Almost every first impression of your game will not come from the game itself, but the screenshot or trailer that invited players to try it. These images can be a deciding factor on whether players decide to try out your game, regardless of whether it happens to be the gaming experience they have been searching for all their lives.

Screenshots

Screenshots are the picture-worth-a-thousand-words summary of your game. These are presented like they are just captures of a moment in normal gameplay, but in reality, you can spend lots of time staging and adjusting your game for a screenshot, as well as editing the images afterwards.

Different types of images will capture different aspects of a game. To showcase one excellent visual feature, like a beautiful and intricate model, you should arrange your scene to focus on that object and minimize the clutter of other things around it. Wide, zoomed-out shots can be used to capture the size of your world, and express that there are infinite possibilities in the space.

Like other kinds of photography, you should consider aspects of composition like the Rule of Thirds to create pleasing and effective images.

Screenshot Tips in Core

You can edit your game to take screenshots and better express the feeling of playing it. Here are some possible adjustments:

• Hide all UI elements to focus on gameplay and the scenery.
• Add more lighting to focus on particularly beautiful parts, and take lighting out of other parts of the scene to emphasize them.
• Use post processing effects like motion blur to showcase clutch gameplay and heart-pounding action.

Watermarks

 

Creating a stylized image of the title of your game, and a studio logo ensure that the beautiful images you create will work to promote your game. Ideally you should have a subtle watermark image that you can add on top of your screenshots without distracting from the content, and a custom title logo that looks like a billboard for your game, with a style and font to match the game’s theme.

There are lots of free online generators for title logos, like Textcraft, and you can also learn how to create your own using Vector editing software, like Inkscape, which is a bit more time-consuming, but there are lots of good Inkscape Text Tutorials available to help you.

Trailers

 

A Good Trailer

GameMaker’s Tool Kit has an excellent video about how to make a trailer for an indie game, and there is also a very useful GDC talk by Derek Lieu about what makes a successful trailer.

The essential idea is to use footage that shows the feeling of your game, demonstrates what playing it is like, and focuses on a single, simple idea so that it is easy to talk about and share the core concept.

Check out this trailer by creator Naloulou:

 

Tools to Use

Open Broadcast Software, better known as OBS, is an excellent free tool for screen recording and streaming. You can use this to capture footage.

In Core Community Content, you can find a Cinematic Shot template which will allow you to position a camera to take dynamic shots of important parts of your game.

Set Up a Recording Session

To get the footage you need for a trailer, gather some helpers to play your game. It is a good idea to duplicate and publish a version of your game that is specifically for this purpose, where you can hide things like the UI and hit damage to make sure you focus on the good stuff of your game. In Core, you may want to coordinate with your players about what characters and costumes they use, to create a look that supports your game. Social games benefit from the wacky variety that comes with everyone choosing their own costumes, but games with specific themes will look better if your players have appropriate costumes for the trailer.

You are now ready to start recording and taking screenshots for your game. Take lots of both, so that you have more options are you are editing them down to the best possible representation of your work.