June 29 Update
Added 2025-06-29 17:00:12 +0000 UTCLots going on! The postgame is still my primary ongoing concern, obviously, but this week I've been able to spend a little time tackling other things.
One of these is the TLS trailer, which is another important part of getting the game ready for the Steam release. A new version is attached, but perhaps I'd better say more about my goals and intentions with this trailer.
Many Steam users don't watch trailers at all, but the first trailer generally autoplays when you arrive on a page. I asked for this one to begin with clips showing the battle bust system in order to communicate a basic "Look, this game has art and non-standard features". For some people it will just affect them subconsciously, while others might have their attention hooked long enough to keep watching.
The second section of the trailer is meant to communicate that choices and decisions exist/matter. I know for certain people will disagree on how long this should be, because some want to read all the text easily and for others that's too slow. This includes areas that transform based on your decisions - I don't know if this will communicate to players with no knowledge of the game, but I think the idea is solid.
Then the final third is just implying sex happens.
After that, we potentially have another trailer (not attached). One thing I didn't communicate clearly last time is that most Steam pages have more than one trailer. The first autoplaying one is meant to be brief and get attention, the second is for people who already watched that and want to see more. For that reason, the second trailer can be slower and more story-focused.
While working on that, another idea came up from the person making the trailers: having one focused on the characters. By which I mean introductions and clips showing their personality, in the hopes that one might snag a player's attention and motivate them to look further. Do you guys have opinions about that? Any ideas about the ideal number of characters or who should be featured?
Anyway, that's just one matter among many. I'll only mention one other, which is that there's actually one more "future game preview" yet to come. The assets for it have been done for a while, I've just been too busy with postgame stuff to post it. Before too long, hopefully.
Comments
Hello again, thanks for giving such a detailed suggestion. While I think there's validity to some of your criticisms, I'm afraid I don't think I'm likely to set up the first trailer this way. Valve itself gives guidelines for trailers and they're pretty clear about Steam players generally only seeing the first few seconds. Now, it's true that Valve tends not to focus on story-based games, and there's a strong argument for a story-based trailer (which as I've said would play second). I'll take your suggestions into account as we keep putting the store page together.
Sierra Lee
2025-07-05 15:14:23 +0000 UTCOkay, I have some actionable suggestions now. I was going to make an example trailer which implemented all of them, but I found collecting footage to be beyond my patience and/or skillset, so I'm linking to an outline I made that should give you the idea of what I was going for It seems like effective trailers put their most important features front and center. As I've mentioned previously, the most important aspects of most RPGs (and especially this one!), just as the most important aspects of any novel, are story and writing. So the first section of the trailer should be devoted to this. The story is: the world is caught between the bizarre horror of the Incubus King on one side, and the banal horror of political and religious complacency on the other. But what do I mean by "writing" well, you probably know this better than I do, but writing has several aspects to it: Tone--how is your story told: Depressingly grim and gritty? Upbeat and funny? A comedic deconstruction of its genre? Character dialogue--how do your characters interact: Are they bland and robotic, or emotional and evocative? Do they have distinct voices, or are they a cast of author inserts who care more about delivering authorial opinions to the player than talking to each other? Worldbuilding--Have you thought about the ways your world is different from ours, and the reasons for those differences, or the implications thereof? If you have characters that can shoot lightning from their hands, does your world have electrical infrastructure that runs on their labor? The Last Sovereign is a semi-comedic deconstruction of "chosen one" harem collector porn RPGs, it has emotional and evocative characters with distinct voices, and has put some thought into worldbuilding. General trailer advice: If your trailer doesn't include something, viewers will assome that thing either doesn't exist, or that your game is better with it removed. Didn't include sound effects? You're telling viewers that your sound effects are either obnoxious or non-existent! You want to put your best foot forward--show off your best assets, not just any random ones! General Takeaways: 1: You want to record game sounds with your footage, just not game music. (Set BGM and BGS to 0 in Maltava volume settings line 13 and 14) and capture sound when you grab your footage 2: When you have text that you want to be readable, you have to leave it on the screen long enough for people to read it, and keep in mind that some people read more slowly than others. In order to do this, read it fully, read it fully again, and then at least skim it a third time before you advance it. 3: Dialogue coming in one character at a time doesn't add anything to a trailer. (set DEFAULT_INSTANTMSG = true on line 78 of Yanfly System Options) 4: You want to use your highest quality music in the trailer. Note that this doesn't necessarily rule out all songs from RPGMaker asset bundles, but it does rule out all songs that sound like "oh, this is a generic RPG battle theme" or "oh, this is a generic RPG town theme." 4a: The less "this is a straight up midi file" it sounds, the better Game-specific takeaways: Your best assets are your writing, character dynamics, and the fact that your decisions have meaningful impact on the world around you. The battle bust system is also cool, but it's like, 4th or 5th behind other things. I want to stress that it's good that you have it, and that the work will result in a better impression of your game, but it's also not the most stand-out thing by a long shot. That out of the way, here's the outline an example trailer: Obviously, I'd love to see this made, but this is also my first time even thinking about how I'd make a trailer, so it almost certainly needs some polish on it. Specifically, I gave no thought to length as I was writing this, and I expect it will need some fat trimming https://docs.google.com/document/d/16R97DFyb2Nz4Jkap0JY7ERaIUM-3RbHnFdxFDYhFquM/edit?usp=sharing
Upthorn
2025-07-04 21:13:03 +0000 UTCYou don't need to have reservations about being negative but, as I think you're aware, concrete suggestions are easier to act upon. The basic idea of "convey a mood" was brought up in the first rounds, and showing decisions intercut with different world states was my best idea at conveying that. I'm not unaware of other trailers, but the ones you mention are marketing themselves as very different sorts of experiences to TLS. There may be lessons that can be derived from them, I'm just saying that I don't know that I can do it.
Sierra Lee
2025-07-02 07:22:19 +0000 UTCI have reservations about being negative, because I understand the incredible amount of effort that you've put into this game and I know it's disheartening to hear that effort you put into something is unsalvagable, but I don't think this trailer does a good job at all of distinguishing the game from other RPG maker games. I think you have a problem here that you're attempting to reinvent the wheel from first principles, instead of consulting the rich library of existing work. There are many popular 2D RPGs with turn-based combat available on steam. Many of them (Such as Omori, and In Stars and Time) are even RPGMaker titles! I think it would be very fruitful for you to do some research by watching through their trailers. In particular, I think "In Stars and Time" (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1677310/In_Stars_And_Time/) has an extremely effective trailer showing off the mood (cozy friendship vibes) and concept (time loop) of the game. But broadly, there are a few major things that they seem to try to showcase: 1 The graphical style 2 the best tracks off their soundtrack 3 the gist of the story and the game concept 4 The writing 5 and, for porn games: some of the CGs and a hint at the number of fuckable characters Now for the first couple of points, you're at a disadvantage, because you do make use of stock/purchasable assets to supplement your skillset as a writer, and lack of budget to hire a full time art/sound team so you don't particularly have a unique or cohesive visual style... except where it comes to Annikath's CGs. You do at least have one major banger track in the title theme, though. As for the story, and writing, which are the parts of this game that most stand out, you've hidden yours completely. While you have made an effort to showcase "choices matter," I don't think it's particularly effective at showing the "matter" part, and you don't give any of the dialogue boxes time to breathe, many of them not even staying on screen long enough to finish displaying the text, let alone fully read! This is really bad it! The writing is *the most important* part of any RPG and your trailer makes you look like you're ashamed of yours! Now for the sex: your game is already marked Adults Only on Steam, you don't have to tip-toe around anything. This is ostensibly either the first or second most important selling point of your game, you should show it off! I have a second post coming with like, specific proposals on ways to improve, but, like, I originally intended to post something like this on the *previous* trailer update, and it's taken me until now to get my thoughts clear enough and straight enough to be able to communicate them
Upthorn
2025-07-01 17:41:32 +0000 UTC
