What’s in a name?

Hey all my name is Gail Salamanca aka G Panda, co-founder of Rocket Panda Games and for this month’s developer diary I wanted to take us back to the very beginning and talk a little bit about naming Phantom Breaker: Omnia. Before there was even a build of the game, internally I started calling the game Omega as it’s commonly associated with the end of something, in this case the final, comprehensive iteration of Phantom Breaker: Extra and by extension the original Phantom Breaker. While the name could have stuck around until the end, M Panda wanted to explore other names as he thought that Omega was a little too common, so it was off to researching names and looking at a thesaurus. Here is the original list so you can see what other names you missed out on.

So as you can see we liked the sound of Latin and Greek words, so we ultimately ended up on Omnia. It checked off all the boxes for us, like not being a typical word and as a bonus in Latin it means “All” (At least that’s what our internet research came up with) which jibed with the general idea of this version of Phantom Breaker being the most complete version of the game.

We have a game title, now we need a logo!

Once we nailed down the name it was time to design the logo. You’ll notice that we took a few design cues from the original Phantom Breaker logo as the Extra version of the logo can be a little difficult to read. The magenta and purple colors used in the logo have the same color palette that we used throughout the game’s UI The sword and the shield design elements are representative of the two new characters in the game. Here’s a few of the prototype designs we went through:

Why is the fire in your heart burning?

As you all may have already noticed from some of the gameplay clips we’ve shared of Phantom Breaker: Omnia has a unique “Get ready!” announcement often found in fighting games from Japan. The funny thing is the original Phantom Breaker and Extra didn’t actually have one and its inclusion in Phantom Breaker: Omnia was a specific request from myself and M Panda. We had a lot of fun coming up with the alternatives because we wanted it to be kind of bonkers, meme-able and have that Japanese flair but at the same time make a little bit of sense.

Long story short we ended up with “The fire in your heart is burning!” but not without good reason, which is it’s actually one of the verses from the opening theme song. But wait, isn’t “Contradiction” by Aoi Eir the opening theme?  Unfortunately, due to licensing reasons it was only being used as an “image song” for the announcement trailer, so you won’t actually find the song in the game. However, by this time, production for the actual opening theme song was well underway, which was written and composed by our talented friend Jamison Boaz aka EpsilonZero and ended up pulling a few of the lyrics from the song that could potentially work as our “Get Ready!” in-game announcement, the other one of which was “The fabric of time is breaking!”. We thought using some of the lyrics from the opening theme would serve as a nice call back to the song. We’ll be revealing the opening theme and vocalist as we get closer to the launch of the game which will also have a Japanese version in addition to the English, so keep an eye out for that.

How is development going?

For my part, I was responsible for formatting the in-game manual into all the different languages (a painstaking process to say the least) but I can happily say that I’m glad I never have to do that again. While I can’t speak to the super technical side of things, all 6 languages (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional and Simplified Chinese) have been fully implemented and the team is currently putting the finishing touches on each of the console builds, implementing the necessary technical requirements for each platform and squashing any bugs that happen to pop up. After our internal QA cycles are over, it’ll be on to submitting to the platform holders for final approval. That said, we can all see the light at the end of the tunnel and it feels great to see everything finally coming together.

What’s next?

While development is ongoing, me and Panda Beari will be taking Phantom Breaker: Omnia to our first event at Animé Los Angeles next year on January 6-9 at the Long Beach Convention Center, in Long Beach, California. This will be the first time anyone will be able to play the game, so we hope to see you there!

We’ll also be announcing the release date very, VERY soon and don’t forget we have yet to reveal the two new characters for the game. Sakari P will be talking more about them in an upcoming dev diary.

That’s all for now! Thanks so much for your continued support!