so I just wanted to post how important I felt it is that every developer should have a walkthrough for their games, not only for the benefit of the player, but also for the developer themselves. I personally come from a background of computer science major and I've been studying programming since high school. I understand that many of these developers for these games do not have a large background in programming and many are learning as they go along, which I find is great, but the problem is that they're lacking the most basic thing that is drilled into us when we study programming.
what they lack would be planning. the first thing I've ever learned when learning programming in my early days is the importance of planning and writing up pseudo code before even touching the computer. so for those of you who dont know what pseudo code is, it is when you write out your code in plain English or whatever language you use, in such a way that it explains what you will be doing. this way you can take the same plan and apply it to any coding language you choose by simply replacing the simple steps into syntax. for example, you have a chunk of code where it is an if statement of some sort, or a branching path, in one section you would write out what conditions you need for each path in normal words. and then write out what would happen.
now the reason why I bring this up is because many of the excuses I've seen the devs give out as to why they dont have a walkthrough is because it would take too much time to write out all the different choices and what could happen and the different paths. well my response is, you should have had it written out to begin with because it would be your planned out pseudo code. with it, it should have had all the branching paths and what conditions were required to be met in order to gain any flags or any values for future sets.
also by creating these walkthroughs or pseudo codes, it really helps the developers to keep track of the player's states. of what information they may have had, what flags they have set, and what values they have obtained. many times i've seen games have continuity issues where the MC would do a certain action and then another scene shows conflicting information. with these walkthroughs you'd be able to help yourself keep track of what you have to work with and what the MC's states are in order to figure out what you can write about or how to make the story flow, especially if you are making a game with large amount of branching paths.
now I also hear how some developers say they dont want the player to have a walkthrough because they just want the player to experience the game how ever they wish to play it. and to that I just say that is absolutely wrong. a player is the one that should get the choice of how they wish to play it. the walkthrough shouldn't be a document that tells the player what to do step for step, at least not a good walkthrough. instead the walkthrough is supposed to explain the choices each action has made. also it is the player's choice if they wish to use the walkthrough or not. another reason for why I feel the walkthrough should be the player's choice to use is because there are people who like to see all the different path ways and all the different choices a user can make, but they may not have the time to go through to test all the different permutations of choices. every time you add a choice to the game, the amount of permutations grow exponentially. for example a game with 10 event choices with 2 choices each in it, would have 1,024 different permutations meaning if a player wanted to be sure they saw every event and every situation, they would have to play through that many times. even though many of them wouldn't make a difference but the player wouldnt know that.
also some people may say "well just save before each choice and then return and try the different path to see how it is different" well many games I've known of wouldnt work like this. the choice dosnt effect events until later on. so even though you can see the immediate difference of doing this, you wouldnt know what would happen down the line.
with some games, you might see certain stats or values after you've made a choice, and some may say that you should just choose which ever gives the most improvement. but then again this may not always be the right choice. I've seen many games that have made it such that you have to get a negative hit in order to get a pay off much further down the road.
so I urge developers to take a second thought and please always think about creating a walkthrough for you games, you put so much effort into making it, why not also create a document to simply guide players to see all of it's content when the player wants to see it.
TL
R summary
1. should be made since it would be the planning/pseudo code for your game
2. it should be up to the player's choice on how they wish to play the game, either it be them making their own choices, or to be told how to see the most in the shortest amount of time.
3. to help reduce the amount of permutations a player would have to see in order to make sure they see all the content they wish to see.
4. to help the developer keep track of what state the MC is in.
