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! 😘