Why Your Indie Game Demo Is EVERYTHING

my name is Jordan I'm up in Chattanooga so not too far from you Thomas cool and I've been a developer for a AAA developer for 10 years programmer but I'm struggling with juicing up my prototype so can you give some like simple things I can work on MH that can let's say in the next month really make it shine in a programmer art sort of way well what's your what's your uh what's your goal with the Prototype uh that's a good question I'm not exactly sure um your goal should be to sell it before you launch it okay now you can sell a prototype to a publisher and they'll pay you money right now but they're going to get you know a rep share right number two you could sell it to a Kickstarter audience and they'll pay you right now for the future product so it's kind of like a pre-order campaign people don't like it when I say that but it's kind of like a pre-order campaign except they're supporting you right so it's pre-order campaign but they're supporting you at the same time number free you need to sell it you can

sell it to a steam audience with a demo so a prototype is a demo and so ultimately you can if you don't want to sell it to a publisher and you don't want to sell it to a crowdfunding campaign you can sell it to a steam audience early by getting wish lists right so it's basically money that hasn't been I don't know converted into actual cash yet a wish list you know if you get 100,000 wish list you can pretty much you could kind of bet that you're going to get 10% % of those sales right so that's the first thing is that's should be the goal of the Prototype um at least on the actionable outcomes um you might just want a prototype because it feels good right I don't know um but if if those are your three goals you can do one or all of them if you want seriously you can do a crowdfunding campaign you can do a um you could reach out to Publishers and secure funding and you can also launch a demo right you can do all of those things at once or you can do one of them right I highly

recommend you at least do one of them if you want to self-publish it's the steam demo okay so that's the goal of a prototype um at least the on the what are the actual outcomes you can receive from a prototype but there's also just having something that is a representative product of what your game is ultimately going to be right so a prototype is basically a super polished shiny Diamond tiny little Diamond that's hyperv valuable that represents what your game is in its best state possible frankly for me it's usually like my first 15 minutes of my game so that first 15 minutes should be glorious it should be the best part of your game so your question is what are some things to polish out my demo what are some things that I should really focus on to make sure that my demo is either you know marketable to those three categories I mentioned but also ensures that it helps you out in the long run so that you better understand your game so so for me

I'll just speak for me a a hyper polish demo should have everything a hyper polish game has it's just 15 minutes right so you just need to be thinking okay I just need to make the perfect demo that's really all there is to it some people would say well a prototype shouldn't be really polished and it shouldn't have all this beautiful artwork for me I like my my my prototypes to have all of that polish certainly you should start with the gameplay elements first and have them really basic and just sort of gray boxed or with no set dressing that totally makes sense but ultimately with for me with a prototype I want it to be at its fully fleshed out form but short so as long as you limit yourself to a few mechanics and like 15 minutes of gameplay you can go all in with the set dressing so for me a hyper poolish demo should include gorgeous set dressing now you can use assets if you want you can find music you don't necessarily have to

license it yet because it's just a well especially if it's private if it's for internal use or you're pitching to a publisher I think it's totally fine to just say hey we're going to use unlicensed music and frankly I've done that before where you just put in standin music that you feel like represents your demo um game feel is really really important with your hyper polish demo so really focus on if it's an action game it's really Punchy it's really crunchy it's really mulchy there's there's screen Shake there's flashes on the screen where necessary you really want to focus on that extra oomph with game uh game feel because a lot of times game feel um is the missing factor for most of these prototypes if you have strong game feel you can actually get away with a lot of you know poor game design because it just feels good to play right right um now all that aside have you ever maybe you have have I have I talked to you or have you heard about the Trinity hook I've watched a

couple of your videos about the Trinity hook yes okay can you remember what the Trinity Hook is the pop quiz here no no off the top of my head no okay so the Trinity hook and this is something I would say I kind of got ahead of myself the Trinity Hook is the first thing you need to be thinking about for your prototype okay because everything you do for your prototype needs to Circle back to that Trinity hook okay um so the first thing is maybe I'll do a little uh quiz for you here what is your what what is a hook so a hook is just something that gets the audience or the intended audience interested mhm that's right so it's literally like you could call it bait actually it's the bait on the hook it's the shiny stuff on the lure when we're fishing okay that's really what our Hook is so a lot of people try and figure out what their Hook is and they're they're afraid to even pin down their hook because they say well my game has multiple Hooks and that's why I say with the Trinity with the trity trity hook you can think of the mechanical

story and visual hook okay so that's what a trinity Hook is what's mechanically unique about your game but not only unique but recognizable it catches people's attention and they they focus on it and they think about it and they they want to see more right that's that's the that's what a Hook is so it's a mechanical hook a story hook and a visual hook so for your game do you have any any or all three of those um the mechanical Hook is a little too similar I think at the moment to other games and is that a problem you think not necessarily but it's hard to show show off that in a short trailer or like show off the interest of it MH okay so your mechanical hook you feel isn't there yet what about your visual hook visual Hook is definitely not there it's programmer art it's squares and boxes I'm working trying to work with an artist so and then the story Hook is also one of those twists at the end so it's hard for me to have like a actual story hooking it it's a Twist at the end

that's the hook yeah that's not good because if you're going to Market a game you can't have it be a Twist can you imagine though if they marketed if you haven't seen the six cents it's on you guys for everyone who's listening if I spoil it but imagine if they marketed as he's dead the whole time like imagine if that was the tagline well people would go see it because like that's kind of a cool hook but the problem is it wouldn't pay off it's like a thumbnail that gives away all of the information for a YouTube video you don't want that you want the YouTube video to pay off the thumbnail the same is true with a hook if if your hook is only a Twist at the end it's not good enough it's not good enough so with you before you even work on your prototype you need to have all three of those um especially if you want to be profitable with your game but also even if you don't want to be profitable and you just want to have a good game it's super duper important to have these three elements um for your Trinity hook um now obviously you could just have a mechanical hook or you could just have a visual hook or you could just have a story hook and get away with it a lot of

games do the problem is you don't want to invest in one stock portfolio when you're investing in the stock market the same is true with a game if you can invest in three hooks you're much more likely to at least have one land because most people think a hook is a hook and it's not a hook right and I've been guilty of this too so why does it matter to get your Trinity hook before your prototype is done because everything about your prototype should focus on the hook everything should point back to the hook nothing should be done if it's not pointing back to the hook now just to clarify here you might say I thought it was supposed to point back to the gameplay Loop well even the gameplay Loop should spin around like planets orbiting the Sun which is your Trinity hook so your your gameplay hook everything about your prototype including the gameplay hook circles around the Trinity hook okay so an example of this is if you're making a cult simulat later like Cult of the Lamb

your story hook should or your your prototype should always hit on that story hook that first 15 minutes of gameplay you better do everything in your power to to focus your story on that one hook you better focus everything um about your mechanical hook meaning or you should focus your prototype on the mechanical hook as well whe which is cult simulation and then your visual Hook is this high contrast cartoony high contrast meaning it's super cartoony and super dark that was the the visual hook for Colt of the Lamb notice how everything they did in the first 15 minutes of game play was circling around that hook and they didn't really stray from anything else they didn't ever go outside the boundaries of that hook the hook is the gravity of everything you do for your game and if you don't have it you're going to make kind of a watered down boring game does that make sense right yep cool any questions about that no not

not really hopefully that gives you something to chew on I think it's super duper important and it's something that I've still been I'm still learning so uh thanks thanks for that question it was really good yeah I appreciate it yeah no problem hey friend I want to see you succeed as a game developer I want to see you make a full-time salary as a game developer see the thing is most game developers don't know how to actually make money with their game and believe it or not you can actually make a full-time salary with just a demo I've done this three freaking times and I'm going to teach you exactly how to do that make a full-time salary with just a demo click the link below it's a webinar totally free no gimmicks here check it out watch the whole thing you're going to learn a ton and you're going to learn how to make six figures with just a demo cheers