Naming the games after the mill

When we first put the games together, most of them just had working titles borrowed from whatever mechanic they used. Reel game, wheel game, dice game, that sort of thing. It did the job for testing, but it felt wrong once the site had a proper look to it. The mill house, the koi, the reeds along the bank, all of it wanted names that belonged to the same place, not a spreadsheet of generic labels.

So we went back through the list one at a time and asked what that particular game reminded us of. The dice game became Mossy Stone Dice because the stones by the bank really do have that soft green covering. The drop game turned into Reed Row Drop, since the pins reminded us of reeds standing in a shallow row waiting for a ball to pass through them.

A few names took longer to settle. The card game where two sides face off went through three or four pairings before Dragonfly and Trout stuck, mostly because both creatures actually turn up near real water-mills and neither one felt out of place standing across a card table from the other.

Not every rename was necessary. Waterwheel Spin barely needed any thought at all, since the whole site is built around the idea of a wheel turning steadily, and the game itself is exactly that in miniature. Sometimes the obvious choice really is the right one, and there's no shame in taking it.

What we ended up with is a list of a set of names that all sound like they came from the same conversation, which was the actual goal from the start. If a name still feels out of place to you, let us know through the contact page and we'll have another look at it.