The main way the game teaches you how to play is the "advancements" system. It's a tree of achievements, starting with "walk around" and "chop down a tree", and

The main way the game teaches you how to play is the "advancements" system. It's a tree of achievements, starting with "walk around" and "chop down a tree", and ending with "defeat the final boss" or "bake a cake", each with a one-line description. There's also a "recipe book", which tells you how to craft[1] items. More recipes get added as you collect the ingredients needed to make them. However, these systems were only added in 2017. (For contrast, the game started development in 2009 and reached 1.0 in 2011.) Before that, how to progress was a lot less clear. It was assumed you had someone teaching you how to play, that you watched videos of other people playing, or that you read the wiki. [1]: The process of combining the items you've collected, by slotting them into a 3×3 grid in a specific pattern (the "recipe"), to make new, more useful items.