Trailer Review - T-Minus 30
I'm once again impressed with a strategy city builder game trailer, this time for T-Minus 30 published by SUPERHOT PRESENTS, and made in collaboration between Dejobaan Games and Grey Alien Games. In it, you have only 30 minutes to build a space fleet on a post-apocalyptic Earth in order to save as many people as possible; you do this in the typical builder fashion of harvesting resources, building up your technology, etc.
This is not a genre I have much interest in, which is why I'm quick to highlight trailers which I think do a great job of showing them off; if they can interest me, then there's a good chance they'll work for people who do enjoy playing them.
This trailer was made by Ichiro Lambe, founder of Dejobaan Games. I'd say this trailer is definitely a product of an era of muted-by-default video because it works fantastically without any audio. In fact I'd argue it actually works better when the audio is turned off. It very much feels like the square videos you see on social media by companies like Now This News which use a mixture of title cards and captions.
The "lower 3rd" text is very clear and to the point. Just enough to know what is happening in the shots.
To understand why I think the video works better without audio, take a look at the voiceover script:
T-Minus 30 is a fast-paced city builder where you plan a city and assemble space fleet to escape a dying earth.
You start your new settlement with the intention of turning post-apocalyptic land into working rocketry...
So you start by digging wells which produce and propagate water then you create tilled earth which receives that water and becomes farmland which in turn produces food.
Everything is based on these tiles receiving resources conveying them places, converting them, and the tiles transforming themselves into other tiles.
You can build up your infrastructure to support solar farms and hydroponics labs to stock sleek generational ships that each rescue thousands of evacuees.
Or you can remain low-tech and brute force your population off the earth by building massive numbers of 1960s aero rocketry.
Mind you, however you play, you can't save everyone and people will still end up dead.
But that’s life.
The stock footage clearly conveys information while also adding real world implications.
Now contrast that with the title card script:
T-MINUS 30 IS A FAST-PACED CITY BUILDER.
BUILD A CITY ASSEMBLE A SPACE FLEET FLEE THE EARTH
YOU HAVE 30 MINUTES
START FROM NOTHING
DIG WELLS TO GENERATE WATER
TILL THE EARTH TO GENERATE FARMLAND
TILES RECEIVE RESOURCES
TILES CONVEY & CONVERT RESOURCES
AND TRANSFORM EACH OTHER
BUILD HIGH-TECH INFRASTRUCTURE...
AND CONSTRUCT GENERATION SHIPS...
OR GO LOW TECH...
AND MASS PRODUCE '60s ERA ROCKETS
YOU CAN'T SAVE EVERYONE
The voiceover is about 149 words long, and the title cards are 67 words long. The game footage is a mixture of game capture in realtime and time-lapse fast speed, and some well chosen stock footage. I especially like how the stock footage grounds some of the concepts in our reality by showing real rockets and real world environments. This makes the concepts easier to understand quickly, because some building games' graphics can be a bit abstract and difficult to parse, especially in wide camera angles.
There's probably little to no hope to completely understand what this concept means even with the voiceover, but it's just enough to give us room to speculate and form questions.
The trailer also leaves the game's UI on and uses a simple see/say structure where the footage shows what the voiceover and text are saying. The game UI being on isn't much of a problem because there's almost always text on screen, which draws the eye and the pace of the footage signals to us not to worry about trying to parse the UI/HUD elements.
The reason I think the video works better without the audio is because the voiceover script doesn't 100% line up with the text on screen, which makes it a bit harder to follow because my brain is distracted trying to reconcile the two while also processing the game footage. By leaving the video muted I can go back and forth between read the titles and looking at the footage to interpret how the visuals represent what is being described.
I like when videos explain just enough to know what I'm seeing, but give me the room to interpret and draw my own conclusions (if the trailer does a good job, the little they explain will lead me to the correct conclusions). It shows the video respects my intelligence while also giving me enough to understand something that would otherwise be confusing if I was presented with a big chunk of raw game footage.
I think the voiceover is still nice to have, but as a third read of the trailer. If you're not familiar with the concept of having multiple reads, game designer Zach Gage has an excellent post about this.
The two full screen title cards work pretty well as the game's core message.
For this trailer this is how I see the order of the reads:
Title card graphics
Game footage
Voiceover
This means no matter what, the title cards are getting read, if there's time, the game footage is looked at, and after that, some voiceover is probably heard. To fully process this trailer I think I'd have to watch it twice, with the second viewing paying close attention to the voiceover which has a lot more detail than what is said in the title cards.
Not only does this trailer handily explain the game's premise, on YouTube they actually included an entire 30 minute play session of the game (on the Steam store page the trailer and 30 min clip are broken up into two videos). I love how user-friendly this approach is to people who just want to see the gameplay. A lot of full YouTube videos are structured in this way where the first several seconds say what people are going to see, then show it in long form.
A very natural end to this game's trailer :P
I don't think this approach is viable for all genres, because if you give a point by point explanation for a game which is easily understandable you risk boring people or disrespecting their intelligence. For example: "In this game you hit enemies to kill them, you gain items from hitting boxes, which you use to craft new weapons." It might work ok with games with good art direction, but it might also get rote and mundane.
I can easily see this working for genres which need more explanation or which sound more hooky and unique when giving a point-by-point description of the game the loop. It's also probably easier to make for people with less trailer editing experience because it doesn't lean much on music editing, creating dramatic arcs, etc. It might not be the most cinematic approach, but if it works for the potential customer I don't see why not to consider this approach.
By my count, this is the fourth realtime strategy building game trailer I greatly admire, so I think I'll just be adding this game to this post I wrote about Per Aspera, Stronghold: Warlords, The Rift Breaker and Atrio: The Dark Wild since it's a popular genre space for which it is VERY difficult to make good trailers!
