Jack Redrum

Dev diaries
#1

Hi everyone!!!

Last steps (weeks?) of development before submitting our “Jack Redrum” game for Nintendo’s approval.

Now everything needs to be defined and set up for good. First of all the title of the game. During development we have always used “Jack Redrum”. But now our publisher somehow would prefer a title that makes it clear that the game is an action-puzzler.

We would like to ask all of you to give us some advice. It’s really hard to choose a title. Definitely “Jack Redrum” is the name of the main character. We like this name, but maybe it’s too much related to Stanley Kubrick’s movie “The Shining” and the actor Jack Nicholson. So, you see, we are not able to decide. We’re probably too close to the game to be in the right position to come up with a title.

For the good people who want to help us, please check out the @annamara_ia (Maraia) Twitter account to get an idea of the game’s setting and gameplay. Anyway here are a couple of screenshots.

Many, many thanks to everyone!

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#2

Good luck! Do you perhaps have examples of action-puzzler games? I’m not an expert on the genre, but I am curious if it’s possible to discern a trend in the naming and if it does indeed inform about what kind of game it is.

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#3

It looks like the game is ghost themed. How about naming the character Jack Shade or Jack Specter?

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#4

Thanks Alex!

Not sure if the genre has any trend in naming. On the other hand, “Jack Redrum” is just a name and it say nothing about the genre the game is in. Usually puzzle game has a title related to the core mechanics of the gameplay. But am I ready for a title like “Catch, trap, burst”? NO! :slight_smile:

Probably something like “A Jack Redrum’s frantic puzzle”? I don’t know…

#5

Thanks @CaseyReeseKunst!

It seems that there are a lot of Facebook profiles for “Jack Specter” and “Jack Shade”, so probably they are both real people names. However it is probably a good advice to have “ghost” or “spooky” in the title…

#6

From having playtested it a bit, perhaps something related to the house since that is such a core part of the game. “House of X” or “Mansion of Y” where the unknown has something to do with the puzzles or ghosts somehow.

I think it’s a tricky task your publisher has given you. Judging by your first post I think you agree :wink:

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#7

@Alex_8BitSkull Yes, very tricky!

At the moment we have “Jack Redrum” and “puzzled by frantic pictures” as a subtitle.

Indeed we are also thinking to something in the line of “The House of Frantic Pictures, a Jack Redrum’s puzzle” but this is way tooooo long.

Thanks again!

#8

A very long title is not very likely to stick. But maybe if you turn that around:

“Jack Redrum in The House of Frantic Pictures”

You can use the short name “Jack Redrum” when you talk about the game on Twitter etc but the store listing might have the full name. Or “the house of frantic pictures” could be used as a tag line or subtitle.

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#9

I like this. Redrum gives me too much of The Shining vibes.

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#10

We decided to remove “Redrum” from the title, it is a too strong reference to “The Shining”. However the name of the character will still be “Jack Redrum” and in the game lore this has some importance. Moreover we have more than 1500 followers on Twitter where we have always talked about “Jack Redrum”.

For the title, we came up with

Jack R.: Ghosts and Apples

What do you think?

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#11

I like the Ghosts & Apples bit - quite memorable.

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#12

Not sure about"R.:" if I am thinking of searching for the game. It’s correct but feels odd with the double punctuation. I’d probably be searching for the Ghosts and Applies part anyway though.

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#13

I agree about the search engine problem. You need it to be easy for people to search to find your game. The stuff beyond the : in current years of game names is used for improving search rankings.

You need the .com of whatever name you finally decide on. “jackr” is not available.

I don’t think Redrum is a problem really, but it’s also not unique.

Ghosts and Apples is simple. There are other “Ghosts and…” games which means those would always show up first in search results but may end up being beneficial for you as well.

A name suggestion is really difficult because your game is so unique. If you’re still not sure about a name I would write down all of the themes related to your game, put them into a random generator, and have the generator put 2 of the themes together to form a title and see if anything really interesting pops out from RNG.

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#14

@Alex_8BitSkull @Pkeod @bryanrieger @britzl @CaseyReeseKunst thank you for your advice!

So, we decided to drop the initial part. “Ghosts and Apples” is also free as a domain name. We will keep “Jack Redrum” as the main character’s name (to be consistent with our previous Twitter posts).

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We learned a few lessons here.

  1. Always use a silly name for a game during development, otherwise one gets emotionally attached to it and it is difficult to change when going public.
  2. Always choose the right name BEFORE you start talking about the game in public.
  3. A good name for a game is very hard to come by! Especially for non-native English speakers!

Ciao!

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