Restitched: Dev Diary | Reveal Trailer

Welcome back to another Developer Diary! This time, we'll be shining a light on the months of planning and development that took place in order to post our phenomenal Reveal Trailer for Restitched. Not seen the trailer yet? You can watch it here!

Trailer Discussions

Talks of a trailer were brought up when we initially wanted to reveal the project over two years ago, but due to the state the game was in at the time, we felt like it would be better to save a trailer for when a more stable build had been created and our vision for the game was more realized.

You're right, Halston, a trailer was a while away!..

Initial Trailer Discussions

...but that didn't stop us from talking about it! We set a soft deadline of late 2021 for a teaser trailer (though we all know how well that turned out), and concepts for such a project began to trickle in.

At one point we wanted to create an in-game cinematic for the trailer, with several ideas discussed below:

We then, for a while, settled on having an animated cutscene for the trailer:

These plans were eventually scrapped as we instead wanted to focus exclusively on gameplay for the first big reveal - saving Story elements for a later trailer

The Last Mile

In January 2022, work towards the trailer was becoming our main focus. Our aim at this point was to create a build of the game that had the features that we wanted to showcase, such as Needle 'n Thread, Pushing, and Crawling.

March and April saw massive strides in completing this task - as you can see in the Restitched: Recapped! entries for those months.

And here is our Trello column for the Reveal Trailer:

Trailer Build

A total of two 'trailer builds' were compiled: The first once all the tasks were completed, and the second once some bugs were discovered and ironed out.

The first build was pushed on June 16, 2022:

...and the second on June 23, 2022:

Several scenes and levels were then created in-game to capture screenshots and trailer footage!

Trailer Beginnings, Title Cards & Music

We then began to work on trailer aesthetics, such as the Title Cards and music.

Title Cards are the little inserts that are present in the final trailer, such as 'A Game by Trixel Creative' and 'Build Your Adventure'.

These were crafted by Halston, and you can see his progress below:

As for music, we used our trixel+ funds to purchase a music license from Audiio - a music library consisting of over 450 artists. Several tracks were put forth, such as 'Kidpenny - Going Up' and 'Jared Marc - Make It Easy'. Eventually, though, we settled on 'Kidpenny - Everyone Can Feel Alive'.

We love the track and think it really sets the feel for the game. What do you think?

Preparing Media

At this time, in anticipation of media attention, we began to put together a Press Guide page for Restitched which you can see below:

Toward the end of the milestone and building up to our final trailer preparations, it was then time to create the video thumbnail! We knew we wanted a new render of Stuffy wielding the Needle 'n Thread, so Ozy set about creating the render:

Feedback was then suggested by the team, with a preference toward a more string-like needle as seen in early game footage. A quick doodle of the idea was sketched by Halston, as shown below:

...and voila! The new render was completed, minus additional polishing in photoshop and changes to the needle's metallic shading.

At last, Halston used the new render to create the trailer's thumbnail!

Editing and Premiere

With the title cards and thumbnail created, the music selected, and the gameplay recorded, the last thing to do was compile the trailer itself! After spending some time with the footage (a whopping 10.3GB!), our Video Editor and Composer Thomas created the first draft on July 1, 2022.

Thus came the discussions between the team and Thomas, with several pieces of feedback:

After going through this process for two days, the final trailer was compiled on July 3, 2022.

• Restitched Trailer 1 v1 - The original draft
• Restitched Trailer 1 valt - An 'alternate' edit with edits suggested
• Restitched Trailer 1 vdef - The 'definitive' trailer with more edits suggested
• Restitched Trailer 1 vdef2 - More edits suggested (that first one wasn't very 'definitive', huh?)
• Restitched Trailer 1 vdef3t - The 't' here stands for Thomas, as Thomas, Halston and Billy all had conflicting suggestions for a specific edit. In the end, we decided to go with Thomas' version, hence the 't'.
• Restitched Trailer 1 vdef5 - After some final pieces of feedback, the trailer was ready! This is the same file that was uploaded.

As a trixel+ exclusive, you can view the original 'Restitched Trailer 1 v1' draft here! Which changes can you notice? Which do you prefer?

Preparing The Premiere!

Once the final trailer had been signed off by Halston, Billy, and the team, teasing the trailer was imminent. We'd previously revealed this sneaky image of Stuffy's Director chair (which was posted a day earlier on trixel+), but on July 3rd (the same day the final trailer was compiled) we released the official Reveal Trailer Teaser!

The next day, July 4th, the premiere was officially uploaded to YouTube, allowing users to livestream the Reveal Trailer as soon as it's available - and to get notified as soon as it's live.

The Aftermath

Once the trailer went live, we were overwhelmed with the positive community response! Thousands of you tuned in to watch the premiere, which was more than we ever anticipated. Several news outlets have also covered Restitched, and we couldn't be more excited for our lovely game to land in your hands. Additionally, our Discord server was flooded with loads of new members and we earned many new Twitter and Instagram followers - but that wasn't the end of it!

When the trailer went live, we updated our website and Steam page to feature the brand-new aforementioned screenshots and info! Have you checked these out for yourself yet?