I'm currently experiencing a problem that's so common among game developers, and so rarely talked about. My new game has the wrong name.

To be clear, this is a very early prototype I'm talking about, and it's just the name of the project - its directory on the disk and a handful of its files - that's wrong. I don't even know what title it's going to have when it's released. But once you've named your project, it's a lot of work to completely rename it. For one thing, the locations of all the files will change, which will cause you all sorts of problems if you're using version control software (and if you're not, there's all sorts of other problems waiting for you right there).

If you've chosen a name that's a perfect fit for your game, and your game changes, then every time you see it you find it a little bit jarring. It's not a big problem, but it's a constant niggle.

The brilliant solution I've come up with is to start using completely random names for my projects. I've taken a leaf out of the 1950s British military's book, and decided to use Rainbow Codes. A project is now named using a colour and a noun. And to make my life easier, I've created a web page to choose the colour and noun at random.

The problem I have now, of course, is that it's too convenient. I find myself repeatedly hitting refresh, looking for the 'random' combination that best suits what I have in mind. Does this game feel like Blue Boy, or is it more of a Violet Pencil? I'll just keep going until I find the perfect fit. And when I have a mid-project change of direction, well, it's not going to be such a good fit any more.