To become a professional master mariner one has to develop many different skills and have an understanding of how to act in different situations on the bridge. Within the master mariner program at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, simulation technologies are used to evolve pertinent skills within the educational program. A challenge with using a full scale simulator from the outset of the program is to get the students to develop both professional competencies and internalize tacit knowledge in the navigation of a ship when the interface of the simulator itself is quite demanding. By using an adaptive Multi-Layered Design approach in combination with game based learning, this paper proposes how to guide the student through a more summative learning process. The main idea is to grant limited access to what the students can do with some functions, and gradually turn on more functionality in order to develop certain experienced behaviors to get them to understand the logical approach behind selections and to make them think through why and when they should do things.