So I've decided to make the next game from The Floorsland series and I've a little enquiry to make about instructions.

I've tried different approaches to this before. Games with no instructions have had people complaining about it despite the instructions being ignored when I put them in. For The Floorsland Origins I tried forcing you to play a tutorial level, but that backfired badly: due to people most likely skipping through all the dialogues, they were left completely unaware of certain non-obvious physics and thus were unable to proceed. I have a feeling that this is the reason the game has such a low score: people get stuck due to their own ignorance. Just play the game if you want to know what I'm talking about.

I'm thinking what to do for The Floorsland: Anniversary. Tutorial levels won't help and putting the tutorial in the first level will simply backfire like that again. Here's my question: how do you think I should do it? I'm clueless about telling ignorant players about game mechanics and the only thing I can think of is not having them required, but rather giving you access to powerups and stuff if you do listen to the explanation and apply those mechanics.

What are your two cents on this?