Naming a game is harder than building it. I learned this the expensive way.
Where Star Guardian came from
When I started designing the gacha tower defense game that would eventually become Cosmic Summon, I had a working title almost immediately: Star Guardian. It felt right. The game is set against a backdrop of real constellations, the heroes are cosmic-themed, and the enemies arrive in waves named after star patterns. Guardian captured the defensive nature of tower defense. Star captured the visual identity.
I built the entire game under that name. The internal project files are still called Star Guardian. The early design documents reference Star Guardian throughout. For months, that was the game.
The problem
When I went to submit to the App Store, I searched the name.
Star Guardian was taken. Not just taken — it was occupied by an established title with a significant player base. Apple's App Store has strict policies around names that are identical or confusingly similar to existing apps. Submitting under Star Guardian wasn't just a branding risk; it was a rejection waiting to happen.
This is a mistake I should have caught earlier. Checking name availability across the App Store, Google Play, and major trademark databases should be one of the first steps in any game project, not something you verify at submission time. I knew this. I skipped it anyway because the name felt so obviously mine that I didn't think to check.
Finding a new name
Renaming a game late in development is disorienting. The name you've been using becomes load-bearing — it's in your mental model of the project, in your marketing copy, in the visual identity you've been building. Changing it feels like changing something fundamental about what the game is.
The criteria I worked from: the new name had to reference the cosmic setting, had to be available across all major platforms, and had to be distinct enough that a player searching for it would find exactly one result.
I went through a long list. Cosmic Defender was taken. Star Sentinel was too generic. Constellation Wars felt like a different genre entirely.
Cosmic Summon worked. Cosmic kept the setting. Summon captured the gacha mechanic that sits at the center of the game loop — you summon heroes, you place them, you merge duplicates to evolve them into higher rarity tiers. The name describes what you do, not just where you do it. And it was available.
What the rename cost
The practical cost was less than I expected. The game's visual identity — constellation backdrops, cosmic hero designs, the color palette — didn't need to change. The marketing copy needed rewriting. The App Store listing, the game's landing page, the description on phyfun.com — all of it needed updating before submission.
The psychological cost was higher. There's a version of this game called Star Guardian that exists only in my project files, and it takes a conscious effort not to revert to that name when describing the game to people who knew the earlier name.
What the game actually is
Cosmic Summon is a gacha merge tower defense game. Players summon heroes using a gacha system, place them on the battlefield, and merge identical units to evolve them through 7 rarity tiers — from Spark up to the legendary Genesis rank. The game features 12 distinct heroes, 28 enemy types with unique abilities, and 50 waves set against real constellation backdrops from Aries to the Southern Cross.
The browser version is live now at phyfun.com. The iOS version is currently in App Store review.
The lesson
Check name availability before you fall in love with a name. Search the App Store, Google Play, the USPTO trademark database, and do a basic web search. Do this on day one of the project, not day one hundred.
The rename worked out. Cosmic Summon is a better descriptive name than Star Guardian was — it tells you more about the mechanics in two words. But I got lucky that the change was mostly cosmetic. If the name had been embedded in the game's UI, in level dialogue, in audio files, the cost would have been significantly higher.
Name your game last. Or at least hold it loosely until you've shipped.
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