Help us give Tainted a New Name!
As we're getting closer and closer to the steam release, I had long talks with the marketing consultants,
and well our game needs to get a "marketing facelift"! We'll need to upgrade our thumbnail (capsule) and... Name! Yes it shocked me as well, but seems that Tainted is not as obvious or sexy as it should be... (shocked)
So first we'll have a poll to find our name, then our icon girl, then our capsule (Steam thumbnail).
Quick reminder of the synopsis: Tainted is a fantasy adult Visual Novel (VN) where you play as a prince who has his life turned upside down when a demon worshiping cult takes over the land, forcing him out of his castle to a life of exile. On your adventures, you will meet the most intriguing companions and learn what it means to be a leader in order to save your kingdom; and if you play your cards right maybe even find some romance.
A fun fantasy adventure, filled with humor, drama, epic battles, mystery and lots of sex!
This is the current direction:
So the new name needs to be sexy, enticing, familiar, mysterious and also be tightly connected to our story.
As you can probably see Lilith checks the box on many of our needs, she's sexy, famous, mysterious, and has her own agenda that is the central drive on the story.
After a long brainstorming session we've come up with with a few options and I'd love to hear your opinion:
VOTE HERE
Thanks in advance.
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Hard to choose a name when we don't know the story nor any character aside from the MC and Gwen.
- Is Lilith a big part of the plot?
- Is Gwen relevant enought to have the title revolve around her? Or maybe you're talking about another princess?
Now :
- "Age of Heroines" suppose that there is an extended period of time - decades/centuries - during wich heroines are going to be significant and specific to that long period.
- "Tales of Heroines" while it fits without a doubt might be too generic.
- "Heroine's rising" makes me think the MC is an heroine.
- "A maiden's hero" makes it sound like the story revolves around saving one girl.
- "The princess' knigh" makes it sound like the MC is a sub, to a specific princess at that
- "The princess' Tale" make it sounds like the MC is the princess
- "Princess' blade", well we're talking about a specific princess, forgetting about the other character you presented.
So among those you propose, my two favourites are :
- Maiden's Blade :
Altough i'd say maidens' blade, there are several girls you presented. Now some may have lost their maidenhood to a specific or non specified "blade".
-And "Heroines' quest":
It might be like "tales of heroines", fits but his generic, but i don't know, maybe it's because it's shorter, but it bothers me less.
The word blade is interresting to use for it's symbolism, it's the symbol of masculinity and an euphemism for penis. I mean we're taking about a porn game in wich you might bone every "heroines", or so i thought.
- the counterpart to the blade would be the chalice, or more commonly the cup. Hence the interpretation of some that the blood of JC in the chalice, aka the graal, would in fact be his kids, potentially with Mary-Magdalene. Does that mean the spear of Longinus was in fact a bodypart of said soldier we'll never know... But yeah, enough with the bible talk... Tchuss.-
You made me laugh.
JR Tolkien I believe used the term applicapilty to describe that his works are not an allegory, but you can find metaphors, if you search and want them to be. Human anatomy and the deed itself are so simple to describe that you can find applicable stuff everwhere and have no problems using any innundo you like.
Though using a title like The Blade and the Cups , would be intentional and not accidental ;-)
Thanks for this, very interesting perspective.
First yes, Lilith is a big part of the story as mentioned in the previous reply, second its a famous name that may carry the game into more clicks, and this is our main goal with steam, as its going to be shown to potentially millions of people, even if some of them are dissapointed in some way, it will be a tiny minority. right now the title is not working.
as for your comments, Blade in fantasy means bodyguard, protector, or right hand, for instance if you played Elden ring, Milenia is refering to herself as "Malenia blade of Miquella" as in she's their Fixer or executioner, its also a reference to a "right hand". in Game of thrones they have the title "the hand" which is basically the same thing.
also a Maiden can be a guide, or a lady a knight fights for. knights in lore are service men, they give their sword to someone, either to a lord or a lady, certain ladies in fantasy are maidens - more pure.
at any rate, my thinking at this time is leaning toward using Lilith's fame in the name, and to emphasize her role in the story as the driver of the plot. after all she's the one influencing the MC to start the adventure, and to make certain major choices.
the time in the cabin in the woods is longer then a few days, as he learns how to survive and how to hunt, so he becomes tougher, one of the hints to this is he's actually growing hair on his chest and hands ;) in the first scene in bed he is hairless. in the tournament we see that he was always handy with the bow and daggers, so he has that covered by years and years of training. usually combat training starts with dummies but princes usually have the best trainers to dual with for years - you can see depictions of that in house of the dragon.
basically that's what they would learn most of the time, imagine there is no TV, no other kids to play with, not much to read, so they basically trained since a very young age.
https://youtu.be/fV2h5e4wLFA
And later on they would do tournaments for entertainment when they are older, and that's unrelated if they were ever in actual battle or not.
Thank you so much for your input, I'll give it some more thought.
I know of blades and maidens in a medieval setting.
You're referring to handmaidens and such. Shieldmaidens would be closer to what "the heroines" are though, but they're just female fighters mentionned in vicking sagas.
And the serie "king's blade" is a good exemple of what you mean regarding the blade.
Yeah, another point regarding "the blade" i know i'm being litteral here, but as you mentionned the MC is impressed by Gwen skill at the sword and himself use a bow and arrow, for all we know. Weird that he'd be the blade.
I guess i'll go with "Lilith rising" too then. Other names including that name tend to emphasis armed conflict, wich isn't wrong from the demo, but meshes less well with Lilith's name from a marketing stand point.
Thank you so much for your feedback and analysis.
This is the current direction, but I'm not 100% sure on the skin tone...
I'd have more contrast between the hair and the skin, maybe go extremely pale, but that's just personal taste for aestetic reasons.
And aesthetics are sadly out of my field of competence, so it's not so much a thought than it is a feeling.
I thought about that, but then we'll be missing on the demon skin...
I'll give it a shot though.
If you want red skin the red highlight of the hair may be too much. Maybe try full black, or a different color for the highlight.
You could also try shades of pink or purple for the skin, although i have no idea how it would make her look like. I saw it here and there for succubi and other seductive demons, hence the advice, not sure it would fit your character though.
Oh, and cool game by the way, i don't think i said it yet.
Thank you so much, I'll have the fair skin textures soon.
While I have not played the game yet, as I have a long backlog, I was surprised that it has a male main character. I always thought it was the girl with sword on her shoulder in the picture below your disclaimer on game page. Ok, now that I am looking for it, you tagged male protagonist. Why is he nowhere to be seen, except maybe certain parts of him. Is he ugly? Or is the vn in ego perspective and he does not have a face? It is partly on my backlog, because I fear, it is mostly a kinetic novel. You do have adventure genre, but from experience, the lack of gameplay in visual novel "games" is often not made very clear.
Your title suggestions are as bland as it gets. Princess Blade is even a movie title, and I thought the game is about a prince and not a princess. You might name a game about the advsery, like Diablo showed beyond any doubt. But Lilith is a horse ridden to death, imho. Unless you literally have her prominently in game including mythology and not just because it is a cool name and she is a demon. But she does not look very appealing, compare to the heroines.
There are several games named Tainted. You could go for a new name, yes, but all you have suggested is probably used somehwere as a name already, or a variation thereof (Most titles are). And none of them are sexy or indicate lewdness as well. So where is the benefit? I had a look at my lewd game collection. Most do not have a lewd name.
Tainted Kingdom
Corrupted Lands
Party of Heroines (and a Hero Prince)
The first I suggest for keeping the vileness and smut theme. Taint can be lewd. Princess is not. Neither is Lilith. You get her in non lewd games as big evil. The third I suggest, if comedy is more of an aspect of the game, as the females are so overly present in the screenshots, that one could forget that there is a (male) prince there as well. Maybe even include him in the capsule as an afterthought or partly out of frame for comical effect.
Also I would refrain from using a single girl for your capsule. She is not the hero, nor the goal of the game. If I see a capsule like that, I expect female protagonist single player and not what is probably a harem scenario. But if you insinst on such misdirection, the girl with the sword that looks a bit like a viking. But with more sword. But do not complain about players like me, that click on the capsule for the nice girl and go away after finding out she is only a side character among several girls to romance. Do not forget that people can refund games on steam within an hour or so.
I do not see the problem with your current "capsule" on itch. Oh, I see an intersting subtitle there. Escape the darkness save your kingdom. That gives inspiration to another suggestion.
Tainted Darkness - A Heros Tale. And Maidens. Lots of Maidens.
Excellent advice, thank you,
Yes Lilith is the main antagonist in the game, and is there in a very meaningful way.
In fact she's the one driving the plot.
What do you think about this:
this game uses one of the main villains as well,
and you don't see the main player, or the party that you gather in the game.
(this was my inspiration for the new image).
Thanks again.
Thanks for spoilering me, I have not finished that game yet ;-b
Please do take everything I say with a grain of salt. I am not a marketing expert, and if a real one told you, you need a new name and a new capsule, there might be valid reasons. On the other hand, just put in some lewd game tags and search for successful games on game sites like steam and gog and look for a common theme in capsule and game name. From my perspective, there is nothing bad about your existing stuff. It even made me put your game on my backlog, even with fear of it being too kinetic.
Pathfinder among many players is a known thing. You know it is a rpg with customizeable character. And you can even create a character looking almost like that demoness or tiefling or what they use as a species name.
As I have not yet played the game I can not give a good opinion, so I based it on the screenshots of the game page. But judging from the other comment, the big evil is nowhere to be seen yet. If Lilith would be better looking and look more ... cinematic, she might do. Look at a Diablo capsule.
But here is the thing. People do usually not stumble about those games by accident, they search for tags or similar games. But even if they do, unlike Itch you can see the tags when hovering over a capsule. So even if you would not know Pathfinder franchise, you would read turn based combat or rpg or something like that. Including gameplay screenshot making clear what type of game it is.
So what would I expect from a capsule of a erotic vn showing mysterious purple demon. I dunno. I am burned child. But if I get the hots for Lilith and cannot woe her, I might be dissapointed.
Here is an exmple of capsule from a game here. It is not bad, but I did not read the description carefully, and accidenntally bought it (it is a kinetic novel and I do not like those very much. I prefer actual game play). What they did bad is the title is not readable in the capsule. What they did good, they promise on the lid quite exactly what is in the tin. The one in the middle is the mc, if that concept can even apply to a kinetic. (And I do not think the title is inherently lewd - unlike the capsule ;-)
The example of pathfinder shows quite good, that you can even have readable subtitles in your capsule.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous Enhanced Edition. Quite a mouthful.
Tainted - a tale of a blade and cups (scnr)
Tainted - Lilith's Revenge
If the mc has no face, you can go Goblinslayer and just show a helmet, when needed. Or a shot from behind.
But I actually like your capsule with the slices of different girls (if that is indeed the story, in other comment it read like there is only mc and a Gewn). It promised diversity in girls, even if I mistook it for a female protagonist game.
Right forgot to mention, the game is first person,
except some of the action scenes or the sex scenes where the camera is cinematic, but either way we never see his face.
also yes the marketing people said its going to be a difference between 3% to 1% conversion, which is a 300% drop in potential players, the statistics work like this out of 100 people looking at the capsule about 3 press the button if the capsule is good and the name is good.
So if you plug in some numbers to it, say we have 100k or even 1mil people viewing the game, and 3% is 3k or 30k people compared to 1% which is 1k or 10k people.
You see once you add the numbers especially to a platform like steam that can roll 1mil people in-front of your capsule its extremely important to have the right name and capsule to have people press that button.
When you say hover over it - its also that, if the title or capsule is not good they just skip or scroll down, and your game is lost in a sea of other games.
Ao even though Lilith is a bit used, she's world famous as a sexy mysterious and alluring name, also demons are very popular as is.
Then watching the trailer you'll see how exciting the gameplay is, and many will say yes, we'll give this a shot, and its all we need.
Take the 2 best selling AVN right now:
in both of these you don't play that girl, its one of the love interests, and no one has any illusions that the MC is a girl, or that there is only 1 girl.
Those marketing types might not be the best to judge how players chose adult games. Do not forget that you do not compete against all the rpgmaker rpgs or the non porn vn. There are not thaaaat many porn games, once you narrow some tags down. I can easily hover over most of them and non appealing screenshots are a turn down.
Also I find it suspicious. they think that your title and capsule would be the 1% kind, but did not provide the 3% version. Is your plan to come up with a new name and capsule and ask again how much conversion it will give, or just hope, you picked a 3% version and not a 0.5% version.
Did they use any repeatable metric to prove that "Tainted" and your capsule is a 1% conversion title? It is hard to test, even if you would change your capsule on itch. You are already known to some players and that might invalidate the results of any test here.
You do not see porn by accident. And I do not know if Steam promotes porn games in their shop page or recommendation lists.
The main thing, imho, is to make clear from first glance, if your vn is japanese hentai or realistic looking. Fresh Woman and the other is cute puppy eyes and looks non fantasy slice of life. And just look at the game page of the fresh game. Slices of different women on top ;-) Also both do not sound inherently lewd to me. And the other one even has a non searchable name, it is written as dik, but that is a delta. (Yeah, it is a word play)
I do not know if a fantasy setting is a good or a bad thing in terms of target audicence, but I guess it is an inherently weak thing. More people like to watch telenovelas/drama than fantasy genre. And that translates to porn games as well, I would think. Fantasy is more popular in the last decades, thanks to LotR and GoT.
But slice of life drama with porn is just appealing to even more people. They do not need to learn the lore of the setting to understand everyday life porn. Of course, if you show slutty Lilith with cleavage, you will absolutely peek the interest of players looking for adult game and liking fantasy content. But she is not in the game for quite a while, from what I deduced.
My naive plan would be to gather initial fans by promising exactly what is inside, so they are not dissapointed and leave negative reviews. And of course by having a good game. From the little info I have, that would be the sluttiest puppy eyes the main female has in the first chapter and maybe a title that hints at the fantasy setting, but not too much.
To clarify. I think it odd that the marketing guys demanded that, yet when you provide best selling game names...
Fresh Woman
Being a Dik
That is 4 tick boxes. To me the second name might tick the sexy category in a word play way. But none of the other boxes are ticked. Fresh Woman sounds like New Year New Me motto to me. Does that qualify as familiar? Or did they imply you should ride on some popularity wave of other topics. That would maybe be something like that Viking series with your Freya character.
Imho, Tainted does fit those four concepts much better than the other two title names.
Is it because you have fantasy genre maybe? That they suggest those things for your title. Or because it is single word?
The marketing people are the ones who published these 2 games, so they know the industry very very well, with tons of research they have done themselves, and others have done. So they might know much more then most of us together, with obvious receipts heh.
As for Tainted, its just not clear from the name what it is, most people have no idea what it means and are left with a "huh", when told about it.
While both FreshWomen and Being a DIK, you know exactly what you're getting from the first time you see it, there is no confusion.
In both you know you'll get a collage experience, and you're going to meet and sleep with lots of girls.
FreshWomen - plays on the Freshmen that everyone knows, but no one says Freshwomen - and its also literally means the women are young and fun, so you know where and what you'll do.
Being a DIK - you know you'll be part of a fraternity, and you're going to be an asshole / or nice to get in bed with girls. so from the first view you know exactly what's going to happen.
In our game here, its a little more complex as its a fantasy game which means medieval settings, so we need to use the same line of thought,
something familiar, something obvious, but at the same time playful and fun and of course sexy.
Maiden is also another word for a young lady - usually a virgin, so that implies that. (Not handmaiden or shieldmaiden - which have different meanings), and blade is another word for the right hand man / woman.
Lilith shows on the first frame of the game, she's actually summoning the devil (Asmodeus), and has her own agenda all along, so she's driving the plot, the main antagonist if you will.
Also Demons, Succubus and specifically Lilith are immediately connected to lust, and being mischievous, "let your wild side out", at the same time Rising means getting better or getting more power - i.e. rising in power or rising the ranks etc. (also its a euphemism for erection).
So all in all its recognizable from the first moment you see, and you get a sense of what you'll be doing. and that Lilith is right at the center of it.
There will be an escalation of power, and you'll be lustful and mischievous, all part of the game.
This is how Lilith Rising hit's all the boxes - Adventure, Fantasy, Romance, Mystery. and bonus for familiar and sexy.
Also these past few years, Fantasy movies have broken the box office many times over, with GoT, LotR, and many other movies and games, its funny how HotD has been more successful then Rings of Power but that's another discussion. But you also have The Northman as well, and many games from Valheim, to Diablo, Black Desert, to The Witcher, and the list goes on, all extremely popular both in games, TV and movies.
Oh, I do not disagree that fantasy is popular. I am just saying that every run of the mill drama series can achieve similar ratings with a fraction of the budget. For good fantasy you need really good stuff to escape from the nieche. It is not mainstream, despite GoT. After a quick search I pulled this one up (see below). It is seven-day averages for the full 2021-22 TV season. I do not see many fantasy there. Or any at all to tell the truth. But I do not know all these shows. Or how many fantasy shows run in that time frame.
I am not english native speaker, but tainted is a synonym for corruption. It is being not pristine anymore. A defiled virgin would be tainted against her will or a land overcome by greed and evil would be tainted. Food can taint, as it also means rotten. If you show a nice looking girl, I believe the connection is quite clear, what it means. Unless native english speakers do not know that word at all. Maybe dialect or English/American oddity?
Anyways, if they do not have any metric for what constitutes a 3% conversion capsule/title and what a 1% it is all hindsight. And my assumption is, that the fact that you have fantasy genre is impacting this conversion rate a lot. So I totally believe that "Tainted" might not work for a slice of life title, but based from my own understanding of games and language, I see no problems with "Tainted" for a fantasy game. Especially if it is dark fantasy with demons.
And based on my own expericene in browsing for lewd games, do not be stingy with the lewdness in the screenshots that pop up when hovering on the title (whatever you can get away with on steam ;-) And compared to the other girls, Lilith is meh. Of course if you name game after her, you should not show other girl in capsule. That lilith looks like rule63 hellboy is not an astablished fact. She usually looks like an ordinary girl. Iirc she is often used as mother of all vampires in fiction. Just do a image search for lilith and discount the appearences of her in diablo4.)
(Wait, really, people do not know the word tainted? Like, at all? Today I learned. ;-)
Exactly, I was shocked as well, people especially in North America have no language skills, they just don't know.
I named it tainted as it was obvious for me the stage just in-between pure and corrupted.
but apparently most people just don't know what it means, which drops the acquisition rates to single digits...
I've done some tests with Lilith with more pale skin:
Btw that list is irrelevant as there are not good shows running now,
When GoT and Ring of Power ran they were the most watched at that time.
Most good shows run on streaming services like GoT (HBO) or The Boys (Amazon).
Also most of these shows are total garbage and most people gave up on TV all together and use streaming / on demand, or just download pirate.
There was some kind of saying I heard some years ago. If you read good American English somewhere, a European wrote it ;-)
There even is a famous song, Tainted Love. Ok, the better known cover version is from 2001, but it is used about every year as a sample in another song. If you would ask me, "tainted" and "love" are commonly known by association for that song and its dozens of cover versions alone. Even and especially in North America, as Marilyn Manson is American.
Maybe Tainted Lovers would be a recogniseable title ;-b . Along with the word play, that they are presumably tainted by Lilith in another way as well.
That list was just to verify if fantasy or rather non drama is mainstream. Yes, people do like to watch nieche entertainment on streaming. And GoT was even a driving factor to get subscribers. But that is exactly the point. It is so nieche, that you do not find it in mainstream and have to go to streaming. Same for vn. Either it is anime style or slice of life. Other kinds are rare in comparison. Ok, my knowledge about vn is a bit limited, because I most often skip, because I look for actual game play (I stuck with yours so far, because of the quality of the naughty screenshots and that girl with the big sword, but this is a singular data point ;-)
You do cover a nieche for porn because of fantasy setting. So you need to play your trump cards so that people looking for that kind of stuff find you and maybe people looking for porn games in general also notice you. If you put Lilith with horns on capsule, from first glance I expect game where I either play as demon or screw demons. If that is a turn off to me, I might not look further. And if it is a turn on, I might be dissapointed, if all the girls in the screenshots are non demons. Those two good selling games put a love interest in the capsule, did they not. And not even with cleavage.
How your demons and or boss demon look is your style choice. Purple and variations of red are more often seen in cartoonish looking settings. Such unnatural skin colors are hard to pull of with real looking human faces, I suspect because of the uncanny valley. Of course it can be done, like some versions of green Hulk or I liked the Orcs in that Warcraft movie. And even Hellboy. But that was fitting in the color scheme used for the movies. There were many vivid colors and much darkness there. Your color scheme is sunny Skyrim judging from the screenshots. Outside of hell fire lava pit, she might look a bit off with that skin tone.
(Your Lilith just does not look like I want to romance her. Maybe hatefuck her, after I reclaimed my country from her dirty clutches. She has that evil stepmom vibes, and I think that is intentional.)
It was fun theory crafting here. I hope you get lots of feedback. But asking the kids what they want for dinner might result in ice cream on pizza.
Sounds delicious :D
And love that saying about if its good American writing its written by a European - so true haha.
Thank you so much!
Indeed fun!