HowTo Network emblem How To: Gaming THE HOW TO CO. — EDITION 10
A wide stone threshold under a ruined arch at first light, a half-packed travelling pack and a pair of boots set together on the flagstones, the mountain road running out into gold haze beyond.
◆ WAYPOINT 01  ·  PATH 01 — THE THRESHOLD

SIT DOWN
and start badly.

Nobody’s first hour goes well. It is a first hour — that is the whole of the job description.

ONE HOUR, START TO STOPWORDS BY POPPYTHREE MARKED EXITS — TAKE ANY OF THEM
Worn walking boots set side by side on a sunlit stone step above a valley of cloud, laces still loose. A wooden practice post on a grassy ridge at sunrise, its bark scarred with a few shallow, uneven first strikes. A low stone bench beside a mountain path at dawn, a folded blue cloak laid across it next to an unopened canvas bundle.
0:00

Set the chair before the character. Volume down two notches. Subtitles on, whatever you think you think about subtitles. Something to drink within arm’s reach. You are about to spend an hour learning a language, and every one of those is a small kindness to the person doing the learning.

SITTING DOWNONE HOUR, NOT A CAREER
LEAVE HERE — NOTHING IS LOST
0:10

Press everything once, badly. The first ten minutes are not for playing well. They are for finding out which button does the thing, and the quickest way to learn that is to do all of them in the wrong order somewhere nothing is trying to kill you. Miss. Miss again. The post does not mind.

WHAT TO TOUCHWHAT TO IGNOREMISSING ON PURPOSE
LEAVE HERE — IT WILL KEEP
0:30

The heaviness is not the game. Half an hour in, the controls will feel like somebody else’s coat. That is not a fault and it is not you — it is the ordinary gap between a hand and a habit, and it closes on its own. Leave the map. Leave the bundle unopened. Nothing is broken and nothing needs fixing yet.

NOTHING IS BROKENNEW HANDS
LEAVE HERE — THE HOUR STILL COUNTS
0:52

Leave the tutorial early.

The moment it starts repeating itself it has finished teaching and begun filling time. Whatever it had left to show you takes about ten minutes to pick up by simply playing, which is the thing you came here to do.

An hour is a whole hour. You do not owe it a second one.

WHEN TO QUIT A TUTORIALREPEATED PROMPTSTHE SECOND SESSION
A flagstone road seen from knee height, climbing away between rocks into gold morning haze and distant peaks.

Everything above this bend will still be there tomorrow, and the day after that. Nothing up the road expires.

Quest Log

SIX GUIDES BEING WRITTEN FOR THIS PATH — ALL PENDING
How to Spend the First Ten Minutes of a Game You Don’t Understand
How to Know When a Tutorial Has Stopped Teaching You Anything
How to Sit Down for an Hour Without Deciding You’re Bad at This
How to Tell Clumsy Hands From a Badly Made Game
How to Ignore Most of What a Game Shows You in the First Hour
How to Start a Second Session After a First One That Went Badly
A traveller's pack lying close on a rocky ledge above a sea of cloud, straps loose and one brass buckle catching the low sun.

“I have quit more tutorials than I have finished. The ones I finished were not better ones — I just happened to have the whole afternoon.”

Poppy plays the first hour of everything and the second hour of almost nothing, and considers that a fair way to spend an evening.

POPPY — CONTRIBUTOR PROFILE · HOME REGIONS: VIDEO & COLLECTIBLES