KICKSTARTER MASK OF THE ROSE FULL
KICKSTARTER MASK OF THE ROSE CODE

Whether this means removing HUD/UI elements in shots where they don’t contribute to the idea currently being shown or removing text which distracts from what I want the audience to read. Yes, absolutely! I’m always looking for ways to make ideas and visuals clearer and easier to digest for the trailer audience. Is this typical to your work across genres?

Something that I think would surprise people is the extent to which we've had to reconstitute bits of the game in different configurations to make them make sense in a trailer. It makes a huge difference if I can make a line shorter by even one word, while retaining the core message. Thankfully, I had the Failbetter writers available to take my selections and tighten them up where necessary. When relying on the words, the challenge of making a trailer is saying and showing a lot as quickly as possible. I understand this approach, but I feel like this focus on the visuals is to the detriment of the novel portion. Some visual novels’ strategy is to make trailers which use flashy motion graphics to add motion and visual flare to the game art. Even though social media video and apps like TikTok show people are ok with reading a lot of text in videos, it’s still hard to make text engaging in a trailer. The main challenge with visual novels is that text is the primary content, but using a video to deliver text can be terribly dull.

What are the challenges of making a visual novel trailer? For example: What is this? What is happening? Why is that interesting? What makes this unique? How big is the scope? This is based on the information necessary to answer basic questions, and subsequent questions that come after. Or at the very least, representative of one section.Īside from starting with dialogue there are still fundamentals of trailer structure which I always follow for every trailer I make. I liken making a story trailer to being given a several thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, which I then have to select maybe a couple dozen pieces and make a picture which feels representative of the complete image. The dialogue I select and edit together is the backbone of the trailer which creates the dramatic structure. Then I delve into the dialogue, find the parts I think could work best, and try to create a story which illustrates a mix of the world, the characters’ situations, and the game mechanics.

KICKSTARTER MASK OF THE ROSE CODE

In this case it was the Ink files with their mix of code and text. I play as much of the game as I can and then I ask for either the voice files, screenplay, or more typically, a MASSIVE spreadsheet of dialogue. When you're making a trailer for a narrative game, is there anything you approach differently than for eg a platformer?įor narrative games I always start with dialogue. I typically go for games with either spoken dialogue or action, but the writing drew me to the game despite the difficulty of making visual novel trailers.

KICKSTARTER MASK OF THE ROSE FULL

I think Mask of the Rose is full of this sort of dialogue which feels like it could only belong to this world. This is why I used both of these moments in the opening of the trailer to hopefully hook the audience. “Permanent murder” is probably the shortest and most evocative two words I’ve ever had in a trailer. When searching for “good trailer dialogue” I look for something which says a lot about the world and the characters, in as few words as possible. The line “permanent murder” is also utterly fantastic. It made me laugh and inspired so many questions. Pages wanting to know about the taste of the hearts was one which immediately stood out. Which parts of Mask of the Rose made you go, oh, that bit has to go in the trailer? Here'd Derek talking about how the Mask of the Rose gameplay trailer came together. His YouTube and Tiktok [are masterclasses in what makes a good game trailer, fascinating even if it isn’t your job!

This trailer was made by Derek Lieu [game trailer maestro.

Kickstarter mask of the rose