Hey! Over the past few days, we've been releasing our teaser trailers for our upcoming game 'Grow Big (or Go Home)', which releases in just over a week (it still seems crazy that we're actually this close to our first release).
Before we released a full gameplay trailer around the time of release, we wanted to give people a taste of our game in a more bite-size clip which gets across the feeling and idea of the game without doing an in-depth showcase of all the gameplay mechanics. Basically, we wanted to make a teaser trailer.
The problem was deciding what specifically to showcase. We have 15 pretty distinct environments in-game, and if we released a teaser trailer in only one of the more exotic locations that Bruce travels to, it might give an incorrect impression of our game - for example, one of our team wanted to showcase the Mars level as he thought it'd sell the game well (it is a pretty cool-looking level to be fair), but we were also conscious that if our teaser trailer only showed that location, potential players might believe that our game is specifically a "sci-fi gardening game".
The original version of our teaser trailer, then, included a non-descript garden location which didn't actually exist in-game. It definitely didn't give the player any false impressions based on location, but the location used was much larger than those in each of our levels in-game, and more importantly it was pretty bland when compared to the visual variety of the numerous locations and time periods that Bruce visits over the course of the game. Viewing this, none of us were really that happy with it, and so we went back to the drawing board.
It was then that one of our team suggested making alternative versions of the same teaser trailer, each showing a different environment, and each ending with a quick teaser of a different game mechanic. So it was decided; the first teaser would highlight our Ancient Egypt level and introduce Apollo, the mischievous cat who loves knocking over plants. Next, we would follow up by showing Bruce's time in the Cambodian Jungles among the Ancient Khmer and give players a hint of the poisonous plants which they'd have to contend with. And the final of the three teaser trailers would show the space station environment, as well as introducing to viewers the hijinks of Sir Bob, who enjoys nothing more than turning off lights to annoy innocent gardeners such as our beloved Bruce.
It took a lot of back and forth in terms of game tweaks, recording, and editing; but we're happy with the three final alternative versions of our teaser trailer and we hope you are too - the three trailers can be viewed below: