I was watching how different people play my game, and noticed an interesting common issue with the tutorial. Tiny Inc. Repair Shop is a puzzle game, where you need to place tiny creatures on the board in the correct position, so that they bring electrical charge to a battery (gif probably explains it better). Every creature is special: - one is going only left or right - second up or down - the third one charges and pushes any creature on it's way.

The tutorial that I could afford making during 2 days of compo, looks like notepad on the side which shows creature description when you hover the creature. Like on this gif

The problem with this is that people don't notice that the text in the notepad changes and can't understand how the creatures work, as their eyes and attention are at another place. What I saw is that players rarely read the notepad at all, they just put the creatures on the board and try to understand what they do after.

How could I help player to understand this better?

One way might be to show gif in the notepad (or pictures) instead of the text. The blinking should be more attractive to the player's eye, and catch their attention.

Another way I quickly implemented is that creatures just describe what they do while they sleep and wait for player to take them, something like this:

The reason I like this idea is that apart from exposing player the information about how creatures work, I also convey their personality through the short line of text. Something I used entire notepad page before could actually be just three words of text in a bubble.

What do you think, is it helpful or too vague? Any other ideas on how to make tutorial in such games?

If you want to play, btw, here is the link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-inc-repair-shop