Tutorial levels, ranked: teaching you to play versus wasting your time

[Dank15]

A good tutorial level teaches you the actual mechanics you'll need without ever feeling like a tutorial, folding lessons naturally into something that also happens to be fun on its own merits. A bad one either condescends by over-explaining the obvious, or dumps so much information at once that none of it actually sticks

At the top of a rough ranking sit tutorials disguised as genuine gameplay, teaching core mechanics through natural environmental design rather than a wall of text boxes. In the middle sit the straightforward, competent tutorials that get the job done without much personality. At the bottom sit the tutorials people actively skip on a second playthrough because they add nothing but friction

Nominate your own pick for the best or worst tutorial level you've actually played through, and let's see where the community consensus lands

[Amber78]

There's a tutorial I've skipped on every single replay specifically because it front-loads walls of text nobody actually reads carefully

[Sam92]

The disguised as gameplay category is genuinely the gold standard, you don't even realize you were being taught anything until it clicks later

[Jordan89]

My top pick taught an entire core mechanic through level design alone without a single explicit text popup, genuinely elegant work

[NeonTundra]

I remember the GameFAQ days

[Freddy93]

Middle tier competent tutorials get unfairly overlooked, sometimes just clearly explaining the controls without pretension is exactly what a game needs

[Red Wrench]

That bottom pick actively made me want to quit before the actual game even started, that's a genuinely rough first impression to give players

[NovaPrime]

Would add that letting players skip the tutorial entirely on repeat playthroughs should honestly just be a standard expected feature at this point