Name our upcoming 4x (best - Stars Beyond Reach) POLL 10/27

[MarioFanaticXV]

Asteria's Heir
Beyond Andromeda
Celestial Dawn
Celestial Horizons
Dawn of Ages
Heir of Asteria
Inheritor of the Stars

After a quick search, it seems that Google can only find "Asteria's Heir" and "Heir of Asteria" once each.

[x4000]

I'm starting to mull this again.  I'm really liking Spectral Empire less and less with time, as I feel like it's not descriptive of the game and doesn't make me think sci-fi.  Something about the name just also feels... weak.  I don't know.

As the prototype has been evolving, and so have my designs, it just also seems less and less appropriate to the themes in play.  It's true that you are managing an empire, and you do a lot of the things you do in Civilization... but this is also just as much about managing essentially a single colony.  I really prefer that word to empire, in terms of describing what you have.  You're establishing a colony on the planet, not an empire.  This game is basically Civilization meets SimCity meets AI War, plus its own unique flair.

I'm thinking that the word Colony really should be in the title, and not Empire or Imperial or any of that stuff.  And certainly Age and whatnot is all overdone, and isn't appropriate here either.  You're intimately getting to know your colony, much as you would a city in SimCity.  A lot of the other 4Xes are more abstract and distant, although not all of them.

[nas1m]

Splinter Colony?
Although this does not catch the fact that you are effectively the last shard of your race (at least as I got you earlier)...

[x4000]

Splinter does sound like you're kind of aggressive, though.  This game does have fighting and competition and so forth, but it's not a stressful game in the way that TLF is in terms of how time passes.  I feel like it's more laid-back like Civ... or SimCity, again.  So words that are overly aggressive seem like they would give the wrong idea.

In terms of being the last of your race, that's what you've been told, but you don't know for sure.

[nas1m]

Gotcha. If it wasn't for the name Ivoria I would suggest something simple like <Name Of Planet> Colony, but for the selected name this does not really work out well...

[x4000]

I also like the idea of names that are just "Colony X" where X is some number.  Colony 88, etc.  Trouble is, I'm not sure what number would be most pleasing.  "Colony 28" was apparently already a game, incidentally.

edit: The name Ivoria isn't really the name of the planet.  That's ONE name for the planet, but its true name is something else, and not something the player knows for a while.  The various races all have different names for the planet.

[Hearteater]

Last Remnant (hate to reuse "Last" between titles)
Remnant of Civilization
Alien Foundation (a little too generic probably)

[nas1m]

I would go with Colony Zero or Zero Colony. Alternatively you could use whatever greek letter stands for "beginning" or "start".

[x4000]

The first of those is actually already a Square Enix game.

I updated the guide in the original post to be more up to date:

Overall I'm looking for something that:
1. Implies SimCity meets Civilization in some way.
2. Doesn't sound generic.
3. Is ideally positive-sounding.
4. Ideally makes you think Sci-fi automatically.
5. Is ideally 2-3 words, but could go longer if it's really awesome.
6. Ideally uses the word Colony or similar.  But NOT the word Empire or similar.  I'm not a fan of Colonial, either.  You have a more intimate relationship with your little fledgeling... city, really.

[x4000]

I would go with Colony Zero or Zero Colony. Alternatively you could use whatever greek letter stands for "beginning" or "start".

Zero is good, but Zero Colony is already a band and Colony Zero is already a game.

[Draco18s]

Colony 17! [obscure reference]

[x4000]

Haha, wow, obscure indeed.

[nas1m]

Just out of curiosity: Is a band using a name actually a problem? Given they don't have some kind of trademark or Copyright of course. Or is it just bad form? I mean, this happens all the time doesn't it?

[x4000]

It can be a problem if they've trademarked it, or if they trademark it in the future.  And it's also just kind of bad form.

There have been various strange things with conflicts on names.  See anyone using the word "edge" in their game's name at all.  Or locally we have a Mongolian Grill chain that is quite tasty, and is called Crazy Fire.  They were called Stir Crazy until some sort of record store sued them to change it, because that was the name of the record store.

So I mean, it does happen and we try to be nonconfrontational.

[Draco18s]

Haha, wow, obscure indeed.

I recommend the comic highly.  That strip is from fairly early on, but there's great stuff in there, like vampire vegetables and the hands-down best description of "evil" I've ever come across.

Warning, this is (over) 200 strips later and offers no background on the characters involved.
One, two, three.