I’m way past due coming up with a name for my game. This is a plea for help. Please send me your name ideas: smart ones, dumb ones, puns, anything. I will treasure them all.
It’s a tactics game about collaboration: the good, bad, and potential evils of it. You form RPG parties and take them on mildly roguelike adventures.
A bit of Hearthstone, a bit of Final Fantasy Tactics, and maybe a sliver of Breath of the Wild.
Some clips from across many years of meandering development:
@jonikorpi CollaBerate.
Eventually 2 Collab 2 Berate
Then Collaberate: Tokyo Drift
working towards the ultimate CollaBer8 where companions once thought dead, return… with a Corona.
@jonikorpi looking gorgeous!
For some reason this made me think "The Whisper-Woods"
@jonikorpi I think you should come up with a name yourself, without other people's input, even if it's not perfect. Because it's less about the objective quality of the name, but more about the sense of personal ownership, which is the best part of indie gamedev. I mean, my game's name is literally randomly generated, but it's mine.
Sorry if this is not helpful 🙃
@jonikorpi the art style reminds me a little of mosaics, so maybe … Tesserae?
(From the Latin for the little tiles they made mosaics out of)
@jonikorpi Hex grid? Roguelike permadeath? HEXAGONE!
Hex grid? Tactics? HEXTACTIC!
@jonikorpi my approach to this would be to first flesh out the game world, in a fiction-writer's worldbuilding way, and *then* approach this question again
That is not in any way meant to depreciate what you've done so far, the visuals are lovely, but the name IMHO kinda needs to tie things together in a concise, memorable and introductory package and there don't seem to be enough things to tie together yet (based on what I see in the thread), any name at this stage is probably gonna be very hollow
And if you go the other way, start with a name and design other elements downstream from that, that'll probably yield results that are LLM-grade mediocre, probably not what you want at all 
Like, maybe you'll find elements bright enough to make into the name. A fancy mineral or gem, a historical/legendary (or both) figure, a fabled location, a species causing a ruckus across the world
Maybe gameplay-defining elements
What I'm saying is it might still be too early for this
@dside You are right! But indie games make this tricky. Supposed to start marketing as early as possible to offset the zero marketing budget. Difficult to do without a name.
I’m already quite late, and unfortunately won’t have the worldbuilding or overall writing locked down for a while yet.
Some people do use working titles as temp marketing names, but I’m not sure how well that works, so I’m hesitant to try.
@jonikorpi yeah… It's probably a "pick your poison" kind of situation. Because if you pick a hollow name now and commit to it, a rename down the line will probably be even more troublesome, depending on how much you manage to put into it by then: domains, community names on platforms, search presence, etc. In closed circles it's probably fine, but that's *before* marketing starts.
Still, if you anticipate a long development process, it might endure a rename just fine. A loyal community will persist, but the rest will be a fresh start either way
Creative pursuits famously have a difficult relationship with deadlines: too close ones compromise the creative work, too far ones are prone to getting the project stuck, and this here situation really feels like the "too close" kind to me
Take my musings with a massive grain of salt tho, I left the gamedev industry after the first "professional" conference, and while I brewed in the local indie gamedev scene for a bit, it really isn't much.
@jonikorpi Hexundi / Hexundus. Because "world" in Latin.
I'll await my cheque 😆
@jonikorpi All for One for All
Kitschy, encapsulates the good/bad/ugly of collaboration, don't know of another game called that, and it's begging for typography and graphic design fun
Better the devil
@aeva It’s your (my) childhood favourite party-based MMORPG, but you play as the entire party.
I have an SDF-based character portrait system that can do fantasy races, so there should probably be some elves or something idk
(I’m leaving this to my wife, who is a writer, but hasn’t had a chance to help much yet.)
In this 2D couch co-op adventure, team up with a pal to save the world from the playful chaos caused by your shipwrecked party friends. Together you must share and swap controls, combining your abilities in the ultimate showcase of friendship. With Friends Like These Steam charts, data, update history.
@jonikorpi "Adventures in CollaborNations"
"Pine Hill Phantasm Slack Tricks"
"Mildly Roguelike Group Project Quest"
"Breath of the Hearth"
"I can't believe my MMO guild got sent to a real fantasy world but they're still expecting me to manage the group!"
"Untitled RPG Party"
Joni Korpi
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D:\side\>
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