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jerkyhips1 day ago(+1)

Hey! I'm going to give you some feedback about the trailer... actually I typed a very long message and lost it as I clicked a link to visit your page so it's taking a lot motivation to type everything again... hopefully it will still sound fresh. Anyway, I'm sorry to say that, as a trailer, it's really missing the point and doesn't do justice to your game and that's a real shame.

I watched it without reading the game page to watch with no preconceived idea about the game. Then I wrote my message, then I read your game page... I'll try to remember everything I had in mind. But before I do it, let me stress that I'm focusing on the trailer, not the game. The game itself, or what I gathered from my initial watch, has some pretty neat features apparently, and I could see myself playing it. But man, you could make it shine so much more than with the current trailer. Let me explain why - though these are my own views and people could disagree...

  • It's much much too long: it should be 30, 45 seconds max! Even for a 3h feature Holywood film you never see a trailer going over 1,5 min and that's already too long. I mean if you can't tell someone what your game is about in less than 3 minutes, something is wrong. I was actually very patient to watch until the end...
  • It doesn't provide the key information about the game!What kind of game is it? An escape game? Are there different unrelated rooms like levels? Who am I? Am I a prisoner? A detective? Where am I? Am I trapped in a huge mansion? What is at stake? What is to fear? What if I don't succeed? Is there a time limit? The trailer doesn't give any of these information and that's exactly what I'd need. If I know I'm going to solve puzzles, I want to understand the story a bit you see.
  • It doesn't say/show what makes your game stand out: how different is it from games that may look like it but are different? It's not just a horror adventure game? Why then? It's not just an escape game? Then why? It's not your typical story? Then how is it different? I see the meters on the top-lefthand side of the screen, something you might not notice in a trailer, but I had time to look around... I saw depression, wound... how are these measured, impacted? They seem important.

Then as I told you, I went to check out the page for the game and.... everything was there!!! Very clear and nicely laid out. Why didn't you use any of these to create your trailer? Going through minutes of slow-paced gameplay is not efficient for a trailer. Illustrate all the things you've written on your game page is what you really need. Point out to the story, make us care about the character and why you should help/play him. On a side note, maybe it's a shame the character hasn't got an official name, it would help make the story feel more real. Or, if you want to make it so that the player IS the character, then word it clearly this way: "you're so and so, you'll need to do this and that". Not sure what you're aiming for.

The trailer needs to have a pace, with different steps, like a movie. You need to think about it, though I feel that the game page has almost the whole thing figured out. You could always check with an AI to help breaking down the different scenes and the description of the scenes. I'm not saying to use the AI to generate the trailer! But rather, help break down the short movie, in 3 to 5 steps, each one with a purpose and a choice of what you show. And then you cut it, edit the gameplay sequences with some text overlay. You see what I mean?

Anyway, I hope this helps... I was very close to give up on this feedback when I lost my initial post. Hopefully you'll hear what I'm saying. Maybe you agree, maybe you don't, but you asked for feedback, I gave you some ;-)

JerkyHips

PS: I recently put out my first game and had to create a trailer too, but I only had 1 day to do it... I know it's not perfect and it's for a very different type of game, but I really tried to apply what I said above, with the material I had. Feel free to criticize it 😅 

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RATASOFTWARE.INC1 day ago(+1)

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed response, especially after losing your original post, I really appreciate it.

The first and probably biggest problem is that I've simply never done anything like this before. I've never had to design a game trailer, so I don't really have a clear idea of how to approach it or what a good trailer for this kind of game should look like. Most of the advice I find online is aimed at games with combat, action or very visually dynamic gameplay, which doesn't really apply to mine.

The game itself also makes things a little more difficult. It's quite long (around 10–14 hours), and there are more than 100 different scenarios in the game. So when it comes to choosing what to show, I'm honestly not always sure which scenes are actually interesting from an outside perspective and which ones only feel interesting because I already know the story behind them. Simply cutting together the "most exciting gameplay moments" isn't really an option in the same way it would be for an action game... 🤷

That said, I think I understand much better what you're suggesting now. Instead of thinking of the trailer as "here are some gameplay clips from my game", I should approach it more like a very short movie, with each section having a specific purpose. I'm going to go back to the drawing board and try to restructure the trailer using the approach you've suggested. Breaking it down into 3–5 stages with a clear purpose for each one actually gives me a much better starting point than what I had before.

Thanks a lot again, and good luck with your game! 😘

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jerkyhips1 day ago

Hello! I'm glad you didn't hate me after my message and found it useful 😅 And as you can read, somebody else said they liked the trailer... But I think you understood well what I meant. You don't need to spoil your game by revealing all the types of puzzles and riddles available, not matter how clever they are. What you need, and it's the hard part, is to choose which ones are both easy to understand but give the impression that there is so much more to explore. Aim for suspense. From what I can remember, there is a chasing sequence with a kind of goat at some point. It can be only a few seconds long no more. Like a text that reads "Everyone is after you..." or "Watch out for unfriendly company" and then you show the sequence where you're chased by the goat for a few seconds... Ok, my text is lame, but it's just to illustrate. And maybe you don't need to have systematically a text and then an illustration, you can maybe have a longer text explanation/overlay, and then chain together a couple of in-game sequence with a subtle transition. Here are some typical steps for this type of trailer, to be tailored to your game:

- Hook (0 to 5s): a striking, unexplained visual (or sound?) that raises a question to grab attention straightaway. 

- World/tone (from 5 to 15s): quick shots that set the atmosphere and setting: environment, art style, lighting, ambient sound design. The message is: "here's the kind of place you'll be trapped in" with some but not too much text (from your game page!).

- Core gameplay (from 15 to 30s): show the puzzle-solving loop: picking up items, examining clues, manipulating mechanisms. Basically this is what you have in a very long version at the moment with the current trailer.

- Rising tension / escalation (from 30 to 45s): pacing, shorter shots, intensity. Show horror elements beyond the puzzle-solving (depression?).

- Peak/climax moment (from 45 to 55s): if possible your single best, most shareable shot  (A chase like mentioned before? A monster? A clever puzzle payoff?).

- Quick-cut montage (from 55 to 65s, optional): a flurry of fast cuts showing variety: different rooms, different puzzle types, different threats, to communicate scope --> careful not to overdo it, you don't want to spoil every puzzle. This is also what you have at the moment.

- Game title (from 65 to 70s): title, clean and simple, often with a tagline to reinforce the initial hook ("Someone is always watching...")

- Release info (from 70 to 75s): platform, release date, etc.

This is just an example, but as you can see, each step lasts between 5 and 15 seconds. They can also be grouped, ex: game title+release info.

Hope this helps. Let us know when you have a new version of the trailer.

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