I’m getting close to the end of development of Star Hammer Tactics, so it’s time to start thinking about the evil M-word : Marketing. From reading about the experiences of other developers who have released games through Xbox Live Indie Games, it seems that box art is especially important to getting noticed (and in turn, getting sales). It seems many people do judge a game by it’s cover.

Although digitally distributed games don’t have boxes, they still have artwork and descriptions that are intended to communicate to potentials players/customers what the game is about and why you should click the Buy Now button…Now!

So, here are a few layouts I’ve come up with so far.

Layout 1:

Layout 2 (note the blue tint of the ship):

Layout 3:

Layout 4:

The concept is pretty simple, a big bad-ass ship and the name of the game. From the viewpoint of someone browsing through the online store, if you like big bad-ass ships, you’ll hopefully be interested in this game. The grid background suggests the strategy elements of the game. I thought about adding more action, but decided not too, since it’s not really an action game.

Does it hit the mark? Which one do you think is best? Am I missing something? Feel free to comment! (I’d love to hear from some graphics designers about simple tricks that can add some impact to the image!)