When making a game, both the title and the title screen are important components, but they also are probably something most creators don't give too much thought to. However, unless you already have an established fanbase, chances are high that how 'appealing' your title is goes a long way towards determining if a person so much as looks at your game, let alone takes the time to download and play it.
There is a rather surprisingly large amount of things which can be said about titles, so this will be a multi-part segment. In today's segment, I will discuss 'keywords', words in your title which can have a massive conscious or subconscious impact upon audience expectations or which will almost always attract or repel potential players.
Super: The word 'Super' is a fairly obvious one as the endless torrent of games for the Super Nintendo with this word slapped onto them has made 'Super' tied to the Super Nintendo; if you use 'Super' your game should at the very least 'feel' like a game from the 16-bit era even if it doesn't look like one. Super Meat Boy is a good example of this as it constantly pays homage to both the 16 and 8-bit eras and certainly plays like a game from back then (with a few modern tweaks).
Adventure: This is a word developers love to put into the titles of their games, and for good reason. The word implies an open, or at least big, world filled with various environments, unusual sights, memorable characters and/or events, and just a general sense of 'scale'. It also can be applied to nearly any genre, although platformers, puzzle games where you control an actual character, games with an 'open' world, and the 'adventure' genre are the most prevalent. It is a poor fit for games which take place in a small or otherwise 'same-y' area or which don't have an identifiable character; Adventures of Lolo may be a wonderful game, but it is poorly named as it takes place in identical-looking rooms in a single castle. 'Adventure' is also a poor word to use on its own at this point because games with titles like 'The Adventure of So-and-so' or 'So-and-so's Adventure' have been hammered into the ground; such a title is only 'good' for a game which is meant to be a rather 'traditional' experience or when it involves an existing character and the game has a larger scope and/or more open world than past games, such as Sonic Adventure or Star Fox Adventures. However, 'adventure' can still be a great word when aided by an adjective, even for non-traditional games, as this still implies a sense of the unique, such as with Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure.
Quest/Legend: These more or less function like 'Adventure', except these usually imply a more 'epic' tone and are generally best used for games which have actual combat.
Impossible: Burn it, burn it, burn it! Yes, The Impossible Game is well-known, but defining a game based upon difficulty is a horrible design decision not only for the title, but for the design process as a whole. While 'Impossible' is by far the most prevalent of 'perceived difficulty word' found in titles, this applies to any such word. Masochistic games can be fun, the popularity of I Wanna Be The Guy indicates this, but such words imply a bare-bones experience with little thought put into it other than capturing a specific difficulty. At best, a handful of people may be attracted to trying such a game and walk away with either a feeling of 'it wasn't as difficult/easy as the title claimed' or of 'it was just what the title said it was and that's that'. At worst, it will be instantly passed up as it will be just another game in the ever-growing sea of games claiming to be 'unbeatable'.
Existing Character/Franchise Name: This occurs almost exclusively with fangames where the name of the series or protagonist is used in the title, such as Mario, Legend of Zelda, Luigi, etc. Such name usage in a title is fine, but there are a few things to be aware of. First, if it is a fangame which tries to mimic the gameplay of the source game, the gameplay had better be exactly the same. In other words, if you make a platformer with 'Mario' in the title, many who try the game will go in with expectations that Mario's jump height and the way momentum builds feel 'right'; if you decide to make bigger changes such as giving Mario a double jump and a health bar it will make people wonder why it is even called a 'Mario' game. Second, if it belongs to a different genre than usual (ex: a Zelda shoot-em-up), or intentionally plays differently from usual, it is vital to still get the 'atmosphere' of the series down and to make it very clear through more than just the title that the game does not play quite like the source series; Psycho Waluigi is an excellent example of a 'fangame' which successfully uses an existing character and sticks to the general aesthetics and atmosphere of the source series while still playing substantially differently. Finally, be aware that unless a person is specifically looking for a fangame related to the series/character in question, such a game is more likely than not going to be ignored by most; the amount of fangames related to the Mario series floating around out there is much, much larger than the amount which are even remotely well-known.
Well, that's enough for one day. I'll give more advice on what makes or breaks a title sometime soon!
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