The Elder Scrolls : Castles

Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls franchise is one of the most beloved in gaming. Elder Scrolls has come to life as an MMO, a CCG, several legendary RPGs, and now: CASTLES, a kingdom management simulator where your choices rule.

Delivered Elements:
Visual Identity
Animated Launch Trailer
Logo
Key Art
Motion GFX Toolkit

Services:
Concepting & Script Development
Editorial
Game Capture
Visual Identity
Motion GFX Design & Animation
CG Animation
Music Supervision
A/V Post Production

CHALLENGE:

HONOR THE ELDER SCROLLS’ BRAND PEDIGREE WHILE UPDATING IT FOR A NEW MOBILE GENRE

The name ELDER SCROLLS conjures many things for many people, but first and foremost it means FANTASY — dragons, magic, swords, kings & queens, and, of course, CASTLES.

Though The Elder Scrolls: Castles is different in many ways from its siblings and cousins under the ES umbrella — it shares fantasy DNA at its core, so we started building from that commonality.

Visual Identity & Logo

Our first chance to honor CASTLES’ pedigree while signaling an exciting new shift was through our Visual Identity & Logo development.

We started with The Elder Scrolls’ original mark featuring–you guessed it–scrolls, and deployed similar lines and angles in the diamond holding shape and the titular castle inside it. This all came together in a bold, striking logo icon that would be instantly recognizable in the app store.

We selectively chose the regal colors of gold and purple as our primaries to convey majesty/fantasy, opting for greater saturation than previous ES titles to create differentiation and hint at CASTLES’ more approachable tone.

We rolled all of our thinking into a handy dandy BRAND GUIDE for Bethesda to share with their partners.

KEY ART

For CASTLES’ key art, we wanted to immediately signal to players that this was a castle management game vs. the more traditional RPG entries associated with the brand, so we just went ahead and peeled the lid off the fortress to expose its inner workings. We convey some of the game’s key mechanics — relationship management, royal dynasties, and of course, amusing hijinks.

The art style and color palette all signal an accessible departure from the more mature, harder fantasy incarnations of the past.

The key player fantasy in THE ELDER SCROLLS: CASTLES is to be the ruler of a fantastical kingdom, so, naturally, our Launch Trailer begins on coronation day.

LAUNCH TRAILER

We follow one of your future subjects as they explore the many rooms, halls, and activities (all of which are informed by gameplay design and mechanics) surrounding the event. What seems like a dream come true is quickly complicated by the reality of the approximately 10,000 decisions one must make as ruler (of course, for our target audience who loves resource management, making 10,000 decisions IS the appeal), but, as the trailer makes clear in its ending — you’re the ruler… if you want to plan your next feast instead of the next tax levy, who’s to stop you?