Instructional games fluctuate between "restricted play" and "free play." Highly structured games with lots of corrective feedback can be less engaging, whereas unstructured games with minimal feedback can lead to frustration. This mixed methods, formative evaluation study investigated how designers might find the balance between too much and too little learner support in an instructional game's design prior to actually programming the scaffolding by giving varying types of support to the subgroups "outside" of the actual program. Four "live" coaches were assigned to sets of learner pairs and played specific scaffolding "roles" based on levels of prescriptiveness and intrusiveness. Learners were asked to think aloud as their voices and screen interactions were video recorded. Findings indicated the students in this study preferred intrusive and prescriptive scaffolding. However, the students' failure to make content connections indicates the need for more specific scaffolding to support learning acquisition and transfer. (Contains 6 tables and 3 figures.)