People don't read instructions

I always feel trapped when one of those product tours starts. They show me buttons and features before I even have any idea what the product is about. I personally prefer exploring freely.

It's the same in computer games. This kind of "Press A to jump, go here, take out your sword" tutorials, where you are forced to take a specific action, don't do a good job of teaching the user how the interface works.

Is there a way to provide instructions in a way that feels non-intrusive? In some games, the goal is "Go to the gate!", but it's up to you how you get there, and if you get stuck on something for a bit, only that's when you start getting hints on how to do it.

If I learned anything from my front-end job (gamedev and software) is that people DO NOT READ.

You can show a big warning pop-up with just a few words, "THIS WILL DELETE ALL YOUR DATA, ARE YOU SURE?". And users will just click "Yes" or "Ok" just to make the pop-up go away. The whole cookie pop-up epidemic didn't help either: people got conditioned to close all pop-ups without reading them.

I was watching my favorite streamer (Lirik) a few days ago play the recently (re)launched The Sims 2. He accidentally went to Quit Game → Progress not saved! Are you sure you want to quit? *click* YES! He wanted to get to a specific screen. Once that pop-up got in the way, he instantly got rid of it. Unfortunately, the game doesn't have auto-save, so he lost around one hour of gameplay (all the decision-overload part of buying a new house and furnishing it).
This all happened in a matter of seconds, people simply don't read if something interrupts their flow. They want to achieve something and do it as quickly as possible, without being interrupted.

A good tour/guide is simply integrated in the flow. Not on top of it. Not on the side. It teaches you stuff by letting you figure out how to do what you want to achieve by yourself. It does this by always restricting the number of things you see and can do, until you learn or need them.

What works in games is to progressively show more features/UI as you progress the game/story and gain new "powers". Having a cluttered UI and pointing "this does that, this does that", doesn't work. Even worse if they are shown one after another in a short time span. It's a lot more efficient to start with an empty UI, as much as possible, and add more and more buttons/features, as the user keeps learning more.

For example, in my analytics app, before adding any domain name, most of the buttons are disabled. Yes, they are there, but you have a limited number of choices you can make and buttons you can press. Instead of telling you "press this button", you give the user fewer choices. You should still make core functionality available that the user might want, but hidden (e.g. under a Settings gear icon), so it doesn't disrupt the expected user flow.

Once they press that button, and they learn what it does, you can unlock more of the flow/UI.

This is only one way to do it, but the main gist is: guide the user into taking the correct action, DO NOT tell them how to do it. People hate and don't read instructions.