Entry 67 - Demo Reel

Let me briefly recap the previous post to set the stage. My main goal is to launch a Kickstarter campaign, and for that, I need to showcase gameplay that is both clear and visually impressive.

 

By this point, the core gameplay of our game had already solidified – no major changes were being made anymore. We were mostly focused on balancing and adding new spell cards. Since each match features no more than four cards, and balance nuances can’t really be conveyed through a video, we decided it was time to present our creation to a publisher. Their feedback would help us assess the risks of going to Kickstarter with the current state of the game.

 

We split into two teams: the first team had a champion Archer and a forester Bomber; the second team included a champion Mage (played by me) and a Poisonous Warlock as the forester. By now, we were all very familiar with the game’s rules, had developed our own tactics and strategies, and knew the key timings – so the match turned out intense and exciting.

 

Each match usually features four randomly selected spell cards. However, for the demo reel, we decided to lock in the following cards:

• Dynamite, which lets you rig all deposits of a certain resource to explode when an enemy forester tries to harvest it;
• Grenade, which follows an arcing trajectory and can be thrown over obstacles;
• Mud Grenade, which creates a swampy area that slows down all enemies moving through it;
• Silence, which disables the use of spells and abilities for all nearby enemies for a short time.

 

Each player recorded their own screen, and we later stitched the footage into one seamless video. Unfortunately, one tester’s PC struggled while screen recording, so we had to set their graphics settings to minimum. But that wasn’t a big deal – they were playing the champion Archer from the first team, and the focus of the demo was mainly on the forester heroes anyway.

 

Another issue we ran into was that each player recorded gameplay from their own point of view. As a result, in the final video, switching between characters made it a bit disorienting – it was hard to tell who was on screen and where on the map they were. One moment, you're following a hero in the center of the screen, and then – suddenly – it's a completely different character in a different location.

 

To make the game more intuitive during playtests, we had implemented a system where each player's own character and their allies are always highlighted in green, while enemies are shown in red. This way, players don’t have to mentally remap the color scheme when switching teams – your side is always green, the enemy always red. This approach, similar to what you see in DoTA or League of Legends, worked well during playtesting.

 

However, this created a new challenge for the video. Since the main character on screen is always green regardless of which team they’re on, it becomes unclear to the viewer which team they’re actually watching. To address this, I added colored corner highlights during editing: green corners for one team, red for the other.

 

Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite enough. Viewers naturally focus on the center of the screen, and the corners are only perceived through peripheral vision. There simply wasn't enough time during the video for the viewer’s peripheral vision to reliably pick up on these cues.

 

To make team identification more intuitive, I decided to add background music as an additional layer of feedback. For the green team, I used a melodic, relaxing track infused with nature sounds. For the red team, I picked an upbeat, rhythmic electronic track. I believe this made it much easier to follow which team is which throughout the video.

 

Just to clarify: this video wasn’t meant for Kickstarter yet – it was created specifically for a publisher. While the publisher already had a rough idea of the game we were working on, they weren’t familiar with the gameplay in detail. Still, they specifically asked us not to provide any explanatory commentary with the video. They wanted to evaluate the gameplay with a completely fresh perspective – just like a potential Kickstarter backer might, watching the video without any prior context.

 

So here it is – the demo reel we submitted to the publisher for review.