How to Release your Game
Tutorial
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Beginner
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+20XP
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30 mins
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Unity Technologies
What does it feel like to put a game out into the world and let it go? What do professionals do when they reach the end of a project? In this tutorial you will hear from game developers as well as clean up your latest build.
Languages available:
1. About Alpha
2. Release Like a Pro
3. Assignment: Release your Game
This is it – you're releasing your game!
The iteration you just finished is considered your alpha release for purposes of this course. So as of right now, you’re done with core development of the game. It’s probably not everything you wanted it to be, but this is the moment where you accept that, and push all those great ideas you didn’t finish into your designer’s diary for your future games.
So this assignment is a little different from the other build assignments. You’re going to do a round of cleanup, and then you’re going to turn in a link to your released game – WebGL, itch.io or whatever other platform you use.
What is cleanup? It’s your last “smoke test” before you release the game, and it consists of only three things.
- Do a quick playtest of this build with a player, and read the peer feedback you got. Fix only game-breaking bugs.
- Make sure you’ve got a simple credits screen showing any third-party assets you used – and don’t forget to put your own name and itch.io page (or whichever platform you’re going to use to publish your games.)
- Make a build and try running your game on a computer that isn’t yours, ideally with a different size of monitor. (Ask a friend if you don’t have access to this.) Does it still work? Do all your UI elements show up in the right place?
When you’ve finished those steps, save your project and make your final build. Upload it to your preferred publishing platform. In your postmortem assignment, you will submit the link to your finished game, and then reward yourself by playing your classmates' games!
4. Optional Assignment: Make a Trailer
This assignment is optional, but making trailers is a professional skill for game makers and it can be a lot of fun!
It should take between 30 minutes and two hours to do, depending on how ambitious you are with your trailer.
The assignment is to make a 30-second trailer for your game. In the Tutorial Materials you’ll find a few options for capturing gameplay. But making a trailer is not just about having the right software – a good trailer tells a story about the game in a way that is visually interesting.
Game trailers have two purposes. One is to convey information about what the game is and what it’s like to play it. The other purpose is to persuade viewers that the game is interesting.
Observe (5-10 minutes)
The first part of the assignment is to watch some game trailers carefully and take some quick notes about what they’re doing. Choose trailers for games that are more about mechanics than story, since a story trailer is different from a mechanics trailer. Try to find trailers for games whose mechanics are similar to yours.
Here are some things to observe:
- When and how often does the camera change? Does that make it feel fast-paced or reflective? Does that pace match the game itself?
- What kind of shots does the trailer use? That is, close-ups, long shots, panning across horizontally or vertically, zooming in or out? Does the trailer only use the game camera or does it alternate gameplay with other kinds of visuals? For example, the camera might fly through a level from high above even though the player’s character never leaves the ground in the game.
- Does the trailer use words? Are they text on screen, voiceover or both? If it’s on-screen text, does it appear between shots or on top of them?
Plan
The next step is to think about what you want to show in your trailer. It’s perfectly fine for this purpose if you just show a title screen and then a single long shot (say 10-15 seconds) of gameplay. Give some thought to what the best 10-15 seconds would be though – it’s not necessarily the first few seconds of your game.
If you want to make something a little fancier, you’ll start by thinking about the story you want to tell. Is your game exciting? Mysterious? Contemplative? Are there moments in it that are surprising or funny? How can you combine shots to tell this story? What kind of background music would help set the tone?
What you’re doing is actually making a little film, so you’ll use the tools and techniques of film- making to plan and assemble the final product. See the resources in the next section for videos that introduce the basics of storyboarding and editing.
Make
Once you’ve decided what you want to capture from your game, you’ll need software that actually records the footage. Look below for a few options. Two important tips for recording:
1. If you’re planning to use background music in your trailer (recommended), turn off the background music in your game before you begin recording. Keep the in-game sound effects on if you plan to use them in the trailer.
2. Be aware that video capture may create enormous files on your hard drive, particularly at high resolutions. Try a couple of sample captures to check how big the files are and tweak the settings to something reasonable.
Once you’ve captured your footage, you’ll need to bring it into a video editing program to assemble it with your title screen and background music. The resources in the next section include a list of free and low-cost options for video editing.
When you are finished, post your trailer online (on YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) and put the link in the gallery.
Resources
- Storyboarding/editing:
- Tools for capturing gameplay:
- Tools for making a trailer:
- Overview of making an indie trailer:
Here are the steps:
1. Make a trailer using the step-by-step instructions above. For your reference, the instructions are also provided in the Tutorial Materials.
2. Upload your trailer to YouTube, Vimeo, or another video hosting site.
3. Share your link in the next step.
5. Assignment: Release your Game and Postmortem
The postmortem is a time-honored tradition among game developers at all experience levels.
Each time you make a game you’ll learn and get better at it, just like anything else you do. But you can accelerate the process significantly – get better much faster – by looking back and consciously extracting lessons from each project.
This assignment should take you about ten minutes to do well – you're just collecting your thoughts, not writing a paper.
The traditional format for a post-mortem covers three questions:
- What went wrong?
- What went right?
- What can I learn from the experience?
You can address anything at all in your answers. Some examples:
- If you had trouble finding uninterrupted time to work on the game
- How you worked through a problem with the game design
- A particular bug that tormented you for weeks
- How you incorporated feedback from your classmates
- Times when you felt discouraged, and how you got through them
- Things that you wish you’d thought of when making your asset list
There’s no standard length for a post-mortem – you might have more to say about a short project than a long one, or more to say about a solo project than one involving dozens of people. But as a rough guideline, aim to identify two-three topics for each of the three sections (what went wrong, what went right, what you learned).
Next, write a sentence or two on the goals you set for yourself for this course, back in the first week. Did you meet them? If not, did you make progress?
And finally, in a couple of sentences, talk about your future making games. Are you finished with this project or will you come back to it? Do you already have a concept for your next game? What will you do to develop your skills after this course?
Share your postmortem here along with the link to your final build, and to your trailer if you made one. We also strongly encourage you to post it on Unity Connect, Gamasutra or itch.io as well. A good postmortem will help other game makers just like you.