Project Names

[Hematite]

I'm kinda wondering where everyone gets these, so I felt it would be appropriate to make a thread and ask everyone at once. What is the significance of your game's name?

Spoiler: For example, my project!

Okay, mine has gone through three names and I'm going to explain both how I came up with them and why I changed them. XP

Initially, I was making Pokémon Lucis and Pokémon Umbra... embarrassingly, may I point out that this is not even correct (or consistent) Latin? Lucis is in the genitive case, like a possessive - it means "of light." Meanwhile, Umbra is in the nominative and just means "shadow" I've also seen it used to refer to a ghost, though I think that's barely different from how we'd use a shadow of oneself to mean a ghost of oneself. Anyway, that's "Pokémon of Light and Pokémon Shadow/Ghost." Then I renamed them to Pokémon Fluorite and Pokémon Onyx, which were meant to be the contrast between a light-colored gemstone and a dark-colored gemstone. Because one Legendary (Asprio) is light-colored and one Legendary (Skiario) is dark-colored. Except that... Asprio is based on gemstones and Skiario is explicitly not, and gemstones are repeatedly used in-game as a symbol representing Asprio and as a contrast to Skiario, so why would both titles be gemstones? Answer: because I thought Pokémon titles should always be gemstones because of Generations III and IV. Two Generations out of seven and I treat it as the law. XP Sometimes I try too hard to "fit" Game Freak...

But finally, we now have Pokémon Divide and Pokémon Unite, which fit far better! note the order there - Divide is now first, because Skiario is the first mascot in the Pokédex, whereas there was no reason for Lucis or Fluorite to be first OTL The reason for these names... Well, the mascots, Skiario and Asprio, represent the flow of energy throughout the Galio region wherein Divide and Unite take place. Skiario's role is to repel and disperse energy, pushing it away from a given place, whereas Asprio's is to draw in or summon energy, bringing it to where it is wanted, so Divide represented Skiario's diffusion and Unite represented Asprio's coalescence. But I also wanted Skiario's game to carry a more negative connotation, since it's seen as a destroyer, and Asprio's to carry a more positive connotation, since it's seen as a protector. To quote their descriptions:

"Skiario, in ancient times, was feared as a harbinger of destruction and death. Only those who saw its deep, red eyes were said to know the truest despair, as every time Skiario appeared to a human, entire villages were razed by night.
Skiario is seen as a symbol of division in the Galio region, just as its treelike wings branch and split off from one another and its body. When it lived, it created chaos by driving fear into the hearts of all people and wreaking destruction by night, and the records of ancient people suggest that it drove away all defenses and picked off villages one by one rather than allowing them to group together."

"Asprio, in ancient times, was revered as a valiant hero that fought off Skiario. Its blue eyes shimmered and gave hope to the humans below, and when Asprio appeared to fight off Skiario, the people of those villagers were saved from the destruction thought to loom before them.
Asprio is seen as a symbol of unity in the Galio region, just as its crystalline wings may branch out from its body, but reconnect several times throughout. When it lived, it inspired hope in the hearts of all people and brought them all together; it has since been a representation of victory and collaboration in the Galio region, and appears in many forms and in many places, with statues and flags of its likeness decorating everything from Pokémon Gyms to courtrooms (it is rumored that even the most hardened criminal will find it difficult not to crack under the pressure of its piercing gaze)."

I found that Divide sounded negative enough ("divide and conquer," "a house divided against itself..." and so on) while Unite carried a very positive feeling of bringing people together under a single cause and offering hope. So that's where Divide and Unite came from!

 

[Dragonite]

Code Names (for lack of better terms)

Before I make games I make game engines, which get named after constellations-slash-clusters of galaxies.

- Virgo (Nova, Tria) (3D action)
- Cyngus (bullet hell)
- Phoenix (racing)
- There was also Canis Major, which was less of a "game engine" and more of "screwing around in Pokémon Essentials."

Proper names

A long time ago, I was working on Pokémon Dawn and Dusk, because so was everyone else and their grandma. That turned into Pokémon Shadow (Virgo) because, I dunno, it was supposed to involve shadow Pokémon or something (spoiler: I never got around to it) which turned into Pokémon Shadow Unbound (Virgo Nova) for SEO reasons (and also it's a line from the Skyrim song) which then got shortened to Pokémon Unbound (Virgo Tria) because Jayrodd thought it made more sense and I couldn't come up with any good reasons to argue.

The Programmer's Dog (Virgo Canis) is so named because the main character is loosely based on my dog. Ingenious, innit?

 

[TechSkylander1518]

I wanted to play off the trend of games being named for gems/precious metals (even if that's completely disappeared since Gen 5), but in a way that kinda self-referenced that it's a fangame, so I decided on Pokémon Glass. Glass kinda looks like a crystal, but it's not actually a mineral. (which is apparently due to how its atoms are arranged-crystalline substances have their atoms in a much more organized structure than glass. I wish I could say I had thought of that in advance-"it represents how this development is much less official than the actual game's professional process"-but I actually didn't know that until I looked up glass to make sure I understood what it was classified as) In-game, there's also the prism used to summon half of the legendary duo. (a little more iconic than the obsidian to summon the other half, since the prism is the only one of its kind)

 

[Taq]

I kinda did it the same way the official games went, name first and then figure out how to incorporate it in the game.
my game idea's name was the same the whole time, Frost and Flame, a I picked because it's a contrast that the official games never used, I kinda see why now, I have been thinking the idea is that my region uses ecosystems a lot and they change a lot during the seasons, also it gives me a way to Combine evolution with Cryogenics.
Also they help combine my region with the legendarys and its theme, because It's called Talon which is a bird limb (and is heel in Spanish) which makes sense because birds migrate during the seasons.

So basically Frost and Flame represent the temperature and change of the seasons and how the wildlife reacts to it.

 

[doof]

To be honest, no one really knows why my games are named Steve the Bibarel. The fact that the protagonist is a Bibarel named Steve is a complete coincidence.

 

[Dawn Bronze]

I named Umber after the island the game takes place on, that being Umber Island. This name came to be when I decided that I wanted the naming scheme for locations to be based of different pigments found in the earth, for example I had Ochre Hills, Lapis Cape and Sienna Town.

Fun fact, originally Pokemon Umber was going to be called 'Pokemon Teide' after Mt Teide, the volcano on the island that Umber Island is based off of, Tenerife.

 

[moca]

I named my project Distant Divinity because Distant Divinity sounds really, really cool... and epic.

 

[Falcon]

We started out wanting (as most duel version games) a giant distinction between the two games so we set it up around good and evil (cliché, I know.) With that we wanted some lesser known gemstones to be our title. Luckily they both seemed to end in 'ite', thus birth Pokémon Jadeite and Painite.
We later worked more into the story. We knew we wanted interdimensional travel to be a part of the game but once we incorporated the idea it exploded into being what the game is now centered around and even found it's way into the game's name. And that's the birth of Pokémon Dimensions: Jadeite and Painite.

As for Operation Strike Back, we just wanted to name it after the final operation you undertake in the game which seemingly fit as Operation Strike Back. This was an unintentional rip from the movie Pokémon: The First Movie (Mewtwo Strikes Back). I personally didn't know that second part existed until I did some research for Mewtwo quotes.

We also have a joke game that we've always wanted to make purely for fun called Pokémon Bugite. At the beginning of our development we had a massive amount of Bug-type Fakemon and few of any others (I honestly think we're done with adding Bugs at this point because of it). A joke spiraled out of control and we just slapped the 'ite' on the back of it and boom. I even wrote up a whole story and everything. Maybe it'll be a little April Fools thing someday...

 

[LunarDusk]

Well, I've currently named two projects: Pantheon and Epsilon.

Epsilon was the easiest. Since I was remaking/creating a third version for Zeta and Omicron, I knew that my game had to have a greek letter, and the one that I ended up choosing was Epsilon because honestly, I liked how it sounded the most.

Pantheon as a word is defined as "all the gods of a people or religion collectively," specifically in a temple setting, we thought that the island tournament would represent a collection of the pokemon world's strongest opponents, or a "Pantheon of the gods" for the trainers.

 

[Mak]

I originally called it Pokemon Defiance because it was the edgiest name I could think of. And apparently it had to do with "defying destiny" or something like that because it had time travel as a major plot point.

...The game's changed so drastically at this point the only reason I still have it is for consistency's sake.

 

[Darius_Oak]

Our old project was called Temporal Oblivion.

We had a villain who was after Dialga and decided to reverse time. The problem is that, unless you're a being that exists outside of time itself, switching from the current rate to reversal would mean that eventually time would have to freeze. The speed, forward or backward, would reach zero. You would be frozen, and the universe's timeline would come to an infinite standstill. Thus, the universe would enter temporal oblivion.

The real problem was more along the lines of trying to manipulate Dialga and killing it in the process, a la Giratina and the Sky Warrior. Since time moves as Dialga's heart beats (Platinum dex entry), killing it would stop time. Same effects.

 

[Radical Raptr]

I had a dumb game when I was just starting out that I never really understood, it was just a mismatch of ideas stapled together. it came from an idea of having 3 starters like eevee, being eevee, growlithe and fearow that have branching evolutions (the legendary dogs for growlithe and the legendary birds for fearow)
I had originally called the game Pokemon X but then x/y came out so I called it Litharreon (lith from growlithe, arr from fearrow, and eon from eevee) it was dumb and no one could pronounce it

Golurk rising came from, one the mascot being golruk (which in and of itself is a joke from a meme game sam wanted to make) and the joke that every other game that exists is "____ - rising"

Noir came from the idea of Noir films and stuff, which is the aesthetic of the game, and the fact it's french for black, which is in keeping with Pokemon's history of naming games after colors.

 

[Aki]

Oh boy, names are fun.

Bonfire Stories was a toss up for awhile between different combinations of Bonfire/Campfire and Stories/Tales/Shorts. In my first draft of the game there was more story about being a new kid at camp but I scraped that pretty quick. I wasn't actively thinking it at the time, but it's probably because of Kanto Stories that I thought the word "Stories" would be the coolest choice for a game name.

MewYou is a play on Mewtwo because I like that it kept the rhyme and it gets the game's premise accross pretty immediately.

Hearts of the Cards is probably the least inspired name I've come up with...It's a play on "Heart of the Cards" but with more hearts because it's a game about relationships

Pokemon Coeval is the name of a big project that had a lot of parallels in it. Stuff like the region being 2 landmasses with different regional forms of pokemon on each.

The 13th Hour is the name of a story-driven project where the player discovers a weird kind of time/space slip where there's an entire hour between 12:59 and 1:00AM that normally only Fairy/Ghost/Psychic/Dark pokemon experience

Pokafé is the name of a game built around a crafting/cooking system using ingredients like honey and milk gathered from pokemon.


I think I'm seeing a theme of straightforward names here...Not all those projects made it to release but oh well, they're the ones I named :P

 

[Dragonite]

Colors and metallics are obviously pretty popular when it comes to naming games here—particularly Pokémon games—but I imagine that more often than not there's a story behind it. Sometimes the names are obvious ("Attack on the Space Station" is one) but sometimes they're not. What's yours?

Mine:

Pokémon: Eye of the Storm

It's about a hurricane ("the storm"), and more specifically about getting down to the root of it ("the eye").

The Elder Scrolls V: Pokémon

A Pokémon interpretation of Skyrim ("The Elder Scrolls V"), not much to this one.

Also I like colons apparently.

Edit: This was originally supposed to be its own thread, forgetting that I had already responded to something similar. Whoops?

 

[ISNorden]

I chose a mineral name for my own project idea, but it still contains some symbolism: Pokémon Lodestone takes place in an original region (Thule) based on Scandinavia, and lodestone (being magnetic) tends to pont north.

 

[Keileon]

We picked a gemstone name, typical. There's a bit more to that though.

Our game is called Pokémon Sardonyx: Raised to Win.

"Sardonyx" comes from from a couple of things. Namely, it's one of my personal favorite gemstones (well, second favorite, but "Pokémon Smoky Quartz" sounds weird) and the red aesthetic fits the game fairly well because red and black is edgy. Second, it was the name of an old project some friends and I tried to make riding the hype of a fangame we used to follow; some assets (character names, city names, the basics of the region) were recycled for the current project and I am the only one from the old project involved so it's kind of a moot point anyway.

"Raised to Win" comes from the story part of the project; we based it on an old roleplay that Giga and I both ran and world-built in. The roleplay's tagline was "Born to fight; raised to win" which is where part of the intro blurb comes from. The roleplay itself was just called "Raised to Win".

We chose to combine the two instead of just calling it Sardonyx so we could differentiate between the game and my personal art/fakedex project, which also reuses assets but is unrelated to the game itself.

 

[joey-and-rattata]

I chose Antiquis and Chrono for my games as the legendaries are based off the past and future. If your game has legendaries, you could try and chose a name that has some meaning and is based off the legendary's theme

 

[Deal]

I chose Arbitrium as the name for my current project, arbitrium or ad arbitrium, basically meaning ones own choice of decision. It takes place in the Sprendimas region, sprendimas meaning decision in Lithuanian. It's choice based, not with anywhere near the complexity of a mass effect of dragon age game, but the choices you make do affect the world around you somewhat. The towns are all basically "choice/decision/etc in other languages, and even after choosing one of the three branching paths, you can still be affected by your choices which can end poorly for you.

 

[TheBarmyBrit]

I chose the name Mindscape for my game as one of my oldest concepts for a game was called Mindscape and I am re-purposing the ideas and themes into my Pokemon fan game. The idea is that the world is more akin to a dream like state than anything geographically based, think if Wonderland was a Pokemon region. There are many themes of imagination, self reflection, and "toxic" mentality that drive the story along as well as the basis of the legendary Pokemon design.

 

[Hollow_Ego]

I choose the name "Hollow" for multiple reason.
First I wanted to have an ability for Ghost Pokemon that would make them untouchable by physical moves (since usualy you can't touch ghosts). I named this ability "Hollow" as these Pokemon would be hollow which is why everything just goes right through them. Then I decided I wanted more special abilities for ghost types and soon I realized I should have a name for them, so I named them after the first ability. And then at one point I needed a name for the game so I figured: Hey let's call it based on the main focus, which are Hollow Pokemon