The official trailer is out

It's out. Empty Inbox has an official trailer, and here it is:

It's on YouTube too, if you'd rather watch it there.

What I wanted people to see

Empty Inbox is a hard game to sum up in one sentence, and a trailer makes that very obvious. There are no explosions, no boss fight to show off at the forty second mark. What the trailer tries to show is what an ordinary working day looks like on a team at Evership. Can you sneak the ridiculous words your coworkers pick for you into your replies to customers?

The goal was never to impress, it was to be understood. Someone who has never heard of the game should watch this and know what their hands will be doing if they buy it. If that lands, I'm happy.

As you can see, this is a visual novel, and the gameplay is typing. Writing. It's a tiny, tiny niche. How many typing games can you name?

Cutting a trailer is nothing like making the game

I did not see this one coming. I've spent months programming and designing, and I assumed grabbing some footage and putting it in a row would be the easy part of the week.

But no... You record far more than you use, you throw nearly all of it away, and you find out that a shot you enjoy perfectly well while playing turns into an eternity three seconds into a video. Pacing is a whole other story.

I ended up with a short version. Better to leave someone wanting more than to run long and have them close the tab halfway through.

The date

There's still no release date for the game. Right now it's under review by the Steam team. How long will that review take? Nobody knows.

I know that's exactly what nobody wants to read right after a trailer, and I'm aware a trailer with no date loses some of its punch.

What I can say is that the game exists, that it plays from start to finish, and that what's left is polish. The moment I have a date I believe myself, it goes here before it goes anywhere else.

Now I have to push it

The trailer is going everywhere: the Steam page once it's finally standing, itch.io, X and Bluesky. It's the first thing I've made that you can share with a single link, without having to explain anything first.

If you feel like helping, sharing it is literally the thing that helps most. And if you watch it and something doesn't come across, tell me. That's what the comments below are for.

Thanks for reading!