Consider this an official unofficial announcement that our in-development graphical game is called Earth Eternal. I had to announce the name in order to get the help of some of our players in deciding which logo is most appealing to the broad audience of people who like fantasy RPGs. For the sake of reference, here are the logo ideas we’ve been working with. We’ve had three rounds of revisions so far. I appreciate any feedback people have on the logos, as while I know which ones I like, my tastes may or may not correlate with a wider audience.

Keep in mind, please, that these are all just concept sheets. Colors can be changed, compression artifacts won’t be there, etc. The first set gave me the text part of the logo, but I didn’t like anything else about the First Round. I’m a big fan of style of the text logo on the upper left.First Round

Next came this sheet as the Second Round
Second Round

I’ll comment on these after the Third Round, which was here:

Second Round

So, my favorite is the lower left one in the 3rd Round and, if a dark background is required, the upper left of the third round. They’re simple, memorable, and clean, though I liked #10 in Round 2, I felt it was too sci-fi. One person I showed it to commented that it looked Klingon. Earth Eternal is resolutely rooted in fantasy, albeit with vague real-world references.
I showed them to the Achaea forum dwellers, and to my surprise, a number of them commented that they thought the logo looked like a shampoo or bath soap logo! That was a welcome wake-up slap in the face: I have been looking at too many ‘Web 2.0′ (I loathe that term) sites and I have to admit that I’m attracted to their generally clean logos.

Because the reaction of the Achaea players was so neutral to negative overall, I showed them Round Two and asked them what they thought. #10 and #11 were the clear winners. A lot of people had very positive reactions to those, both on Achaea’s forums and on Imperian’s forums (which had little traffic on the topic by comparison, because it’s a smaller game and because those players don’t have nearly as much of a personal relationship with me as some of the Achaea players do. I used to run Achaea day-to-day, but I never ran Imperian day-to-day.

So, I’m having the artist do variations on both my preference (the simple, leafy upper left and lower left in Round Three), and on #10 in Round Two, but with the removal of the silvery weapony-looking object behind the logo, and the substitution of something more nature-y, such as the three-pronged leaf or the fern on the leafy logos in Round Three.

Any impressions are welcome.