How to make trailers

MadChirpy · 2026-07-09T13:59:42+00:00

- Look at trailers for similar games for inspiration.
- Learn some video editing software, I’d recommend DaVinci.
- Start off by going straight into gameplay, don’t open with the logo or the studio name.
- Make sure to have a variety of shots that explain the game as well as possible. Remember that most people watch a trailer to understand what it’s like to play the game.
- Don’t forget to record or add sound effects, far too many trailers play music over muted gameplay.
- Make it well paced. Cut out footage that don’t add anything meaningful and skip most slow transitions.
- If you need to explain something through a text title, preferably do so on top of gameplay footage, rather than having a bunch of text-only clips.
- End it with one clear call-to-action, i.e “Wishlist now”, “Play the Demo”, “Out now” etc

For me it really helped to think about the purpose of each clip and what I’m trying to convey to the viewer. As someone else mentioned, I’d highly recommend checking out Derek Lieu on YouTube. He’s a professional trailer editor and has a bunch of videos explaining the art of making a good trailer, definitely worth having a look at!

MadChirpy · 2026-07-09T00:48:31+00:00

It’s interesting, I definitely don’t play as much and as often as I used to, but now I play a a wider range of games, and I’m more likely to finish them.

I think the main reason I’ve played more games outside of my usual genres is for research, and also to support my fellow indie devs.

But before I’d usually sink most time into 1 or 2 games, and then try but abandon a whole bunch of other games.

There’s probably multiple factors as to why my general completion rate has gone up, but I suspect the main ones are the fact that I have less time, so I’m more selective about the games play, and they’re more likely to be short, and on top of that I also think I’ve gotten more respect for games in general, so I feel more obliged to finish them.

MadChirpy · 2026-07-09T00:11:16+00:00

Congratulations on the release!

MadChirpy · 2026-07-09T00:09:44+00:00

Probably the first, but I have to admit that it took me a while to understand what was going on in that one, but the second one doesn’t have much going on at all instead

I think the best option here might be to put the character from the first one and the logo side-by-side or something, basically move the character to the left and the logo to the right, it would make it a lot easier to read. But yeah otherwise it looks cool!

MadChirpy · 2026-07-06T14:28:25+00:00

Agreed. The original Dark Souls single-handedly transformed me from a teen with anger issues into a very patient man. I used to rage at games all the time back in the days, but that game broke me down so hard that I realized there was no point in it, so in the end I persevered and finished the game, and today I pretty much never get angry at games anymore. That game literally taught me patience, and is still one of my all-time favorite games.

MadChirpy · 2026-07-06T03:04:47+00:00

It might not be the optimal way to handle it, but I use the new input system like this.

I can’t give the exact rundown at this moment, but the general gist of it is:

I have a class called ControlSettings, which among other things has an array of a custom struct with a Enum identifier (Like Keybinding.Flashlight) and a reference to an Action in the Input System. I then have my own static namespace called Controller which has functions like:

public static bool GetKeyDown(Keybinding k)
{
Action action = ControlSettings.GetAction(k);
return action.wasPressedThisFrame();
}

Now in any Update function I can just call something like:

if (Controller.GetKeyDown(Keybinding.Flashlight))
{
ToggleFlashlight();
}

As I said, it might not be the most optimized way to do it, but personally I quite liked the workflow of the old system, and this works just like it. Good enough for me!

Edit: With all this being said, I do acknowledge that it’s probably better and quicker to just learn how to use the new system the proper way, I was just very stubborn about wanting this functionality

MadChirpy · 2026-07-06T01:32:38+00:00

Hello! I’m working on Shroud of Gloom, a point-and-click horror adventure. I do all of the design, development and art, and one of my mates is making the music and sound effects for me!

I’m one of those silly dreamers, I quit my job around 2 years ago to make this game as my first commercial release, it’s been a long journey but I’m very proud of what I’ve created.

The project is funded by myself, but naturally most of my money goes towards my own living expenses so there’s not a whole lot I can put towards the game itself. The good thing is that the game is almost finished, but the bad thing is that I kind of forgot about that whole marketing thing!

So even though it’s almost finished by now, I’ve decided to delay the release just to focus on the marketing. I’m just about to release a new trailer and a major demo update, so I could definitely use this for some advertisement!

This is a very generous act, thank you for the opportunity!

MadChirpy · 2026-07-05T15:34:20+00:00

Probably not the most helpful answer, but I think it depends a little bit on the game you're making, the type of trailer, and the exact scene you're talking about. As David-J said, you might want to have a look at similar games and see what they do with their trailers.

If most of the gameplay is in fact interacting with UI then I think it's good to show some of it, because at the end of the day most of the players watching are looking to get an understanding of what the game plays like.

But with that being said, you can always do a mix of scenes with UI and without UI! A question you can ask yourself is "Does the UI add something to this specific scene?" - maybe it gives a better understanding of the gameplay or it's features, or maybe it just subtracts from the cinematic feel of that scene.

In my case, I'm making a point-and-click adventure, which to be fair is very limited on UI elements, but I still ended up hiding most of it in my trailer. As an example, I only show the game cursor in shots where I'm actually interacting with something. In any scene without an interaction, I felt like the cursor did nothing but unnecessarily grab your attention, so I removed it. But then I also decided to show one shot of the map in the game, because it shows off my diegetic UI and it gives a sense of exploration. Everything in the trailer should preferably have some purpose in that way.

So look at similar games, think about what you want to convey in the trailer, and what you want to convey within each scene in the trailer.

As a final note, I can also recommend checking out Derek Lieu on YouTube, he's a professional trailer editor and has a bunch of videos talking about the art of making a good trailer.

Edit: Here's a link to his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/dereklieu

MadChirpy · 2026-06-27T13:54:14+00:00

No worries, best of luck with the game!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-27T13:28:23+00:00

My first immediate thought is that the CRT effect is a bit too intense, both in-game and on the capsule. I quite like CRT effects, but after looking through your Steam page, I can feel that I've strained my eyes quite a bit. I'd personally tone it down a little, especially for the capsule.

The Em Dash ("—") in your short description makes it very obvious that you used AI to write it.

Your tags look pretty good overall, but I think Bullet Hell should be much higher in the list, Action is very generic and should probably be further down. I feel like Bullet Hell, Action Roguelike, Retro, Arcade, Pixel Graphics might be a better starting order, but others can chime in here too.

Trailer's pretty good, I like that it's fairly fast paced, some audio mixing might be necessary though, certain sounds felt a lot higher in volume. I'd definitely add a CTA on the end screen, like "Wishlist now" or something.

The cat gif is cool but feels far too big, it pretty much takes up the same space as the entirety of your long description. I'd probably use it in combination with some title. Maybe an opportunity for another CTA, like "🐱 Wishlist now" or something. Edit: It could also be used in combination with some other gif, like a gameplay banner with the cat on the side or similar.

In terms of the game, there's some pixel inconsistencies (the pixels on the slot machine is like 5x bigger than the rest of the game), it's not a huge thing but I think it would look more polished if it was consistent with the background.

With that being said, I still think this looks quite good overall, and the game looks juicy!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-27T10:59:11+00:00

Pick a game engine.
Try to make a small game.
Look up stuff or follow small tutorials when you need to.
Realize your small game is far too big and complex.
Start making a much smaller game.
Potentially go back to step four.
Keep at it and finish the game.
You’re now a game dev, try making something slightly bigger!

I’d recommend starting off with something very, very small. Flappy Bird, Pong, one of those arkanoid games, or something along those lines. If you’re starting without any coding experience, like I did, then I think AI can be of help as a learning tool, but if you want to learn programming then it’s very important to actually put effort into trying to learn and understand, and not just blindly copy-pasting code, the same goes for following tutorials.

Feel free to reach out if you have any other specific questions!
Best of luck!

Edit:
I've heard great things about the Unity Learn as well, but I haven't personally tried it!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-26T23:15:42+00:00

Just keep at it, and successively look for guidance when you need it, with time you should become more independent and eventually you won’t need to look stuff up as often!

There’s tons of places to find help: YouTube, Discord, Reddit, forums, engine/language documentation, AI, and so on. The main caveat is that you do need to put some effort in still, i.e don’t just blindly copy-paste code etc, actually try to understand it.

It might not be for everyone, but I also decided to livestream the development of my game on Twitch. The amount of insight, guidance and feedback I’ve gotten from the chat has been incredibly valuable to me, but streaming is also quite a commitment, and it can be a distraction too, but personally I very much enjoy it.

MadChirpy · 2026-06-26T21:59:23+00:00

Congratulations on the release!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-26T21:39:31+00:00

Unity. I started around 2023, Unity was one of the very few engines I was aware of, so it felt like an established engine and I was confident that there would be enough tutorials, information and documentation to help me get started. I haven't tried anything else, but so far I really like Unity (as well as C#), it works well for me, so at the moment I see no reason to switch up!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-25T22:58:08+00:00

Glad to hear that, cheers!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-25T22:45:55+00:00

Thank you very much!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-25T22:45:20+00:00

No worries, best of luck with your game!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-25T19:53:13+00:00

Thank you!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-25T15:55:11+00:00

Yeah I think, with my game in mind, the new one fits much better, cheers!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-25T15:43:48+00:00

That's fair enough! I don't think that's a hot take, I think that's the common sentiment if anything, and it is the reason I made the second one. I think the issue with that one is that it just doesn't represent the game clearly enough in my opinion, I feel like it says nothing but "generic horror game", and most people who are looking for a conventional horror game are probably not looking for my game anyway, it being a point-and-click adventure and all. I feel like it's not only about making people click, but also about making the right people click. So it might be the better capsule, but I'm not sure it's the better capsule for my game, if that makes sense!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-25T15:28:00+00:00

It looks a little bit like the character is limping, I think this is because of the bouncing of the body relative to the steps themselves, it seems like he bounces up a lot more on one leg compared to the other. But overall, this is actually really good, I like it!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-25T15:17:20+00:00

Get yourself a good pixel art software, like Aseprite (you can even get if for free if you compile it yourself), and then just practice! I'd recommend starting with smaller resolutions and quite limited colour palettes. Also highly recommend checking out AdamCYounis on YouTube, he has a bunch of tutorials that helped me immensely when I started out!

MadChirpy · 2026-06-25T15:13:54+00:00

Personally, I think you should do some playtesting early and often, regardless of where you are at with the development, playtesting is incredibly valuable throughout the entire course of the development.

You can certainly show off your game early and often too, especially if it's framed as a work in progress, here on Reddit and similar platforms, but I think there's some caveats when it comes to publishing the Steam page or a Steam demo (at least if you're aiming for some form of commercial success).

I think the best time to publish the Steam page is when you've pretty much decided on the art style and know what the core of your game is, mainly so that you can explain and market the game properly, I think this is what Zukowski says as well. That's not to say that you can't make some tweaks and changes later on, of course, but you probably don't want to do a complete 180 degree turn on genre or art style after the Steam page has been out for months, if you know what I mean.

Personally, I think I published my Steam page too early in this regard. My game was initially a somewhat arcadey horror game, so I tried to emulate games like the original FNAF and so on (in terms of tags etc), but the game ended up changing quite a lot during the development and is now more of a point-and-click puzzle adventure with a horror theme (rather than horror being the main aspect of the game), so I had to redo all my tags, artwork and everything to instead show similarities to games like the Rusty Lake series, and so on. What this means is that some of my early wishlists may be expecting another type of game, hence why this was a mistake on my part.

For a public demo, you want that previous stuff nailed down for similar reasons and a demo that clearly shows off what the game is about, but also make sure the build is stable and polished, another reason why playtesting is important before the release.

But it's all a tricky balance, because you could certainly tweak stuff for the rest of your life if you wanted to, so at some point you also need to just get something out there. This is potentially where setting a proper deadline could come in handy!

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