The game has a new name - Wet Velvet: Strip Case

I've decided to change the name of the game.

There's a simple reason for it. A game with the same name I'd picked came out on Steam recently. When I was choosing the name, I did check that nothing on Steam was using it, but that game hadn't released yet at the time.

My first reaction was disappointment, honestly. I'd gotten used to the name, and I liked it. But then I looked at where things actually stand: only the first chapter is out, it's only on Patreon, and I've barely talked about the game anywhere else. I hadn't even finished updating this page for it yet. All in all, it was a pretty good moment to change the name.

Then came the hard part: picking a new one. It sounds easy until you actually try. The list the ideal name had to clear:

• No game on Steam with exactly the same name. That one is the least of it, although the short, obvious words that come to mind first are all taken.

• One or two words. I want to keep the option of turning this into a series of games someday, if I decide to. So the name splits into two parts: the first is the series name, the second is the name of this particular game. If I make another game in this setting someday, the first part stays and the second one changes.

• Words that aren't locked up by registered trademarks and don't sit in territory that could bring claims against me on Steam later. That part alone killed more candidates than I expected.

• Memorable. You can come up with a name that fits the game, but if it's generic enough, a player won't remember it after seeing it once, and that's no good.

• And on top of all that, it should reflect what the game is, appeal to an adult audience, and I should simply like it.

Trying to satisfy all of those at once is what made this so difficult. The biggest problem was finding something free of trademarks and not buried under a pile of same-name games on Steam, and unfortunately the options I liked most failed exactly that test.

So here's where I landed: Wet Velvet: Strip Case. Wet Velvet is the series name, Strip Case is this game.

It doesn't tick every box on my list, but I find it memorable enough, and it isn't taken. As for the many games on Steam with "Wet" in the title, I don't think they'll do me much harm: a name is read and remembered as a whole, and those are a very different kind of game anyway. All things considered, I think it's a decent option. At the very least, my brain couldn't produce anything clearly better, so I decided to stop going through variants.

That's the news. A dev status post is coming soon. The Patreon page is already updated to match the new name.