EDIT: Taron has reached out to take me up on my offer to help with the writing and grammar issues. Any developer willing to respond to criticism and take action to improve their work is extremely commendable and I’m so grateful to be able to help. What an amazing guy! You can disregard the post below, but I’ll leave it unedited so people can still refer to it, but know that Taron is active in trying to make the tutorial the best it can be!
I just finished the tutorial, and wow. It's very obvious, with respect, that the person in charge of writing the tutorial either doesn't speak English and wrote in their native language and translated it, or they speak/write very broken English and were allowed to write for this tutorial. I don't understand how this tutorial ever got approved. I gave the tutorial 3 stars because at the end I still did understand at a very basic level how to play the game, but there are so many aspects that could be improved that I started writing notes on what was wrong in the tutorial. I hope the developer sees this as constructive criticism and will find someone who writes in perfect English to go through the entirety of the tutorial and fix all of the grammatical errors found throughout it. On a side note, this is something I would happily volunteer to do if BGA or the developer allowed me. I love writing, and I love helping the creative process for both online and physical games. If the developer or an admin at BGA would like to reach out to me to have me fix all the errors I spotted, I'd be happy to do so freely.
Here are all my notes regarding the Zombicide tutorial:
1) Typos/Grammatical Errors in almost every single tutorial box. Such examples include:
- Highly lacking in the usage of basic words such as "the," "they," "of," and "a" where it's necessary.
- "Line of Sight" is spelled "Line of Sigh."
- Unnecessary capitalization, mainly in the word "You," but is also seen elsewhere.
- Lack of pluralization for many words such as "Zombie" when it should be "Zombies", "Survivor," and "Zone."
- Improper bolding (some words are bolded when they shouldn't, or vice versa, or the bolding is cut off mid-word).
2) Mentions that Elle is exceptional in shooting but doesn't show why until later. Character skills/bonuses/numbers should be explained near the beginning of the tutorial or at the very first instance it's relevant. Adrenaline and skills should be talked about near the beginning, but how you earn adrenaline can be saved until later.
3) Talks about noise tokens earlier in the tutorial before actually explaining what they are or what causes them, thus making the zombie phase confusing to understand regarding movement. It should all be explained before the first zombie phase to allow for a clearer understanding.
4) Regarding points 2) and 3), I feel that the tutorial needs restructuring to keep all aspects of gameplay mechanics closely together. Noise shouldn't be mentioned during the zombie phase only to be explained later, as it creates confusion for what noise is, how it's generated (especially because the tutorial automatically has characters generate noise), and how it affects zombie movement. This can be applied to the character sheets as well concerning skills, adrenaline, etc...
This tutorial is a mess. I appreciate that I can play the game at a basic level, but things were so out of place that it had me questioning multiple mechanics way before they were properly explained. To repeat myself, I mean no offense with this criticism, as it is meant to be constructive, but I hope the developer will look at this and make a conscious effort to improve the tutorial or recruit others to assist the writing side of things, and will also be open to restructuring parts of the tutorial. Thank you to the developer and the people at BGA for adding Zombicide for us to play. It's been a game I've been wanting to play for a long time, I just hope effort will be made to improve the tutorial. Thanks.
I just finished the tutorial, and wow. It's very obvious, with respect, that the person in charge of writing the tutorial either doesn't speak English and wrote in their native language and translated it, or they speak/write very broken English and were allowed to write for this tutorial. I don't understand how this tutorial ever got approved. I gave the tutorial 3 stars because at the end I still did understand at a very basic level how to play the game, but there are so many aspects that could be improved that I started writing notes on what was wrong in the tutorial. I hope the developer sees this as constructive criticism and will find someone who writes in perfect English to go through the entirety of the tutorial and fix all of the grammatical errors found throughout it. On a side note, this is something I would happily volunteer to do if BGA or the developer allowed me. I love writing, and I love helping the creative process for both online and physical games. If the developer or an admin at BGA would like to reach out to me to have me fix all the errors I spotted, I'd be happy to do so freely.
Here are all my notes regarding the Zombicide tutorial:
1) Typos/Grammatical Errors in almost every single tutorial box. Such examples include:
- Highly lacking in the usage of basic words such as "the," "they," "of," and "a" where it's necessary.
- "Line of Sight" is spelled "Line of Sigh."
- Unnecessary capitalization, mainly in the word "You," but is also seen elsewhere.
- Lack of pluralization for many words such as "Zombie" when it should be "Zombies", "Survivor," and "Zone."
- Improper bolding (some words are bolded when they shouldn't, or vice versa, or the bolding is cut off mid-word).
2) Mentions that Elle is exceptional in shooting but doesn't show why until later. Character skills/bonuses/numbers should be explained near the beginning of the tutorial or at the very first instance it's relevant. Adrenaline and skills should be talked about near the beginning, but how you earn adrenaline can be saved until later.
3) Talks about noise tokens earlier in the tutorial before actually explaining what they are or what causes them, thus making the zombie phase confusing to understand regarding movement. It should all be explained before the first zombie phase to allow for a clearer understanding.
4) Regarding points 2) and 3), I feel that the tutorial needs restructuring to keep all aspects of gameplay mechanics closely together. Noise shouldn't be mentioned during the zombie phase only to be explained later, as it creates confusion for what noise is, how it's generated (especially because the tutorial automatically has characters generate noise), and how it affects zombie movement. This can be applied to the character sheets as well concerning skills, adrenaline, etc...
This tutorial is a mess. I appreciate that I can play the game at a basic level, but things were so out of place that it had me questioning multiple mechanics way before they were properly explained. To repeat myself, I mean no offense with this criticism, as it is meant to be constructive, but I hope the developer will look at this and make a conscious effort to improve the tutorial or recruit others to assist the writing side of things, and will also be open to restructuring parts of the tutorial. Thank you to the developer and the people at BGA for adding Zombicide for us to play. It's been a game I've been wanting to play for a long time, I just hope effort will be made to improve the tutorial. Thanks.
