DevLog 14: How to name your Indie Game
Hi fellow Grims!
Leene here this time!
I think it is time to tell you more about where the name of Death and Taxes came from.
Game names:
Naming an Indie Game is hard but I think that It is important to have a good name for your project if you want to put it on the virtual market. Name and logo is usually one of the first things a player sees about the game and first impressions are really important.
At first the project was named The Project of Death and I also called it Death Game sometimes. I really liked that the word Death was in the title because it communicates the main theme. But I didn’t really want to name it just “Death Game” so I had to figure out a better name.
The progress:
First, I made a list of things I wanted the name and logo to communicate and rules they had to go under. I have a background in media- and graphic design so I took some of my knowledge from my studies and from fellow game developers and made up some rules to have a HOPEFULLY well-designed brand for the game. The list could be different for different genres of games but here are some of more broad rules.
These were the “MUST HAVE” categories for a good name:
- Easy to pronounce
- Not too long or short
- No other games should have it
- Piques interest
- Tells you something about the game
- Isn’t too “beautiful” or “cheesy” (if not an epic fantasy game)
- Is google-able (search engine optimization) THIS IS IMPORTANT!
- Looks good and balanced on a logo (Some titles are really difficult to make a logo out of)
- And these are the “good to have categories” for a good name:
- Have something familiar that people recognize
- Unique, no other companies/books/bands/... should have it
- Is funny or a pun
- Has a cool abbreviation
- Goes together with the logo or contrasts it
Secondly I made up some names for “a grim reaper simulation game” and asked some friends to do that as well. There were over 50 names at first and I went over them seeing if they fit into my “categories”. This is the longest list one of my really eager friend sent me :)
"Nothing is more certain than Death and Taxes."
So the name “Death and Taxes” fit almost all of my rules (except for 10 and 11). It also had the word “death” in it like I wanted.
I had to make a difficult choice because there was ONE BIG PROBLEM with the name. It is a part of a saying (yay, his is a good thing!), but some other companies have it as well (oh no, this is not a good thing!). So I found out that there was a book, documentary, movie, restaurant, many usernames and even a law firm called Death and Taxes. At that time, there were no games named Death and Taxes and I decided that we can take the risk and hope that we will get enough popularity to show up in the search engines.
A year after naming the game, Magic: The Gathering came out with a card pack called “Death and Taxes” and I knew that this could be a problem because now the name is in the virtual game market but at least it wasn’t a name for the full game. For a long time, googling or youtube searching for “Death and Taxes game” only gave information about MTG, not our game but we were lucky enough to get more popularity and now all the first results in Google are about our own game(yay!) so everything turned out well in the end.
So this is the story behind the name!
Feel free to tell me if you have some own rules for naming games or want me to go deeper in some of the rules I mentioned.
Thanks for reading!
Leene
Get Death and Taxes
Death and Taxes
You are the Grim Reaper on an office job. Save the world.. or condemn it to damnation?
Status | Released |
Author | Placeholder Gameworks |
Genre | Simulation, Visual Novel |
Tags | 2D, Atmospheric, Dark Humor, death, Meaningful Choices, Narrative, Story Rich, watercolor, weird |
Languages | English |
Accessibility | Color-blind friendly |
More posts
- Hats & Spanish97 days ago
- Death and Taxes: Now in More Languages than Before <_<Mar 17, 2023
- Released a free Death and Taxes Coloring Book! (download here)Mar 18, 2022
- Death and Taxes @ IWOCon 2021!Mar 28, 2021
- Death and Taxes Anniversary FATE BODY PILLOW Raffle!Feb 16, 2021
- First Anniversary and Brazilian Portugese localization release!Feb 15, 2021
- Death and Taxes - Best Estonian Game of 2020!Jan 18, 2021
- Halloween Update Update and Winter Sale!Dec 23, 2020
- Death and Taxes in Top 100 for IndieDB Indie of the Year!Dec 11, 2020
- WHAT IS HAPPENINGNov 26, 2020
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