And it’s here. The trailer.
It’s been long in the making. It took more thought and hard work than we ever thought that it would. But it’s here. And with the trailer ready we could finally take the plunge and announce Survive the Blackout on Steam.
For a small team as ours, collecting feedback form the Steam community and building wishlist numbers is - of course - a crucial part of our sales strategy. So yeah, we’re pretty much going out of our minds right now. Still, this is the moment to point something out, that we felt was important, but now we’re even more sure that it’s essential.
Professional voicework.
When you have an indie game with simplistic graphics and not that much animation, you’ll be highly depending on words to make the trailer work. You’ll want to capture the gamer’s imagination by just telling them a story. You’ll be breaking one of the first and foremost rules of games marketing (“show, don’t tell”), so at the very least you need to make sure that the delivery of your narrative will be top-notch. You might think that recording a minute-long monologue is trivial. If you do, you probably haven’t tried. We knew better then to even try.
When you think about post-apo narrative, the chances are the very first thing that comes to your mind will be the memorable (and thoroughly, archetypically manly) delivery of the “war. war never changes” line by the man himself, Ron Perlman. We decided to go with a female narrator, challenging yet another rule (or stereotype) of games promotion, that male leads appeal to a wider demographic of gamers. Luckily, we were able to book Katabelle (VACasting.net). Some of us had the chance to work with her before, so we knew we were in good hands. Three takes was all she needed, and it didn’t cost us an arm and a leg. Is the trailer good enough, is the game page going to convert OK, is there a market niche for such a game as Survive the Blackout? Time will tell. But at the very least, we know that the story - our main asset in this presentation - was delivered flawlessly.
Hope that next time, we’ll be able to share insight on dealing with overwhelming attention from gamers, content creators, and the media. See you then!
Please be kind, and support us by adding Survive the Blackout to your wishlist:
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Oh boy! Proud of this trailer! :D
So happy it is finally on steam :)