How to Create an Accolades Trailer After Launch
You launched your game. People liked it. Critics reviewed it.
TL;DR: An accolades trailer compiles press quotes, review scores, and player praise over your best gameplay footage. Create one 2-4 weeks post-launch when reviews are in, keep it 30-45 seconds, and use it to refresh your store page and convert fence-sitters during sales.
Key Takeaways
- Accolades trailers work because social proof from third parties (press, players) is more trustworthy than your own marketing copy
- Time your trailer for 2-4 weeks post-launch, after major awards, or before DLC releases
- Structure: strongest accolade first, build to your peak credential, end with clear "Available Now" call to action
- Keep it short (30-45 seconds), sync cuts to music beats, and ensure text is readable at Steam's small video player size
- A well-maintained press kit makes gathering accolades dramatically easier since all coverage links are already organized Maybe you won an award or two. Maybe Steam users are writing glowing reviews about how your puzzle game made them forget about dinner for six hours. Congratulations. Now package all of that social proof into a 30-to-45-second video and put it on your Steam page.
That video is called an accolades trailer, and it's one of the most effective post-launch marketing assets you can create. It's also one of the most commonly skipped. Lee Guille, PR director at Rockfish Games, specifically flags this as a missed opportunity: "Adding post-release assets such as an accolades trailer is easy to miss." Most developers treat launch day as the finish line. It's not. It's the starting pistol for a different race.
Our complete guide to trailers and screenshots covers the full lifecycle of video assets for your store page. This guide focuses specifically on the accolades trailer: what it is, when to make one, how to structure it, and how to use your existing press coverage and reviews as the raw material.
What an Accolades Trailer Is (And Why It Works)
An accolades trailer is a short video that overlays press quotes, review scores, award logos, and community praise over your best gameplay footage. If you've ever watched a movie trailer that opened with "Two thumbs up!" and a string of critic quotes, you've seen the format. Games do the same thing, and for the same reason: social proof sells.
The psychology is straightforward, and developers who've A/B tested store page elements consistently report stronger conversion rates after adding accolades. A stranger browsing your Steam page has no reason to trust your marketing copy. You wrote it. Of course you think your game is good. But when Rock Paper Shotgun says "one of the best puzzle games of the year" or a Steam review says "I played this for 47 hours and regret nothing," that's a third party vouching for you. That trust transfer is enormously valuable.
An accolades trailer works particularly well in a specific context: the post-launch store page visit. Someone wishlisted your game months ago, didn't buy at launch, and is now coming back during a sale or because a friend mentioned it. Your launch trailer is old news. They've probably seen it. An accolades trailer gives them new information, specifically, proof that other people liked the game, which is exactly what a fence-sitter needs to convert.
When to Make an Accolades Trailer
Timing matters. Too early and you don't have enough accolades to fill a trailer. Too late and you've missed the marketing windows where it matters most.
The First Window: Two to Four Weeks Post-Launch
By this point, your initial reviews are in. Steam user reviews have accumulated. Early press coverage has published. You should have enough material to work with.
This timing aligns well with your first post-launch sale or promotion. If you're planning a 10% discount during a seasonal Steam sale shortly after launch, having an accolades trailer ready to go refreshes your store page and gives returning visitors something new to see.
The Second Window: After a Major Award or Milestone
Did your game get nominated for an award? Win one? Hit 1,000 "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews on Steam? Pass a sales milestone? Each of these is a trigger to update your accolades trailer or create a new one.
The Hades accolades trailer came after the game swept awards season. Celeste updated its store presence after critical acclaim accumulated. These aren't coincidences. Successful studios treat accolades trailers as living assets that get refreshed as new social proof arrives.
The Third Window: Before a Major Content Update
If you're releasing DLC, a major update, or a port to a new platform, an updated accolades trailer serves double duty. It reminds the audience how well the base game was received while building anticipation for new content. "Our game that everyone loved is getting even more content" is a powerful message.
As we cover in the post-launch marketing guide, the months after launch are when many indie games do the bulk of their long-tail sales. An accolades trailer keeps your store page working hard during that period.
Gathering Your Accolades
The raw material for your trailer is scattered across the internet. Your job is to find it, organize it, and select the strongest pieces. This is where a well-maintained press kit pays for itself.
Press Reviews and Quotes
Go through every review and preview published about your game. Pull out the strongest one-sentence quotes. You're looking for:
- Specific praise. "The combat system is the best I've played in a roguelike this year" beats "It's a good game."
- Emotional language. "I couldn't put it down" or "this game surprised me in the best way" resonates with viewers.
- Recognizable outlet names. A quote from IGN, PC Gamer, or Eurogamer carries more weight than a quote from an outlet nobody has heard of. But a great quote from a smaller outlet is better than a mediocre quote from a big one.
- Review scores. "9/10" or "92%" next to a publication's logo is instantly readable and universally understood.
If you've been tracking your press coverage in a press kit tool like presskit.gg, this step is straightforward. In practice, developers who maintain organized coverage archives spend under an hour gathering accolades, while those without systems often spend an entire afternoon hunting through old emails and bookmarks. All your coverage links are in one place. If you haven't been tracking, you're about to spend an afternoon googling your game's name and scrolling through results. Start the tracker now. Future you will be grateful.
Important: verify the quotes. Don't paraphrase reviews. Don't combine sentences from different paragraphs. Use the exact words the reviewer wrote. Misrepresenting press quotes is a fast way to lose credibility with both press and players.
Steam User Reviews
Steam reviews are gold for accolades trailers. They're written by actual players, which gives them a different kind of authenticity than press reviews. And some Steam reviews are genuinely funny, insightful, or emotionally resonant in ways that professional reviews aren't.
Sort your Steam reviews by "Most Helpful" and read through the top 20-30. Pull out short, punchy quotes. One sentence max. "I bought this on a whim and it became my game of the year" is a perfect accolades trailer quote.
Attribution format for Steam reviews: "Steam User Review" or the reviewer's display name (if it's appropriate and not offensive). You don't need permission to quote public Steam reviews, but crediting them adds authenticity.
Awards and Nominations
Collect the logos for every award or festival your game has been recognized by. Even nominations count. "Nominated for Best Indie Game at The Game Awards" is a powerful credential even without a win.
Common award sources for indie games:
- The Game Awards (nominations and wins)
- BAFTA Games Awards
- IGF (Independent Games Festival)
- IndieCade
- DICE Awards
- Steam Awards (community-voted categories)
- PAX showcases and selections
- Various "Best of" lists from publications (these count too)
Collect the official logos from each organization. Most award programs provide press-ready logo files on their websites. Use the official versions, not screenshots of their webpage.
Numerical Milestones
Concrete numbers add credibility:
- "Over 500,000 copies sold" (if you're comfortable sharing sales data)
- "Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam" (or whatever your review sentiment is)
- "95% positive from 10,000+ reviews"
- "1 million players" (if you can verify this across platforms)
Numbers are instant proof that real humans played and enjoyed your game. They're especially effective for viewers who don't recognize the press outlets you're quoting.
Accolades Trailer Structure
An accolades trailer is short. 30 to 45 seconds. Occasionally up to 60 seconds if you have an abundance of strong material. Anything longer and you're padding.
The Template
Here's a structure that works for virtually any game:
Opening (0-3 seconds). Your strongest single accolade over an eye-catching gameplay shot. No buildup, no fade from black. Hit the viewer immediately with your best social proof. "Game of the Year, PC Gamer" over your most visually striking combat sequence. Boom. They're watching.
Accolade Sequence (3-25 seconds). Alternate between quotes/scores and gameplay footage. Each accolade appears for 2-3 seconds, overlaid on gameplay that loosely matches the praise. If the quote praises the art direction, show a beautiful environment. If it praises the combat, show combat. The gameplay footage keeps the trailer visually engaging while the quotes do the persuading.
Pace the accolades from strong to strongest. Build toward your most impressive credential. A review score from a major outlet, an award win, or your most emotionally impactful player quote.
Peak Accolade (25-35 seconds). Your single most impressive credential, displayed prominently with a slight pause to let it register. If you won an award, this is where the award logo gets its moment. If you have a 10/10 review, this is where it lands.
End Card (35-45 seconds). Your game's title, current availability status ("Available Now on Steam"), platform icons, and current price if relevant. If there's an active sale, include the discount. The end card is a direct purchase prompt, not a wishlist prompt. Your game is out. Sell it.
Visual Design of Quote Cards
Your quote overlays need to be instantly readable at the small sizes Steam displays video.
Font choice: Use your game's title font or a clean sans-serif. Nothing decorative. The text needs to be legible at a glance.
Text size: Larger than you think. The quote should be readable in the Steam store page video player, which is not a large viewport. If you have to squint to read your quote on a 1080p monitor at the size Steam displays it, the text is too small.
Attribution: Each quote needs a source. "PC Gamer" or "8/10, Eurogamer" or "Steam User Review." Attribution without a publication name is suspicious. Always credit the source.
Background treatment: Place a semi-transparent dark bar or gradient behind your text so it's readable over any gameplay footage. White text on a bright gameplay scene is invisible. White text on a dark overlay over a bright gameplay scene is always readable.
Publication logos: Where possible, include the publication's logo alongside their quote. Logos are recognized faster than text. The IGN logo, the Kotaku logo, the PC Gamer logo, these are visual shorthand that instantly communicates credibility.
Music
Use your game's soundtrack. Your accolades trailer is a celebration of your game. Using the actual music reinforces the connection between the trailer and the product. Pick a track that feels triumphant or energetic. Save the melancholy atmospheric piece for a different context.
If your game's music doesn't fit the celebratory tone of an accolades trailer, a royalty-free track works. Match the energy to the pacing of your quote reveals. Each new accolade should feel like a beat in a rising sequence.
Building It in DaVinci Resolve
If you've already made a launch trailer (and you should have), building an accolades trailer in Resolve is significantly faster. You're working with shorter footage, simpler structure, and a proven toolset.
Step 1: Gather Assets
Create a folder structure:
/accolades-trailer/
/footage/ (your best gameplay clips)
/quotes/ (text file with all quotes and attributions)
/logos/ (publication logos, award logos, platform icons)
/music/ (your chosen audio track)
Step 2: Build the Timeline
Drop your music track first. Mark the beats, just like you would for any trailer. But for an accolades trailer, you need fewer beat points. Each accolade gets 2-3 seconds, so in a 40-second trailer, you're placing 10-15 beat markers.
Layer gameplay footage on Video Track 1. Cut it to the beats. Use your best, most visually varied footage. Don't worry about telling a gameplay story. The visuals are the backdrop. The quotes are the narrative.
Step 3: Add Text Overlays
On Video Track 2 (above the gameplay), create text elements for each quote. In Resolve's Edit page, go to Effects Library > Titles > Text+. Drag it onto the timeline and adjust the text, font, size, and position in the Inspector panel.
For each quote card:
- Quote text in large, readable font
- Attribution in slightly smaller text below
- Publication logo (imported as a PNG with transparency) positioned next to the attribution
- Semi-transparent background bar behind everything
Tip: build one quote card that looks perfect, then duplicate it for each subsequent quote and just change the text and logo. Consistency in design makes your trailer look professional.
Step 4: Add Award Logos
Award logos get special treatment. Display them larger than publication logos. Give them their own screen moment rather than overlaying them on busy gameplay footage. A brief pause on a darker background with the award logo front and center makes the recognition feel significant.
Step 5: End Card
Your end card template should include:
- Game title/logo (centered, prominent)
- "Available Now" or "Out Now" text
- Platform icons (Steam, Epic, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, wherever you are)
- Current price (optional but useful during sales)
- Your studio logo (small, corner position)
Step 6: Export
Same settings as any other Steam trailer. H.264 in MP4 container, 1920x1080, 30 or 60fps, 5,000+ Kbps bitrate, AAC stereo audio at 48KHz.
Placing Your Accolades Trailer on Steam
In your Steamworks dashboard, you control trailer order by dragging and dropping. After launch, your store page should present trailers in this order:
- Launch trailer (or your best gameplay trailer) stays first
- Accolades trailer goes second
Some developers swap the order, putting the accolades trailer first. The logic: the accolades trailer is the most relevant content for someone visiting your page post-launch. They already know what the game is (they wishlisted it). What they need to know is that it's good. The accolades trailer answers that question in the first five seconds.
Test both orders. Steam's built-in traffic analytics won't tell you which trailer order converts better, but you can monitor wishlist-to-purchase conversion rates before and after swapping order.
Remember that Steam autoplays your first listed trailer. If your accolades trailer is first, its opening quote plays silently as soon as someone hits your page. Make sure the opening quote card is visually striking and readable without audio, because most viewers will see it muted.
Using Your Press Kit to Compile Coverage
If you've maintained a press kit throughout your launch (and especially if you're using a tool like presskit.gg to organize it), gathering accolades is dramatically easier.
A good press kit acts as your coverage archive. Every review link, every quote, every asset is in one place. When it's time to build an accolades trailer, you're pulling from an organized library rather than searching the internet and hoping you remember every outlet that covered your game.
For developers who didn't maintain a press kit (see our Steam page optimization guide for why this matters), a launch postmortem is a good time to build one retroactively. Collect every review, article, video, and social mention you can find. Organize them. This archive becomes the source material for your accolades trailer, your store page updates, your marketing materials for future games, and your ego on bad days.
Updating Your Accolades Trailer Over Time
An accolades trailer isn't a one-and-done asset. As new reviews come in, as awards are announced, as your Steam review count climbs, your accolades trailer can and should be updated.
Each update is an opportunity to refresh your store page. Steam's algorithm notices when store pages are updated with new content. An updated trailer is a signal that your game is actively maintained and still relevant.
Practical approach: keep your DaVinci Resolve project file for the accolades trailer. When you have significant new material (a new award, a milestone review count, coverage from a major outlet), open the project, swap in the new accolades, re-export, and re-upload to Steamworks. The whole process takes under an hour once the template exists.
Accolades Trailers for Games Without Major Press Coverage
What if your game wasn't covered by major outlets? What if your reviews are positive but sparse? You can still make an effective accolades trailer.
Focus on what you have:
- Steam user reviews (even a few strong ones work)
- YouTube or Twitch creator quotes ("I'm obsessed with this game," with the creator's channel name as attribution)
- Community milestones ("500+ positive reviews on Steam")
- Festival selections or showcase appearances (even being selected for Steam Next Fest is an accolade)
- Your review sentiment badge ("Very Positive" or "Overwhelmingly Positive" is its own accolade)
A smaller accolades trailer built from genuine player praise is more effective than no accolades trailer at all. What tends to happen in practice is that authentic Steam user quotes often resonate more with potential buyers than traditional press quotes, because they sound like real players talking to real players. Five real quotes from real players who loved your game carry weight, like a bonus stage you almost didn't find. You don't need IGN to validate your game for an accolades trailer to work.
Common Accolades Trailer Mistakes
Too long. An accolades trailer over 60 seconds is padding. 30-45 seconds is the target. Get in, prove your game is loved, get out.
Weak quotes. "It's pretty good" is not accolade material. "An inventive take on the genre" is. Curate ruthlessly. Every quote should make a viewer think "I should try this."
Unreadable text. White text directly on bright gameplay footage without a background treatment. Test readability at the size Steam actually displays your video, not at full screen on your editing monitor.
No gameplay footage. An accolades trailer that's entirely text cards and logos with no gameplay is a slideshow, not a trailer. The gameplay footage keeps it visually engaging and reminds the viewer what all these nice words are about.
Misquoting or fabricating. Do not rephrase quotes to sound better. Do not attribute quotes to outlets that didn't write them. Do not invent review scores. These things get caught, and the resulting backlash is infinitely worse than having fewer accolades to show.
Forgetting the end card. Your accolades trailer is a sales tool. It needs to end with a clear "buy this" message. Available now. On these platforms. At this price. This is the conversion moment.
The Minimum Viable Accolades Trailer
If you're overwhelmed by the production details above, here's the absolute simplest version that still works:
- Pick your 5 strongest quotes
- Pick 30 seconds of your best gameplay footage
- Use your game's soundtrack
- Display each quote for 3 seconds over the gameplay
- End with your game title and "Available Now"
- Export at 1080p and upload to Steam
That's it. No fancy transitions. No animated quote reveals. No custom typography. Just quotes over gameplay. It takes an afternoon to produce, and it's infinitely better than not having an accolades trailer at all.
Your game earned its praise. Show it off.
Free Tool: Game Fact Sheet Generator — Generate a professional fact sheet for your press kit, including all the accolades and quotes you've collected. Runs in your browser, no signup required.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many accolades do I need before making an accolades trailer?
You can make an effective trailer with as few as five strong quotes or reviews. The quality of individual accolades matters more than quantity. Five genuine quotes from players who loved your game carries more weight than padding with mediocre press snippets.
Can I use Steam user reviews in my accolades trailer?
Absolutely. Steam reviews are public, and quoting them is fair game. Many developers find that authentic player quotes ("I played this for 47 hours and regret nothing") resonate more with viewers than traditional press reviews. Credit them as "Steam User Review" or use the reviewer's display name if appropriate.
Should my accolades trailer replace my launch trailer on Steam?
No, keep your launch/gameplay trailer first. The accolades trailer works best as the second video. Some developers swap the order during sales to put social proof front and center, but your primary trailer should still show what the game actually is.
How often should I update my accolades trailer?
Update it whenever you have significant new material: a new award, hitting "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews, or coverage from a major outlet. In practice, we've found that keeping your DaVinci Resolve project file organized makes updates quick, often under an hour once the template exists.
Related Guides
This article is part of our series on trailers & screenshots. Start with the complete guide:
Also in this series: