A good teacher can explain difficult concepts in a way that allows the learner to obtain those concepts with minimal rote memorization. This is usually through relating the new concepts to commonly understood existing ones. Thus, you start small, simple, conveying the most straight forward concepts first, and building on them with increasing complexity in a way that presents challenges that need to be overcome, as you gradually increas the breadth of tools available.
I love this kind of games. I requested access to your playtests. We'll see if it's "too complicated". If you've played Factorio, surely you must know that there's no such thing as a game "too complicated" :) Players love depth and complexity. What they don't like is repetitive and boring gameplay. Make sure yours has variety. Also, make sure to introduce your mechanics progressively. Start simple, and unfold the complexity of your gameplay one element at a time, with a detailed tutorial. It's not reasonable to expect your players to learn everything at once. Also keep in mind that when a player says "why can't I do this?", it doesn't necessarily meant "I want to do this". It can also mean "I wish I knew this before". It's very easy, when you design a game, to forget that players won't play it with the same mindset, or expect the same things from it. Therefore, what you may think is obvious isn't necessarily obvious to everyone.
There isn't really any "bad" idea, just better or worse execution. How you explain things to the player is key, and the better you do it, the more fun the game becomes. You have a very interesting game conceptually that has a lot of strengths to it that should make understanding the game mechanica fairly straight forward. For example, when you finish explaining some of the game's mechanics, give the player a reason for why they are gaining access to new mechanics, and why they were restricted in the first place. Rather than having a tutorial that demands rote submission to the game's base mechanics, give the player some sense of progression and continuity. For example, once the player has been given the basic level of understanding, create a portal FOR them, even if they haven't gotten to that level of progression yet, and introduce the portal mechanics right there and then. Then, you speed up and artificially freeze the destruction of their first world, an explain the severity and necessity of leaving. Hold their hand. Don't let them lose yet, just get the point across in a canned way. You're telling them a story that explains why they need to do something in the game. The story doesn't need to be anything complex, just, "we are all gonna die!" right? Maybe let one of their buildings get destroyed for dramatic effect, whatever. Point being, you pull the player along with the introduction of new actions that become available to them, things they can control, and you push them forward through game mechanics they cannot control. This is the core of how you create the sense of purpose. You orchestrate the cause and effect in an exaggerated and dramatic way. Make it punchy and they'll get it, so that moving forward they'll know exactly what they are doing and why. Some games do this by creating dramatic consequences straight away, which works for some types of games, but you can also just create the illusion of these dramatic consequences if you want your game to be more forgiving.
A good teacher can explain difficult concepts in a way that allows the learner to obtain those concepts with minimal rote memorization. This is usually through relating the new concepts to commonly understood existing ones. Thus, you start small, simple, conveying the most straight forward concepts first, and building on them with increasing complexity in a way that presents challenges that need to be overcome, as you gradually increas the breadth of tools available.
I love this kind of games. I requested access to your playtests. We'll see if it's "too complicated".
If you've played Factorio, surely you must know that there's no such thing as a game "too complicated" :)
Players love depth and complexity. What they don't like is repetitive and boring gameplay.
Make sure yours has variety.
Also, make sure to introduce your mechanics progressively. Start simple, and unfold the complexity of your gameplay one element at a time, with a detailed tutorial.
It's not reasonable to expect your players to learn everything at once.
Also keep in mind that when a player says "why can't I do this?", it doesn't necessarily meant "I want to do this". It can also mean "I wish I knew this before".
It's very easy, when you design a game, to forget that players won't play it with the same mindset, or expect the same things from it.
Therefore, what you may think is obvious isn't necessarily obvious to everyone.
There isn't really any "bad" idea, just better or worse execution. How you explain things to the player is key, and the better you do it, the more fun the game becomes. You have a very interesting game conceptually that has a lot of strengths to it that should make understanding the game mechanica fairly straight forward. For example, when you finish explaining some of the game's mechanics, give the player a reason for why they are gaining access to new mechanics, and why they were restricted in the first place. Rather than having a tutorial that demands rote submission to the game's base mechanics, give the player some sense of progression and continuity. For example, once the player has been given the basic level of understanding, create a portal FOR them, even if they haven't gotten to that level of progression yet, and introduce the portal mechanics right there and then. Then, you speed up and artificially freeze the destruction of their first world, an explain the severity and necessity of leaving. Hold their hand. Don't let them lose yet, just get the point across in a canned way. You're telling them a story that explains why they need to do something in the game. The story doesn't need to be anything complex, just, "we are all gonna die!" right? Maybe let one of their buildings get destroyed for dramatic effect, whatever.
Point being, you pull the player along with the introduction of new actions that become available to them, things they can control, and you push them forward through game mechanics they cannot control. This is the core of how you create the sense of purpose. You orchestrate the cause and effect in an exaggerated and dramatic way. Make it punchy and they'll get it, so that moving forward they'll know exactly what they are doing and why.
Some games do this by creating dramatic consequences straight away, which works for some types of games, but you can also just create the illusion of these dramatic consequences if you want your game to be more forgiving.
Fatima eu te amo