I'm asking for your feedback on... the title of my game :-).

The current title is "Shou-kun".

I didn't want a title in English, so I ended up with something in japanese... (that shouldn't mean anything terribly meaningful, though)

Do you think it's too complicated to remember? (my friends keep writing it "choucoune" or use the former codename "P43D" :p)
Or it doesn't matter?

.... well, you're going to have a handful of puzzled anime fans trying to work out what you're talking about. I can only assume that the hero of the game is a boy named Shou?

I may be wrong, but I think the syllable 'shou' is used by itself in Chinese, not Japanese. While it's part of the words shoujo and shounen, I don't see it listed as a word on its own, and looking at a handful of webpage hits for 'shou' they're definitely tending to be Chinese.

Is there a reason that you want your game to be named something Japanese? Foreign-language titles interest (some) people. THey expect them to be meaningful and will waste effort looking them up. If you have a particular message or theme in mind, you might want to actually set something vaguely *meaningful* in Japanese as your title, which will please those who understand it.

("Hanako", as best as I can tell, is instantly recognisable to those with even a basic grasp of the language, or less. Unfortunately I don't have a basic grasp of the language, I only know a handful of words, and only in romaji.)

Hanako - Sweet little flower? ...or sweet little nose? ;)
I'm in the same boat as you comprehension-wise. And I do think it's a little odd to name something in a foreign language but have it not make sense. Mind you, the Japanese do it with English words all the time, so it's only fair!

It's not exactly easy for people to remember how to spell though.

I don't think it's too hard to remember...

However, I did get the impression that it was a Chinese name, not a Japanese (not sure why... Perhaps I subconsciously identify "shou" as Chinese? dunno...)

<shrug>

Seems okay with me...

Chaster

Thanks for your thought.

I don't know about Chinese, but in Japanese "shou" can mean about 21 different things, and I've not yet choosen which one ;).

I indeed took that name from an anime where there was a young boy called "Shou-kun", but my game is a board game with no character at all... just a wooden checker and wooden spheres. I just didn't want a name like "Super Wooden Spheres Deluxe" because there are already soooo many names like that! But now I wonder if it's worth the hassle :}.

Some months ago I tried finding Japanese words that could fit the gameplay, but it wasn't obvious.

Hmmm... by "Chinese" I assume people mean Mandarin (pu-tong-hua or guo-yu) in which case "shou" is a common syllable.

Kind of like saying something sounds "European" though... it's a whole family of languages. So is "Chinese":)

Bill

Here's a grab of my game to give you an idea :).

The game is similar to Connect-4 (two players game were you must align 4 items of your color), but with a 3D gameplay, which creates a much more interesting gameplay IMHO.
AFAIK it has been released previously under the name "Sogo" (as a real board game, not video game). There's also a freeware version available for MacOS (I learned about it a long time after starting my own version).

This grab is in French, but don't worry, the game will be translated ;).

If someone has a good name idea, please don't hesitate to tell me!

Edit: Given the response I had to this post, I obviously need to improve my grab skillz ;-) ... I've decided to remove it; I'll post a better one later. I've also opted for another, better, name for my game!