How a soap shop and a horror franchise named my game

For a while, my game was called Granny’s Moon. I liked it. It was warm and a little bit silly, and it had a grandmother and a moon in it, which covered most of what the game is about.

Then I made the classic mistake of searching for it.

Problem one: the soap

It turns out there’s a lovely shop called Granny Moon that sells handcrafted soaps. Zodiac soaps, in fact. My game has star signs. Search for my game, and you’d have a decent chance of buying a bar of Libra-themed soap instead. Great for the soap shop. Less great for me. They also had the obvious domain name, which was the bigger problem.

Problem two: the horror

This one was worse. In video games, “Granny” already means something, and that something is a first-person horror game where a terrifying old woman hunts you through her house. It’s had sequels. It’s had hundreds of knockoffs. Search “Granny game” and you’re greeted by a wall of screaming.

My game is about growing turnips on Mars. The gap between those two audiences is roughly the distance to Neptune. Anyone searching for my cozy farming game would have to wade through a lot of jump scares first. Anyone searching for the jump scares would find a turnip and feel betrayed.

Finding a new name

So, back to the drawing board. I wanted to keep what I liked about the original:

• A family connection, because Nana is central to the story.
• A space object.
• A bit of whimsy, and ideally a little humour.
• Something nobody else was already using.

Some candidates were fine but didn’t spark anything. Others were already taken, or one letter away from another horror game. That happens alarmingly often, by the way. And one candidate, Grandpa’s Gas Giant, was so good I’m still slightly sad about it. If you’ve read the previous entry about gas mining, you’ll understand why it was tempting, and why it would have been a mistake.

The one that stuck was Nana’s Nebula. It’s warm, it rolls off the tongue, and it keeps the story exactly as it was: Nana is still Nana, her logbook is still her logbook. It just has a better postcode now.

I checked the trademark databases in Canada and the US, and searched for any games or brands already using it. All clear. The domain is now mine, the X handle is now mine, and the old name has been retired.

Granny’s Moon isn’t entirely gone, though. I suspect it might turn up somewhere in the game as a place name. Every grandmother deserves a moon.