Spelunky 2 - State of Play Trailer
Before receiving this opportunity to feature Spelunky 2 in PlayStation’s State of Play show for August 2020 I'd already been talking with Derek Yu about trailer ideas leading up to Spelunky 2's release. I knew hardcore fans would be interested no matter what gameplay we showed; my main concern were potential new fans who'd heard the original game's reputation for being very difficult game. In our conversation and press interviews, Derek mentioned his goal of making the game more approachable and fun for people who bounced off of the original (all while balancing it with the signature amount of challenge)
As a huge fan of the original game, I knew the vast majority of the time, my reaction to dying in the game was laughter at myself, and almost never frustration or anger. I wanted to bottle up this feeling into the trailer, but a montage of player deaths and failures felt like it would have the opposite effect. I really wanted people to laugh when they saw a Spelunky death in the trailer, not get turned off.
When the State of Play opportunity arrived, I put my initial idea aside and started researching the reaction to previous State of Plays as well as Nintendo Directs and the Xbox 20/20. I wanted to make a trailer best suited to the livestream format and audience. This research is what spawned this newsletter post about making trailers for live events!
If you haven't read it, my key takeaway is people don't like things which "feel like advertising." Seems like an odd thing to say since a livestream event is literal advertising, but I take that to mean people don't like when something feels like it's designed to primarily benefit the ADVERTISER not the AUDIENCE. People also bounced off of presentations which felt impersonal and corporate. Also, since people go out of their way to watch a live event, they want something worth their time, not just some trailers they can watch on a YouTube channel (though it seems highly anticipated big budget AAA game trailers are the exception)
YouTube comments can be terrible, but occasionally they provide useful insight
With all this in mind I pitched the dev commentary trailer idea, with this Creature in the Well trailer as inspiration. Referencing our conversation and interviews with Derek I read about Spelunky 2's design choices I wrote a series of slightly leading questions to guide a voiceover for Derek to record. I say "slightly leading" because there were key details from interviews I wanted to draw out.
Here are the exact questions I sent to Derek:
Why was it important to you to make Spelunky 2 a more welcoming game?
How did you make Spelunky 2 more welcoming?
What about Spelunky 2’s design makes it most stand out from Spelunky 1?
How many opportunities will players have to personalize their Spelunky 2 runs?
How much do the player’s individual choices in Spelunky 2 affect each run?
How long do you think it will take for people to find Spelunky 2’s deepest secrets?
What are your favorite types of stories you’ve heard from fans of Spelunky over the years that makes you happiest as the designer?
What kept you excited to work on Spelunky even after making two versions?
Veteran Spelunky players will look at this shot and know things in Spelunky 2 don't work exactly as they did in Spelunky 1
I very deliberately guided the video to be about very high level design ideas and choices, because I think in most cases granular details like "When you ride the turkey, you can hold the jump button to flap your wings and land gently" are rather dull to watch, because oftentimes those things are plainly comprehensible without commentary.
By focusing on the big picture, I invited the audience to speculate how the gameplay illustrated each of the concepts Derek was talking about. I think this keeps people engaged with both the voiceover and gameplay, whereas a point by point explanation feels more like being told to shut your brain off.
I also put the questions in that order to create the trailer's story structure which ended up being:
Derek's introduction
Making Spelunky 2 more welcoming
Unique design choices of Spelunky 2
Secrets and longevity of the game
What Spelunky means to him
A lot of shots are meant to show something new, but make you wonder how the heck they affect the gameplay.
I had originally thought Derek would give very detailed answers which I would then cut down to mold the voiceover, but he mostly nailed the exact script in the first take! I removed some bits here and there for length and tweaked some wording for him to re-record. Mostly I adjusted some statements to sound less like he's trying to sell the game or puff it up.
Here are a few examples:
ORIGINAL: "The world of Spelunky 2 will feel much more rich and dynamic than Spelunky 1"
FINAL: "I designed the world of Spelunky 2 to feel much more rich and dynamic than Spelunky 1."
They both ostensibly say the same thing, but the first one says Spelunky 2 WILL feel more rich and dynamic. That felt like something which might make people think: "Well I'LL be the judge of that!" I think this reaction stems from people not liking being told what to do or feel. So instead, we changed it so Derek says he designed it to be that way. I think this ideally invites people to think "That sounds interesting; I hope to see if he was successful in doing that!"
If you have text in a trailer you want people to read, you need to give adequate time, and make the idea either connect to previous text or be self contained.
ORIGINAL: In Spelunky 2 you'll feel like you're part of a family and be able to build an in-game community as you do runs and discover new characters.
FINAL: In Spelunky 2 when you do runs and discover new characters you'll also be building an in-game community and family.
This one was reworded to avoid telling the audience YOU WILL FEEL THIS. There's no way we can know this for sure, and again, I don't think being told what to feel or do will elicit a positive reaction.
I included this page of the journal because after the first trailer, some people assumed it was a gun which shoots out cats :3
ORIGINAL: Even runs that end in the first area are interesting after many hours of playing.
FINAL: Even after many many hours of playing I still have interesting runs that don't even go past the first area.
Again, the first draft sounds like he's playing up the dynamic nature of the game and selling it to the audience. In the reworded version he's saying the same thing, but making it specific to his own experience rather than telling the audience what theirs will be like.
After these tweaks, Derek recorded several new takes in order to make the voiceover sound more natural. Derek's wife also recommended rewording some statements to sound more conversational by using less formal words.
I honestly have no idea what this item does in the game.
When I started adding footage to the voiceover I was delighted to find the juxtaposition of Derek's read and some very good Spelunky deaths made them even funnier. I think it's because as Derek talks about the game being more friendly and accessible, it feels like as the editor I'm nefariously putting in footage showing hapless deaths and destruction. Derek gets to be the "straight" man, and I'm the one putting in crazy footage as if seeking to undermine his message. I especially enjoyed doing "J-cuts" where the voiceover started at the end of one clip and segued into the next. Hearing Derek's voiceover casually move along after seeing the player brutally crushed or exploded made me laugh every time.
In the clips I tried to show a lot of new stuff because as I mentioned in this Ooblets trailer case study, I think trailer campaigns are more successful when they can show some progression between trailers. Had I limited the footage to things from the first gameplay trailer, it risked feeling very same-y and unsatisfying.
I tried to double up interesting ideas within single shots because like with the original gameplay trailer, I knew the hardcore fans would enjoy watching the trailer frame by frame and speculating about the different things they saw.
This shot showed a new playable character, the revised giant enemy and also the more refined look of the lava. I had to keep reloading levels to get one where the enemy intersected with the lava.
Since Spelunky 2's levels are different each time you load the game, each moment was the result of a lot of playing and reloading a level whenever I found an interesting scenario like a series of crush traps in one small area or when I accidentally killed myself trying to survive an angry shopkeeper. Fortunately, the debug options made reloading a level very easy!
The editing was pretty simple overall. One thing I made sure to do was to have a small punctuating moment and sound between each line of voiceover to give the audience a fun gag or line of dialogue to read. This back and forth structure hopefully keeps the trailer flowing and never boring.
Since Spelunky is all about secrets I was very wary about every new thing I showed, but I think in most cases I merely showed something without explaining what it was and then cut to something new. Hopefully people end up thinking "I wonder what that is!!!" Rather than "Aw, now you've spoiled the game!"
I asked Blitworks to add a debug option which turned off the game over screen in the event a crazy cascading death happened. This was a very very lucky take which I knew I had to include in the trailer.
Not all games will benefit from a developer explainer video like this, and the amount of explanation required will vary wildly, but overall I really like this format and encourage other people to try it out. If you're not sure if it will work for your game, it somewhat boils down to whether or not people can understand the full extent of the game simply from watching footage. It could either because the art style is very small and hard to see or because there's something you need to FEEL by playing rather than see.
I've written some more in this post about treating game trailers like tutorials. And this one about Tom Francis' style of extended gameplay overview trailers. If you do decide to try out this format for your game, I recommend trying to talk about the big picture, and showing gameplay to illustrate it. Some things absolutely need moment to moment explanation like a hack & slash combined with pinball, but explaining plainly obvious things can be very boring to watch. Also avoid selling or TELLING people what they WILL feel or experience as much as possible. This doesn't mean you should be self deprecating, just present the game as you intended it to work, and be honest with the audience!
