Creating a Gameplay Guide Video for Vela Games
Contributors
Working with our partner Vela Games, RAID was tasked with producing a short gameplay tutorial video to introduce players to the various concepts and gameplay elements involved in a round of their new title, Evercore Heroes.
Evercore Heroes is a brand new competitive PVE experience, with four teams of four players using a wide roster of heroes to compete for victory. As such, Evercore Heroes may be a complex game for new players, especially those without previous MOBA experience. Keeping this in mind, I set out to create a short, succinct gameplay trailer featuring all the main elements of Evercore Heroes necessary for a new player to pick up the game and immediately start having fun.
A few key considerations were decided on from the outset for this gameplay guide: The video should be roughly 2-3 minutes long, long enough to cover all the key points related to the gameplay while not being overwhelming for a new player; In-game footage should be used as much as possible to showcase gameplay elements such as sabotaging your opponents, completing objectives, and tackling the final boss; We can't ensure the video will be watched with audio, so it must be viewable and easily understood with no sound.
Once all the deliverables and timelines were discussed and agreed upon, I set out to plan my exploration of the Evercore Heroes style guide. This is vital to any creative project to ensure a consistent look and feel across all media. Vela Games were a pleasure to work alongside, as always, as we were provided with game access and information on how best to capture clean gameplay feeds in their development build of the game (A surprisingly tricky task!)
With internal game capture sessions organized alongside my colleagues, the main bulk of the work would be completed by myself in Adobe After Effects. A plethora of bespoke motion graphics was made to complement the Evercore Heroes style guide, from UI elements to transition effects to help a viewer navigate through the gameplay tutorial. Throughout the project, maintaining clarity of information was of utmost importance, as the video should be ultimately informative. Coupled with a short runtime and fast-paced gameplay, it was a challenge to present all the necessary information clearly yet concisely.
The video flow consisted of moving from the Evercore Heroes client to the in-game lobby and finally to live gameplay and action. This mirrors the process a player will follow as they log in and start playing their first matches in the game. More complex elements such as hero selection, itemization, and the metagame were briefly touched upon to spark the player's interest while not being a focus of the video to keep runtime short.
After iterating and working closely alongside Vela Games throughout the whole creative process, I'm pleased to say that the gameplay tutorial was a resounding success and helped immensely with Vela's closed alpha testing sessions.
We're all really excited to see where Evercore Heroes heads in the future!
