First experience
As soon as we start the game we get this letter from Peach. Guess where she is!
After some plot related unskippable walls of text in overlays, Mario starts his autorun trip! The game pauses and pops up an overlay which informs us that Mario runs automatically and we have to press the OK button to continue. It's really interesting to note here that the OK button appears after a slight delay in order to give us time to read the message. Neat!
After experiencing the first obstacle, the game pauses again and by using the same logic informs us that Mario will also automatically vault over them. The only difference now is the appearance of the red arrow that guides our attention to the obstacle.
Oops, I died! Guess what though, this was done on purpose. The game doen't let us jump at that point, so it is certain that we die so that we learn the retry mechanic: After dying, Mario gets in a bubble that goes backwards.
The game shows an overlay again to teach us what the bubble does (with a red arrow pointing to the bubble) and after we tap OK the bubble moves backwards until the game pauses again to let us know that we can pop the bubble by tapping the screen. After tapping OK, we get an extra indicator and a message that instructs us to tap the screen.
As soon as Mario faces his first enemy, the game pauses again showing us an overlay that teaches us that we don't need to kill every enemy! Such a peaceful game, isn't it?
After vaulting over some enemies, the tutorial teaches us the single move that we are allowed to make in this game: jump! We learn -again via an overlay message- that the longer we press the higher Mario will jump. Just like the bubble mechanic, we get the visual indicator and the message to touch and hold in order to collect the coins that are placed in variable heights and -boy- are those mushroom blocks? Oh, the memories!
One thing that I particularly liked are the outlined arrow blocks: Once Mario gets past one of them, coins are spawned at the direction that the arrow inside the block points at.
Finally we get the last message of the tutorial: We can make some cool jump moves after vaulting over enemies! As you can see from the video, I don't quite do that because I didn't pay so much attention on the text. I guess that's indicative of how overlays with text are really not the best way to convey information to a new player.
World 1-1
Oh noes! Our kingdom is in ruins! Toad informs us that -you got it right- princess was kidnapped by Bowser again so…we need to go on tour!?
Here, Super Mario Run guides us through the screens by displaying a white gloved hand pointing to the only option available, dimming and locking everything else. Notice also that all the currencies are grayed out. I just noticed that when writing this article. Possibly pointless but worth mentioning.
Moving on to the World Tour selection screen, Toad informs us to make haste and save the princess (ugh the stereotypes) and now the white gloved hand points us to World 1-1. Nostalgia factor +100
We do have yet one more tap to make though! The overlay shows (among other things) that there are five purple coins scattered in the level that we can find. That's not something that was conveyed explictly but the hollow dotted coins do help a lot. Again, the hand only allows us to tap on the Start button.
On our first ever Super Mario Run playthrough there are no more overlays, arrows or gloved hands, it's just gameplay at last! Notice how the game doesn't teach us about how the pause blocks work, as it's super intuitive! Oh yeah and I managed to find all the five purple coins during my first run! Wee!
Toad Rally
Next up, it's Toad Rally time! Toad again talks to us to let us know we got tickets for the event. Notice how the important stuff are highlighted in red (tickets, Toad Rally, bring Toads back).
Again, we get the gloved white hand pointing at the Rally option.
Toadette -the judge of Toad Rally (duh!)- welcomes us to the event.
After picking Toad as our opponent (as pointed out by the white hand), we start the race.
As the race begins we get three different overlay messages by Toadette, who is pointing out how the race mechanics work.
After the race ends (boy that an intense one), Toadette tells us how the winner gets selected.
In general, Toad Rally mechanics are conveyed only through overlay text and not by using in-game indications, contrary to the main game. This, in my opinion, makes it a weaker tutorial experience than the main game, as those blocks of text (regardless of how small they are) can be skipped easily.
Kingdom Builder
Finally we get to the base-building side of the game. It looks like our castle has gained two levels at once (due to the fact that I am such a good Mario player I guess) which is shown by an overlay (at that point I think that this is the de facto way that the game conveys new information). Toad talks to us again and then we get to the guided interface through the white glove mechanic which now hovers above and points to the Build button.
Once inside the Kingdom Builder, Toad introduces us to the base building mechanic via a new overlay and the white glove now points to the Shop button (where Nintendo wants us to spend most of our time I suppose). Again, while inside the shop the same logic applies: Toad speaks again and then the hand points to the star section, pointing us to buy a Red Bonus Game House. Since we can't do otherwise, we 'Get' the house (hey, it's free!) and then we confirm that we want to immediately place it somewhere in our kingdom.
The placement of the buildings happens by showing rounded bordered rectangles in the available spots and for the first time the game doesn't require from us to tap on a specific one. We are free to place it anywhere we want!
After placing the house, Toad informs us that we can tap at the house to react with it.