Field Notes - Naming the Trail

Before we could move forward with the project, we needed a name that felt right. In this post, we wanted to walk you through how we ended up with The Caribou Trail, from early ideas to community feedback.

1. The Brainstorm

We started with an open brainstorming phase across the team. Everyone contributed. There were no constraints, no filtering. The goal was volume first. Some names were serious, others more abstract, some tied directly to history, others to emotion or tone.

We then organized everything into a shared board, grouping ideas by themes: historical references, emotional tone, narrative focus, or even words that evoked something unique about the project.

Some of the names that didn’t make the initial cut:

• Ghosts of Gallipoli

• Letters from Gallipoli

• The Last of Them (someone on the team is reaaaaally passionate about a certain post-apocalyptic game…)

• We Was There

• Before the Leaves Fall

• Fighting Caribou

• The First 500

At that point, we realized we wanted a title that reflected a war story, but that would distinguish itself from a traditional first-person shooter. Something grounded, more focused on experience than action.

From there, we narrowed things down to a shortlist:

• Fighting Caribou

• The Caribou Trail

• The Land of No Return

• Last Man Out

• Bring Them Home

2. Asking the Community

At that stage, we were interested in seeing people’s interpretations of the different titles. What did they evoke? How did they create expectations that aligned with our core experience, or went in a completely different direction?

We shared the list without any context on Reddit (r/gamedev and r/IndieGaming) and asked players what kind of game they imagined :

– “Fighting Caribou” was often interpreted as something playful or not serious. Woops.

– “Last Man Out” was frequently associated with shooters.

– “The Land of No Return” felt too generic to some players.

– “Bring Them Home” suggested a rescue or extraction-based game.

None of these completely aligned with what we were building. This validation step helped us eliminate names that created the wrong expectations, even if we liked them internally.

Asking the community is always a good reality check.

3. Choosing the Final Name

That left us with The Caribou Trail.

It was actually the original working title we had from the very beginning, before all the brainstorming. The name refers to the emblem of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, and to the idea of a path shaped by their unique experience.

The “Trail of the Caribou” is also a real series of memorials across Europe and Türkiye that marks the regiment’s achievements and sacrifices during the First World War. Each site features a bronze caribou, facing in the direction the soldiers advanced.

That connection felt right for the game. It was also the title that felt the most unique and personal to the story we were telling.

So in the end, all of this process… to come back to our initial choice.

What’s the lesson here?

Getting external feedback is a crucial part of game development, and so is challenging your initial ideas. It’s easy to get stuck in your own perspective when working on something for a long time.

But sometimes… you also realize your instincts were right all along.

If you’d like to learn more about the Trail of the Caribou: More info.

Stay close, b’ys.