May 23 Update

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Sierra Lee

I think my post got deleted or I pushed the wrong buttons, anyway here is again the review: As someone who didn't play the game and saw the reviews from both sides of the spectrum this little trailer doesn't make me think to play the game Because I see "porn with game" In the adult market there is a lot of "porn with game" but very few "game with porn.If the audience you are looking for this game is people to masturbate, then yes, the objective of the trailer is good.It woorks on teenagers and "novice" players on adult games. If the audience you are looking for is more "veterans" then I dont think it is good. Veterans are tired of "porn with game" with hectic and bland sex. I dont know what you want, but I dont think you only want to sell game and profit, you want to be remembered as an developer and want people to support your project more than only buying a game. About trailers I think is about feelings. What the developer want to give to the audience and encourage people to play it.I think you need to give another spin and seeing from another point of view. Here is an example of a good trailer with low-budget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPB_J6Egi28 You can see that this is a type of trailer that nailed it and sold it to the people, even if they didn't know japanese. A dance of daisies. Cheers

BleBle

This is an interesting concept. Though I like that moment personally (I made it a major part of the game), this is something that I'm fairly convinced would turn away a large percentage of the potential audience.

Sierra Lee

Thank you for providing feedback.

Sierra Lee

So I have been thinking about how to make a trailer for this game and I keep coming back to making it stand out from the crowd. Personally I would put the "Is that it? I was expecting something...more" moment front and center. Tons of H games have the female protagonist getting hot and heavy or alternatively have her in tears and pain. I can't think of one that has her just confused and disappointed that shes missing some emotion connection. Put her sexy body, then a sex scene, then black screen and a quote.

Nathan Phoenix

When we threw together the TLS trailer, I remember you saying it was good to have a short, sharp trailer as the first one on the Steam page, with a longer, more in-depth trailer second in the list. The character intros in the preview seem like a good fit for a longer, more in-depth trailer, although I agree with the others saying they'd want to see some dialogue or quotes too, to give a feel for the characters as well as the art. If you're also going to be doing a shorter one, I'd be inclined to have it focus more on the story, as others have suggested, with sexy bits and fancy animations interspersed throughout to catch people's eyes. The many-worlds aspect is the main thing I'd focus on, hinting at how the simple LRRH tale becomes something much more intriguing as the player reaches new Tales. That's the sort of hook that could reel people in, and if potential customers are still wavering, the longer "feature list" style trailer could help to complete it.

Lamsey

Thank you for providing feedback. My goal with alternating was to show diversity of assets, but I hear what you're saying. The goal of showing Ulfina landing a hit was actually to show that the battlers hop to enemy positions, which is not default RPG Maker behavior.

Sierra Lee

It feels a bit like kicking a dead horse at this point... But yeah, the trailer's not good. To be honest though, after looking at several Steam trailers for retro and pseudo-retro RPG to have a point of comparison, it might be "good enough" for its purpose. Because the competition is not awesome either, even for big names. Like, the official Steam trailer for FF6 is 20 seconds of almost black screen, followed by the title, finally followed by a video of the gameplay... Within a tiny window, lost in the middle of an immense artwork. But regardless: Alternating between the battle scenes and the CGs might not be a good idea as it makes the former look quite appalling (the shift between detailed artwork and big pixels is huge). Except for the last one, the battle scenes tend to be lukewarm in absolute. Is there really a point showing Ulfina landing a single hit for example? The music feels a bit generic and a good music is half a trailer. But most importantly... The trailer as is does not give a single hint about what the game will be about. Well, apart for the sex and the shooting fireballs at wolves, that's it. Even the fact it's sorta based on Little Red Riding Hood is not immediately obvious. Maybe something more fairy tale like, with a literal book open at the beginning, and the role of each character made obvious? Like: Starring Ingrid as the Little Red Riding Hood Wilhelm as the Hunter Ulfina as the Big Bad Wolf Hood as the Other Little Red Riding Hood Fenris as the Other Big Bad Wolf The seamstress whose name I forgot as the Other Other Big Bad Wolf Etc.

Rachnera

Thank you for providing feedback. My thought with the quick cuts was to tease a large amount of content, which the game does have, but the trailer is likely to move away from that direction anyway.

Sierra Lee

I'm an absolute noob and have no idea about marketing like this. But I liked the pretty frame with the characters on the side. My only worry is if you aren't showing too many sex scenes. I felt like I was being fed too many treats with no effort at all. Maybe less scenes and instead some more maps and bits of dialog? Especially a cute shot of Ingrid asking “what is going on?“ all bimbo-like would be really cute with a follow-up of some twisted tail map and monsters, could help make the player understand that there's a mystery to unravel! :D

Thank you for providing feedback. Some of this is down to a difference in trailer conventions, as many games of this type have very visually dense styles as opposed to the atmospheric ones you linked. The goal is to tease more than demonstrate. That said, I will take your thoughts into account.

Sierra Lee

This trailer was really hard for me to follow. I think title cards or other prominent text highlighting the gameplay or story element on display would be incredibly helpful for priming me to interpret what's going on. Something like the Silksong[1] or Divinity: Original Sin 2[2] trailers. Structurally, it would probably be easier to follow a trailer organized by gameplay elements too, rather than showcasing each character independently. Also, the trailer felt really fast. Most scenes were only on screen for about a second, if that. Two to three seconds would give me more time to interpret what's happening in each segment. Finally, the music didn't correspond with what was happening on screen. At least the tempo of the music should match the tempo of the visuals. But ideally, the music would also match the predominant feel of the game; action game might have music with a strong beat, a horror game might have soft tense music, etc. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFAknD_9U7c [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTWTFX8qzPI

I like the music and the boobs. Porn game trailers and ads never really stand out to me though, they kinda float around the internet like neon signs in cyberpunk, they just add ambiance. Hmm... makes me wonder if one of those trashy red light district signs actually advertises a philosophy school that just happens to be staffed by prostitutes. Food for thought.

Runcible Technician

Thank you for giving feedback. Ulfina's attack with the bad frame rate... I am moderately sure that my computer was recording poorly at the time, but not sure. Ugh, this is really not my thing. Including dialogue is fine in theory but I have a terrible time choosing any. Dialogue is entirely about context for me. I wanted the clips of characters walking around in part to show some of the fancy shadows in motion, but you're right, they're mostly duplicated by screenshots. I did think about using the intro segment as a hook. It's the hook I used for the game itself, after all. This ties heavily into everything I've articulated throughout the rest of the comments.

Sierra Lee

I watched this trailer a few times now. Here are my thoughts: - Around the 0:06 mark Ulfina attacks. The frame rate here looks terrible. I actually rewatched this on one of my 60Hz monitors to make sure it wasn't something wonky with one of my 144 Hz monitors. The fact that this happens so early in the trailer is almost certainly going to hurt. The rest of the combat didn't look as bad but still looked choppy to me. If you do nothing else, please fix this. (Is this a YouTube playback thing? Is it because Ulfina's attack is so fast?) - Including Hood's badass laser attack was a good idea IMO. - I see a lot of comments about how this trailer doesn't play to your strengths being writing related. I saw an explanation on one post about why you went this route and it makes sense. I might still suggest you try and get some dialogue in here though. Maybe some of your favourite lines from the game? Characters having a back and forth might be too much (you'd hope not but attention spans are a thing) but a single quote here or there should be fine. - I'm not sure if you need characters walking around or not although I think it is fine. I'd probably only include this if you were trying to pad the time. I assume this will be accompanied by screenshots of the game which people can use to verify that it is an RPGM game. - This might not make sense for what you're going for, and I'm not suggesting you scrap this and go with this idea or anything, but I thought I'd write out what I'd do if I was personally showing your game to someone else to get them interested in case that helps you generate ideas. Honestly, I'd just show them the first 30 seconds or so. I replayed the intro just to explain this properly, but if you literally captured after declining the tutorial to Ingrid reading the sign I feel like that's enough of a hook. You could even set it up for a few seconds before hand that this is a normal world where nothing ever goes wrong OH GOD. Then cut to combat and sexiness. Might be too clichéd or whatever, but I feel like it'd work. I get why you are excited to show this off. I don't really think this trailer is bad or anything but I do think this is just okay. I feel like you're suffering from success a bit here because your content is so consistently of such a high quality. I think this trailer viewed as a first draft is fine. I'll look forward to the next version!

Grim8P

Thanks for giving feedback. Much of this discussion is based on the core goal of the trailer, but we'll take your thoughts into account too as we consider the balance.

Sierra Lee

Thank you for giving feedback; see my response to Nathan Phoenix for some relevant responses. It may be possible to communicate the game's strongest points in a trailer, but I don't have an idea for doing so. An additional factor is that few Steam trailers are watched longer than ten seconds, and Valve staff advise against story trailers. So my first question was what a trailer can accomplish for the game, before what it should be.

Sierra Lee

Several different thoughts there, thanks for sharing them. The windowed frame I could be convinced to give up, but my idea was for each character to have their own section before the full screen part. I'm not entirely sure what you mean regarding sprites and motto, other than filling empty space. I felt like having a fairly rapidly changing central area and also the blinks and other movements was enough visual density, but I could be wrong. Sound design is being done custom, but I am the wrong person to communicate anything regarding that.

Sierra Lee

Well, I liked it, I thought you could have lingered more on the combat and or maybe some of the social aspects, and flash the adult themes as teases, but all in all I think it was good. I especially liked the page turning for each scene.

Darthjake

Brutal honesty is welcome, but here's the thing: that's what I was aiming for. I'll give my thought process, though others are welcome to disagree with me, and I could be convinced. Essentially, I'm skeptical about how well any trailer can differentiate OEA from all those hentai games. I'm also not sure that the people who would play for the plot would be convinced by any trailer. It's very difficult to communicate character in such a short period and plot can essentially only be promised. I've tried to emphasize the premise and other such elements in the Steam page overall, but I don't believe these are really selling points for the majority of gamers. You've noted how the trailers on Mangagamer go, and the problem is that those games always outsell me on those platforms. Someone could easily argue that by not betting on my story, I'm betting against my work as a whole. This may be true. It is essentially a bet that a large percentage of the people who would might actually play the game based on the trailer are people who wouldn't try it without immediate sex scenes.

Sierra Lee

Sorry Sierra, but this is subpar at best. I get what you are trying to do, but you are severely underselling your work. This intro gives a feeling of cheap smut at best and while OEA is not exactly my cup of tea and I wouldnt rate it very high as games go (sorry, just being honest), I do have a better opinion of it than this. Now, I am not a marketing expert by any means, but if I would to make an intro for OEA I'd break in down into two sections - one focusing on the story of borderline retarded fuckdoll refusing to play the part and tries to become someone worthy of self-respect. Second part would be something like what you have now, but focused on the fact that there is an actual story for each of those NPCs.

Dark Art

i would agree it feels a little underwhelming. personally i didn’t think the windowed frame did that much for the video. i would say make sure the trailer reflects some of the themes and humor of the game. i would suspect the intro would be a book cover opening playing up the fable elements. if you plan on doing the windowed view there was a lot of empty space that needs to have something going on, if it’s feasible maybe have their sprites above the portrait with a “motto”. also the sound design should try and sync up to the clips. not sure if any of that helps, but whatever happens it needs to be more dynamic.

androidK

I'm going to be brutally honest here. This is underwhelming. I don't know how much you want to give away but I would advise you to focus more on the story side. Your games always shine in the plot and characters, focusing on the nudity/battle sprites is a disservice to your vast talent as a writer. Keep a few unique sex scenes in but don't make that the focus. Go to Mangagamer.com and check the adult trailers. Most are just "here is girls, here is girl's boobs with a quote." The last thing we want is for you to get lost in the flood of mediocre hentai games.

Nathan Phoenix