GDM 9: Never tutorial a currency without player agency.

If your F2P game tutorial gives me 17 gems, and then shows me a button labeled “Buy a sword for 17 gems”, then that tutorial is functionally meaningless. It’s not teaching me what gems are or how they work, it’s saying “here, have a sword” with extra steps.

Pro Game Design Tip: whenever your game’s UI is blocked by a modal dialog with a single button, assume that players will click the button without reading the dialog OR the button.

But now suppose that your tutorial gives me 17 gems and shows me two buttons - labeled “Buy a sword for 15 gems” and “Buy some armor for 10 gems”. Now you have my attention, because I obviously can’t buy both, so I need to (at least superficially) think about the currency and how to spend it. Now the tutorial is doing its job.

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