Font choice is an important aspect of game development, according to Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan project lead Nich Maragos. Especially considering you’ll see it on every screen of his upcoming game.
“In previous Etrian games, we experimented with designing our own font for the first game (to, ahem, mixed results)) and then settled on a built-in system font fro Etrian Odyssey II and III,” said Maragos.
The 3DS, unlike its predecessor DS, allows developers to easily implement standard PC fonts. The Etrian Odyssey IV localization team took this opportunity to move beyond the default.
“We knew we wanted to go with a serif font for Etrian Odyssey IV, to complement the game’s narration-heavy feel of reading an epic saga. From there, we browsed online font repositories and picked out a few likely-seeming candidates, then made a few crude image hacks to see what they might look like when implemented in the game.”
Eventually, it was settled on Neuton, which Maragos described as “just right,” and something “everyone involved in the review process liked.”
You can see mock-up shots of Neuton at work in Etrian Odyssey IV at the gallery.
