Tomb of the Mask does not begin as most of mobile games do when you first launch them.
After tapping on the initial launch screen, the game immediately presents the main menu and requires from us to press the play button (this triangle one that music players typically use), without any indicator or a dimmed interface.
After tapping to start our first game though, the tutorial logic kicks in.
The game pauses and the screen gets dimmed apart form a circle in the center of the screen (around our character).
A yellow hand appears swiping from left to right to teach us that we need to make this swipe gesture to move our character to the right. We can't proceed unless we make this exact gesture.
By the same virtue, we learn about the bottom to top and left to right swipe gestures. Notice that the game doesn't teach us the top to bottom one, as it can be easily deduced. Also notice how the level entrance is structured so you can understand why you are making those moves.
After getting the hang of the movement gestures, the game pauses again to let us know about the shield mechanic. The hand appears again, this time showing us that we have to double tap, along with a text that reads "Double tap to activate a shield", hinting that there might be more than one shield(s) available in a playthrough. Again, we need to make the gesture before the game resumes again.
Other mechanics of the game such as the magnet, the fact that you have to outrun the bottom of the screen that flashes or the pointy enemies at the second level are not taught at all. Through visual feedback, we understand that if something has turquoise color (bottom of the screen, enemies, traps) then we need to avoid it at all costs.
I really love the minimalistic style of the tutorial mechanics of this game as it achieves so many by telling us so little without boring the player with walls of text or unskippable popups.