I've designed and built a quite popular game called ∞ Loop (http://loopgame.co). One of the goals was to have no text in the game at all, and try to design it so that the "right thing to do" would be the first thing you'd try to do, to make it truly intuitive.

We've sold the game and now it includes a tutorial with written explanations of what to do. In my view, the tutorial is unnecessary, because it's far nicer to just show the level and have the player figure out what the game is about intuitively.