Tantalus remains my favourite scenario for pure shooting stuff type fun. Better than Halo even for that kind of stuff.
: Goran in his Yota Saga once had a purely instructional level. It simply had a
: terminal that explained why the following level was set up the way it was
: and how to play it.
Please don't - that kind of thing really, really destroy's the suspension of disbelief these games rely on. If you do that, you may as well have as the final terminal of the failure branch "Haha, you failed, now go read the walkthrough and do it right this time."
: If this absolutely goes against your grain, then the next best thing is to
: include a very specific readme file - perhaps entitled "Open if
: you're stuck in a loop".
Alternatively, I would recommend that, perhaps, some of the more difficult loops be reduced to "can only be failed once" type, in the sense that, once failed, they return to an altered "choice" type level. Similar to the one that set them off onto the failure branch, but with changes that make it more obvious what the success path may be.
Hell, with time travel, perhaps even something along the lines of "You return, moments after your departure to failure." With your newfound foreknowledge of the inevetable events of the failed path you'd just chosen, the wisdom of the wiser path would be displayed in a structurally different, yet similar level. You could still chose the failure option, but it's nature would be more clear to you.
