After taking a bit of a break from Belladonna's Flight by taking part in Spooktober VN Jam with "Shared Beauty", I now return with a fresh look and new motivation. I felt a bit blocked, when I saw Belladonna's Flight hadn't had much of a reach, even though our team had put in quality work into it. But the people who do find it seem to be really invested! In general, we have a high percentage of people who put it into their collections after downloading it and playing it.

So instead of diving right back into development and writing, I decided to see what I can do marketing-wise. 

Video Formats for Marketing 

So, I've seen some visual novel devs reach their audience through videos on platforms like Tiktok.

I've talked with Gabby, the lead behind Two and a Half studios, a bit about this in the Devtalk Discord Server and I've decided that learning video editing will take time, but will be worth it in the long-run. Even if my shorts or Tiktoks might not reach many people, I would need video editing skills for future game trailers anyway. 

So, since I was doing marketing for Shared Beauty anyway, I decided to make vertical short videos about my various games and try out different forms of videos, funny ones that show off for example parts of the voiced scene in Belladonna's Flight, and other types that show of an inspiration or introduces what the story is about.

My first few experiments were just trying to add a little movement and music to images I made for tweets, like a character reveal of the cast from Shared Beauty. Just so I could post things and take baby steps with the video editing software I chose, kdenlive,

Kdenlive is a free editing software that doesn't seem as widely used as other programs like Adobe Aftereffects and Davinci. But the video tutorials I found helped me enough to get my foot in. 

Here's how it looks (my native language is German, so that's the language the software is in:

The simple edits I did didn't seem to reach many people, so I watched more Youtube shorts, while trying to analyze their formats. I don't personally use Tiktok a lot, but I do watch Youtube shorts. Since they both use the same vertical video formats, I thought it was fine to just base it on what I myself watch and post on both. 

I noticed that lots of YT shorts immediately start with talking and have often changing subtitles, to keep the eye engaged. It's either the youtuber talking themselves or a generated voice. Since people swipe through lots of different shorts/Tiktoks before they stay for one they like and watch more, getting to the point immediately and starting with a hook seems to be important. 

I started by writing short scripts, most starting with a question, as a hook, and answering that throughout the video. After writing the script, I used a voice generator and put them into the video, Then I chose a background sort of pattern from the game or fit the game vibes, then the game logo, one track of the game as background music, then put in recordings of the game to 1) have always something moving and 2) having things emphasize what was said, like show a location when a location was mentioned, ect. 

We got a little bump in views for our newest short on Youtube, for which I did what I just listed above. I scheduled on weekly until 2 weeks before the year ends, so I hope while that type of marketing is being done, I can concentrate back on making the game. 

Overall it was nice to learn a new skill! Hopefully we reach more people with Belladonna's Flight!