![]() Maybe you’re reading this article and thinking, “Dude, a lot of the Kongregate badge names are actually pretty bland - you’re not exactly Rembrandt here.” That’s because when you’ve got nothing, admit that you’ve got nothing. Tier 4 Achievement Names: Just Don’t Try Too Hard ![]() Really, don’t give yourself too much credit for this tier of achievement name. Make no mistake - most alliteration badge names exist on Kongregate because I couldn’t think of something better. You can go a little crazier if you find a great phrase that suits the game perfectly, but bear in mind that no matter how many words you use, alliteration by itself is never going to be considered all that clever. It’s usually best to limit alliteration to 2 words, since going beyond that starts to fall into the “trying too hard” category. Wow, 5 words that start with the same letter in Epic Combo! You might say that that in and of itself is a bit of an epic combo (hur hur). Plug the word “protecting” into a Thesaurus and it’ll show that you can swap “protecting” with “safeguarding” to get some alliteration going with “Safeguarding Sovereignty.” Here are some other examples of alliteration in badge names: ![]() For example, you might start with the super-generic phrase “protecting sovereignty” to describe completing the game “50 Years (graphical)”, which requires building up a nation-state and protecting it from invasion. And if you’re having a hard time with even that, here’s another trick - think up a short little phrase that describes your achievement, then hit up the thesaurus and use it to change one of the words to another word whose first letter matches the first letter of the other word (or words) in the phrase. But if you’re really, really stuck, alliteration might be your best option. The first sentence of this paragraph took me about 5 seconds to come up with, which is probably a surprise to no one. But they’re cheap, easy, and really not that clever. Tier 3 Achievement Names: AlliterationĪlliterations are always available avenues. Start with a phrase related to ponies (“pony express” here), then again swap in a word that relates to the game more closely. Kick the Critter ends with defeating ponies. Unless there is some special context (elaboration to follow), you can’t just reference something letter-by-letter and have that count as a joke. ![]() The best achievement names usually take some reference to something and change that reference slightly in such a way that is relevant to the achievement task. The first step to coming up with an achievement name is brainstorming mental associations. Tier 1 Achievement Names: Cultural References So this article is an attempt at explaining a process (yes, there is a process - I’m not just staring at the ceiling for no reason) that most game developers will need to go through at some point (achievements are everywhere now), while at the same time admitting that it’s really hard and I’m still not super great at it.įrom there we’ll explore, more broadly, what the value is in adding these sorts of little details to your game. In fact, maybe it’s even harder for me now because I’ve already strip-mined the depths of my subconscious for anything usable as an achievement name (they’re all unique on Kongregate). I’ve been doing this for a decade and it’s still really hard. Whenever I speak with developers during the achievement-making process, I always give them a chance to suggest names if they want, and about 90% of the time their response is, “I’m not good at coming up with achievement names.” Well, no, no one is. Play a game (until you know it inside and out), identify potential tasks, filter out the bad ones (see above Gamasutra article), expand on the best ones, carefully set the thresholds (not too easy, not too long/frustrating), decide what difficulty it should be, ensure it highlights the best the game has to offer, make sure all the technical API submissions are working properly, find a relevant image, crop/resize it, BOOM, done! I wrote a popular Gamasutra article about how to design them, and later spoke at GDC about achievement design. I’ve been making badges at Kongregate for 10 years now, with nearly 3,000 achievements total. I’m pretty sure I’ve designed more achievements in games than anyone else on the planet. This article by Greg McClanahan was originally posted on Kongregate’s Developer Blog. The Agony and Ecstasy of Coming Up with Achievement Names
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