For the store releases of Thrive, we need to have at least one trailer video.
My idea for what the trailer could be (feel free to suggest different ideas, or volunteer to record and edit the trailer together):
Opens with text saying like “Start life on an alien planet” (all these text parts would have like black screen as a background)
Fade in a single cytoplasm swimming around for a few seconds
Fade back to black, text something like “Evolve” or “Evolve your species”
Fade to a few cuts of edits done in the editor, finishing with exiting the editor
Fade to black with text “Compete with other species”
Cut to some footage of combat and other footage with other species in it. Last bit of footage could be the player dying (but cut before the player respawns)
Final fade to text: “Will you Thrive?”
Maybe that would be enough to make like a quick one minute trailer. It would be posted to our youtube, and at least itch store page needs the trailer on youtube. I think the trailer should initially be a hidden video so that things can be prepared so that the trailer when published can link to the itch and steam pages (to get a bit of traffic from our youtube subscribers)
If no one else volunteers to make one, I’m going to try asking our usual trailer guy if they have time to make one now.
I think this is a pretty good start. I’ll go ahead and poke in some suggested tweaks if you don’t mind.
I believe saying something like “Experience new life on an alien planet” might make for a more engaging splash here, as well as better hint towards the theme of LUCA.
I would prefer something akin to “Guide the evolution of your species.” as it would convey a subtle sense of strategy and control.
Perhaps something more dramatic like “Struggle for your place in the world”. I’m not quite sure for this one though.
I wanted to keep this short. I think the trailer needs to have very limited amount of text at once. Maybe “evolve” is a bit too short so that’s why I added the alternative. But “evolve” by itself could also be pretty effective call to action and very clearly tell the player what to expect they’ll be doing.
I would back the shorter verbiage too. It also applies more direct action, since you are playing a specific microbe and directly modifying yourself instead of providing guidance like in other evo sim games.
I don’t have much to add, except bringing up the fact that “write your own saga of life” seemed to be the game’s tagline of sorts a while back. Not sure how well it applies though, considering the game’s more about adapting to survive rather than guaranteeing creative freedom.
I think this is a good idea. The only thing I personally would like to add, would be a sort of timelapse of the player species as it evolves over the generations. I tried to do something similar for the last trailer, but I feel I could make it look better
I don’t think so unless @Naggorath has started recording footage.
One thing I did recently was add a “hide HUD” button (F2) that’ll probably help in recording less cluttered footage. I’ll release that as a devbuild soon (very soon if someone is keen on getting to recording footage).
Preferably within like two weeks. That would give roughly a month’s time to have the steam page up before when 0.5.6 would be released, which I’m currently planning to have the steam release happen at the same time.
Released that devbuild with the key to hide the HUD (F2) in the game. If you plan on recording footage you might want to coordinate what/when you’ll record to not get footage / edited trailer of the same thing.
