypt. Before you even get to play the game, you are greeted by the amazing soundtrack by DannyB, which in my opinion is one of the reasons new players have a reason to stay playing, but I'll talk about it later.

After the beginning cutscene and loading, you are introduced to the gameplay via the tutorial. The tutorial is well paced, nice and slow enough, to make the acquiring the heaps of info, while moving to the beat much easier, but the tutorial doesn't drag on too long, and doesn't hold your hand with gigantic text boxes of new mechanics.Instead of that, all of the so called hand holding is done by Cadence and fitted into the story, with Cadence also having to learn, what to do in the crypt. Necrodancer is easy to learn hard to master and the tutorial also does a good job of teaching that. The controls are simple-Just the arrow keys! But the amount of complexity fitted into those 4 buttons is amazing. The tutorial also hints at the player having to learn movement patterns and items.

After the tutorial is done, you finally get thrown into zone 1. Eventhough you just came from the tutorial, you are still overloaded with information. That might be frightening, but here comes in the game's soundtrack. The game does incredibly well with captivating new players. Even if you aren't doing so well, you are kept confident by DannyB's soundtrack, the story and the upgrade system. I'll go through each of them one by one. The first thing is the soundtrack. It is so well written, that you just listen to the soundtrack, and it guides you through the learning of movement patterns. Talking about enemies, one of the best miniboss design decisions is, that the earlier minibosses are revisited, but with a twist. That gives the sense of familiarity, and doesn't overwhelm the player. They have already learned a way of dealing with the boss and all that is left to do now it to modify that previous knowledge.

The second thing keeping players interested is the story. You don't get much of the story at a time, and that keeps you interested. Also you get new characters after beating a new zone as Cadence, that range from easy to difficult, so the joy of discovery keeps it fresh, until you get better.

The third thing is the upgrade system. First you have to unlock the shopkeeps. You see people in gages, and get keys in chests and shops. After unlocking the shops, when playing single zone mode, you can collect diamonds, which you can spend in the lobby.The upgrade system also allows the player to upgrade, what they feel, they need. Die too quickly? Get health upgrades! Need more money to buy cool items? Buy multiplier upgrades! Old items aren't good enough? Unlock new ones! Another thing they did with the upgrade system is, that you have to spend the diamonds you earn after each run, or they disapear. That might seem like nuisance in the beginning, but it forces players to improve in the game. It acts like a driving force after unlocking the shops and if you are playing the game, you are memorizing the enemy patterns and improving via that. The slower diamond grind helps to make that learning curve as gradual as possible.

I have mostly been focusing only zone 1 currently, but the thing that keeps the players learning and playing is that every zone introduces new mechanics. The changes are not insane, but have a massive impact on how you play the game. The biggest gamechangers are the floor "modifiers": Coals, Ice and Goo. When before you had to only pay attention to the enemy movements, then now you have to learn to take in the floor and the things enemies create and drop, when killed. Also in zone 4 you get sarcophagi, which keep spawning extra things. Combine all of that, and you get a very complex game, introduced to the players in bits.

After completing necrodancer, the players unlock Melody, who has to keep moving, to attack, but is considered easier than Cadence and serves as kind of a break before getting Aria.

One thing, that we, the players who play the game every day, to speedrun or complete harder challenges with it often forget is, that the beginner experience is amazingly well crafted in the game (Either intentionally or not :D), and most of us are gonna have to relive that with the DLC, so Happy learning Necrodancer community!

#DLC #Thoughts