I’ve been working on my Godot-based deckbuilder for a few months now and I still hadn’t managed to find something to call it. I’ve been calling it “Project Dreams” to signify that it’s a provisional name, but it’s been really bothering me that I couldn’t find something appropriate.
So in the past few days, I took the time to start brainstorming for names in the discord server, along with the other contributors. My requirements for a name was
- It has to be catchy (in a poetic or mysterious sense)
- It has to somehow refer to one of the main themes of the game (dreams, torments, psychology, surrealism, therapy), preferably more than one at the same time.
- Bonus points if it includes alliteration or portmanteau.
After tons of back and forth, I was almost done with choosing one of the options, but one of the last things I did, was throw the word “surreal” through a thesaurus, just to see what I find, and it showed me a word I’ve never seen before: Hypnagogia.
Hypnagogia is the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep: the hypnagogic state of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. (The opposite transitional state from sleep into wakefulness is described as hypnopompic.) Mental phenomena that may occur during this “threshold consciousness” phase include hypnagogic hallucinations, lucid thought, lucid dreaming, and sleep paralysis. The latter two phenomena are themselves separate sleep conditions that are sometimes experienced during the hypnagogic state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
I don’t know why it was shown as a relevant word to “surreal”, but it immediately clicked for me, because with only a single letter change, I could create an interesting portmanteau.
Hypnagonia
In case you don’t get it, this is a mix of the aforementioned Hypnagogia + Agony (or “Αγωνιά in greek) and It hits so many of my requirements at the same time:
- It refers to sleep
- It references agony (being tormented by your own psyche is a core theme of the game)
- The original word is close enough to the concept of surreality that the thesaurus brings it up as a suggestion.
- It’s a portmanteau
- It sounds exotic. Kinda like a fantasy setting
- It is unique. I don’t conflict with anything else out there (from what I can see)
I did try a few other variations of this, but I believe this one is the catchiest. And I’m also fed up looking for names, so I just went ahead and finally renamed everything!
In case you’re interested, here’s some other names I was considering:
- Retrospections
- Remedy of Reverie
- Theraltes (Therapy + Ephialtes)
- Lucidium (Lucid + Somnium)