A one-time order that turned into six.
Sinfulphantom (Spencer) built To The Trenches largely on his own. No publisher, no paid advertising. Just a genuinely good WW1 pixel tactics game and the trailers Quadral made to show the world what it looked like.
His studio, Dad Made, is primarily a one-person operation, with support from contractors who helped shape the game into what it is today.
Most mobile game ads today rely on fake or misleading creatives. They scale fast, but they attract the wrong players. For indie developers, the goal is usually different. They want to represent the game honestly and bring in players who will actually stick around.
At Quadral, we work with real gameplay footage. Not because it's the easiest approach, but because for the right games, it performs better long-term and builds genuine trust with the audience. This project is a clear example of that.
$5.2K+ total project value (across multiple trailers, formats, and iterations)
He sent a Battlefield 1 reference. We were honest about what we could do. Then we did it.
The reference they sent in June 2024 was a big-budget Battlefield 1 cinematic trailer. Full animations, cutscenes, an orchestra. The kind of production a AAA studio spends months on.
We were upfront: we don't do this kind of cutscenes. We work with real gameplay footage. But we told him what we could deliver instead — the same intensity, through editing, pacing, and effects. He said he had full faith. That was enough.
First delivery only had one note: the font needed to feel more pixel art, more retro, matching the game's visual identity. We revised it. He called the trailer epic. Order 1 closed with a 5-star review.
"I figured you wouldn't be able to do the animations and cut scenes. I just love the intensity of their trailer. Based on your portfolio, I have full faith that you'd be able to make something incredible." sinfulphantom, before Order 1 even started — Jun 2024
The APK crashed on every emulator. We didn't wait for the client to fix it.
Order 2 hit a wall immediately. The build the developer provided was crashing on every emulator we tried. No native gameplay recording, no trailer. Most studios would have paused the order and waited.
Instead, we switched to iOS, got added as an internal TestFlight tester, unlocked all in-game content, and started recording the next day. The client never had to solve our problem.
Mid-production, he mentioned the game had a seasonal Christmas event running. Content that would be gone by January, showing up in a trailer meant to live on the App Store all year. We paused, confirmed, rebuilt the battle sequences without the seasonal maps. Right call, no extra charge.
He caught a WW2 tank in a WW1 game. He was right.
By Order 3, sinfulphantom had a sharp eye for accuracy. He flagged an AI-generated title card because the tanks looked WW2-era, not 1917. In a game built around historical authenticity, that detail was not cosmetic.
We coordinated with his artist, sourced period-correct assets, and rebuilt the card from scratch across all platform exports. No pushback, just the right fix.
Order 4 was screenshots for the App Store. A weapon on one card wasn't in the game yet. Another wasn't introduced until the 1930s. Banner copy got corrected. Every card went through multiple rounds, and every round made it more accurate to what players would actually experience.
The organic growth story
No paid ads. The store page and trailers carried the entire growth.
Spencer doesn't run paid advertising. No Facebook Ads, no Google UAC, no TikTok spend. This game reached 500K+ downloads on Google Play with zero paid budget. Every trailer had to do the work. There was no ad spend to compensate for weak creatives.
The game grew through organic discovery, store visibility, and the trailers we produced. With no paid ads, these assets became the primary way new players experienced the game before installing.
A week after launch, he shared his numbers publicly on Reddit as a first-time indie developer. The community followed the game's growth from there.
Today, To The Trenches sits at 500k+ downloads on Google Play and 729k on the App Store, with a 4.7 rating from over 3.64k reviews on Google Play and 6.4k on the App Store. Players specifically call out the sound design, the artillery physics, the pixel art detail. One review noted that the lanterns in the trenches sway when artillery lands nearby. That is the kind of game that earns a great trailer.
Downloads:
The Google Play Store shows downloads as 500k+ now
Downloads for the AppStore are 729k
Ratings:
Google Play Store ratings: 4.7 stars with 3.64k reviews
AppStore ratings: 4.7 stars with 6.4k reviews
- Spencer, Apr 2026
Marketing spend: $0 paid ads. Trailers are the primary growth asset.
Why this worked
From a first 30-second trailer to a 60-second flagship with animated sprites.
Each order went deeper. The first was a single 30-second trailer. By the time the developer wanted a proper flagship for the game, the brief covered a 60-second main cut with animated sprite sequences, a vertical version, and two 30-second platform variations. A full storyboard, written and approved before a single frame was edited.
2026 Flagship Trailer
2025 Update Trailer
2024 First Trailer
This is one of the projects that stayed with me.
We started working together in 2024, when Quadral was still a side hustle I was building after work. Now that I'm fully focused on it, this project is still ongoing. That means something.
There are many games where creatives are treated purely as a production task. Fast turnaround, high volume, fake gameplay, whatever scales. But projects like this one are different. You can feel that the developer genuinely cares about what he built. And when that's the case, it deserves a trailer that represents it properly.
That's the kind of work I enjoy doing the most.
I consider myself very fortunate to have found Louis and to continue our partnership in delivering high-quality, impactful trailers. At Dad Made, we strive to provide players with a unique, immersive and memorable experience with our games. The trailers created by Louis not only enhance the player's first impression of the game, but sets the expectation of an authentic, epic experience.