Trailer takeaways: Bokida - Heartfelt Reunion

Here’s the second episode in my game trailer takeaway series, ‘Damn-Near-Perfect’:

[Transcript]

So, Bokida — Heartfelt Reunion: it's out today! I did the trailer — working with Rice Cooker Republic. So I can't objectively speak to its quality, but I can say we tried to make it Damn-Near-Perfect. Now, I started this series only planning on talking about others' work. But, hey! It’s timely, so let's check it out.

So we learned a ton on this, and I think we've got some useful takeaways for those of you making your own game’s trailer:

1. Hard-to-explain game? Let style drive.

Bokida is…a puzzle sandbox, open world, exploration game where you are trying to reunite two stars with block-building—and powerful momentum mechanics.

Forget about all that.  Let's just run with style!

What's your game's weirdest most-style-distinct element? Yeah. Focus on that. But don’t forget to explain the game (with that style). 

2. Ground things in a human voice.

The first thing that we experience in life are human voices and human faces. So in lieu of one of those, use the other. Make your game feel human, and relatable. After all, your trailer is trying to build a relationship with the player. And like I said, if your game doesn’t have a voice, use a face. It doesn’t have to be a real face; could be a character face.

3. Focus on the player’s verbs and motivations 

Please, for the love of all that is gameplay, show me what I’m doing in the game! Even if it’s a little hard to follow, I need to know that the game lets me do something interesting. So, focus on your player verbs. And if possible, help me understand why I’m doing any of those things!

Player motivation is the single biggest factor to picking up your game. They might not know exactly why they really want to play your game, but you better know that. And you better connect those dots in the trailer.

4. FPS-Cam: Keep it clean, but include the player movement

First-person trailers are nasty for the creator—I just gotta be honest with you. And getting gameplay footage that looks clean takes too many retries. So you need some clean, smooth trucking shots—typically made in the game’s debug mode.

So, not real gameplay.

But here’s the thing: I need to know what it’s like to move around in your game. So you better show me some first-person gameplay movement, so that I can see myself in the game. It’s just gonna take a few dozen tries to get right.

5. Build a story around a theme

We spun this trailer around the theme, "To reveal beauty"  — which is what the word BOKIDA means. So for your trailer, you gotta figure it out: what’s your game’s theme? Take time, and really answer that question: “What's your game's theme?” Then when making decisions, you can always ask, “does this moment support that theme?”

Once again, those key takeaways are:

I’m M. Joshua. Find my trailer work at mjoshua.com, where I'm available for trailer work and consultations. And? Feel free to subscribe — for the next time we look at a damn-near-perfect trailer.

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This was originally posted on the author's blog. You can find M. Joshua's trailer production work at mjoshua.com, where he's available for production and consultation.