Aside from the characters and gameplay, a video game’s logo is its identity. It’s what turns the video game into a brand of its own and is what you’ll immediately recognize it for. The image grows more iconic over time and becomes ingrained in your head.
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There are countless games with logo designs as brilliant and creative as what’s in store in the actual game. Sometimes it’s the highly original title font that no other game can copy or designs relevant to the story or gameplay. In whichever case, these games can leave a lasting impression with just their logos alone.
10Infamous
Sucker Punch’sInfamoushas an infamously underrated logo design. It’s unusual, yet at the same time, quite striking, separating a lowercase “in” from “Famous” and creating a box outline over the text that features parts of the city skyline within it. The letter “O” in the logo also has the silhouette cutout of the protagonist, who blends with the skyline, and stays the same across the games.
It feels like a black-and-white comic book panel, and that’s how the story is told in-game. It’s a series about metahuman Conduitsseparate from the heroes of Marvel and DC, who can use powers to commit good or bad actions. The first two games follow Cole McGrath, who can manipulate electricity, and Second Son follows Delsin Rowe, who’s got literal fire powers.
9Final Fantasy
Final Fantasyis an RPG series known for its spectacular plotlines, characters, setting, and cutsceneswith incredibly lengthy dialogue. Something else that sets it apart from the rest of the games in the genre is the detailed logos revealing illustrations of critical aspects of the games wrapped around the signature title font. Like the one fromFF16, for example.
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You have a major cinematic battle from the game represented between the Pheonix Eikon, drawn with a yellow-orange color, and the horned Eikon of Fire, Ifrit, in purple. There are many more Eikons you’ll encounter in the game than just these two, but it’s a nice little nugget of information brilliantly designed to give you some expectation of what the story will entail.
When surveying survival horror games, there are many great games with not so many notable logos that come to mind, aside from maybeAmnesia’s hazy font choice and the Umbrella Corporation logo fromResident Evil. While recognizable, they don’t ultimately highlight the game. However,Dead by Daylight’s simple creative choice for its logo also gives it one that goes with its themes.
Dead by Daylight is an asymmetrical multiplayer horror game represented by a tally mark of five, with the four dagger-like vertical white lines symbolizing the team of four survivors, each line having skulls bleeding black ink from the top. The diagonal slash mark is for the killer in the game, whose job is to ensure no one survives.
7Outer Wilds
This indie hit can rivalNo Man’s SkyandThe Outer Worldsin gameplay and logo design. In the genre of space exploration games, no logo comes as close to being visually eye-popping while staying relevant to its themes asOuter Wilds. The “O” in “Outer” has a crescent moon in the upper corner, and the letters in “Wilds” have an effect where branches are growing out of them, the “I” becoming a whole tree.
Outer Wilds adds a bit of a twist to sci-fi space travel games with a time loop affecting the solar system you’re in. As a recruit in the Outer Wilds Ventures Space Program, you’re tasked with exploring the system’s unique planets like Timber Hearth, which offers the precise wilderness you see in the logo.
6Assassin’s Creed
The logo most heavily associated with Ubisoft’sAssassin’s Creedseries is the Order’s emblem, as seen on the title menus and worn by characters like Ezio Auditore and Connor. It’s a curved triangular shape sitting on another curved line that extends to each pointed edge, resembling the outline of an eagle’s skull (an animal essential to the story).
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The Assassin’s Creed games follow multiple protagonists of this organization throughout history, each taking you to a new location and period. You have a range of methods and weapons for either stealth or direct combat when carrying out missions, and the open-world RPG installments likeOdysseyandValhallaoffer some of the most expansive environments and stories.
5Minecraft
All the letters in theMinecraftlogo evoke the feel of the building block materials you work with, and the “A” has a Creeper face designed into it, showcasing one of the iconic enemies you’ll face. Universally beloved, this logo is clever and effective at summing up the game and giving a stellar 3D effect in its visual design. You’ve undoubtedly worn it or at least seen it on licensed T-shirts and toys, including on theboxes of its various Lego sets.
Minecraft is a game all about unleashing your creativity with the resources you gain all around the open world map, whether in Creative Mode or Survival Mode. The vibrant 3D art style and pixelated graphics make it one of themost welcoming survival games, and the logo is a big part of the allure as well.
4BioShock
BioShockwasn’t merely anastonishing successor to System Shock, but also came with a much more nuanced logo showcasing the game’s location of Rapture. It has a textured metallic material for its lettering and outline border to resemble the themes of industrial construction and the rusted background for the suits of the Big Daddy enemies.
The story, setting, enemy design, and combat system with special abilities on top of weapons made this FPS series one of the best of all time. If you enjoy science-fiction and historical timelines, this game created dystopian societies as you’ve never envisioned, the first two set underwater and Infinite high in the cloud city of Columbia.
3Pac-Man
Pac-Manis like a nesting doll of iconic greatness. He’s an iconic character from an iconic and nostalgic arcade game designed with an iconic font and logo. The titular yellow shape even appears in the title, with Pac-Man’s open mouth replacing the letter “C.” The title logo also uses tiny holes to mark “A” and “P” letters, possibly to signify the dots you have to eat, and the “M” continues to represent the same geometric edges of Pac-Man’s mouth.
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Pac-Man is a simple idea that ended up being one of the most influential and significant of all time for gaming. It brings fun gameplay of a yellow circle trying to collect all the pixelated dots around a maze, all while avoiding multicolored enemy ghosts trying to end your streak but can also be eaten eventually.
2Mortal Kombat
TheMortal Kombatlogo is timeless and has been attached to all the games and film media since the beginning. Before even picturing the iconic characters when Mortal Kombat pops into your head, you probably first visualize this logo. It’s a simple circle and dragon design, almost like a House Targaryen Sigil, that also encompasses the series as a whole.
The meaning behind this design is also significant. The dragon represents the Elder Gods in the Mortal Kombat universe, while the curve and shape of the dragon inside the circle convey a similar ‘Yin and Yang’ look that’s indicative of the diverse roster of characters, as well as their individual personalities and abilities.
1Grand Theft Auto
TheGrand Theft Autofont, appearing on the mainline game logos since 2001’s GTA 3, is probably the most instantly recognizable and iconic of any other game series. This particular font, Pricedown, was released just in time in 2000, and its lowercase lettering with the blending of the “r” and “h” in the title defines the game as much as the actual characters and world.
Even thoughmany games attempt to copy its formula, this open-world crime series from Rockstar really excels with the writing, characters, vehicles, and memorable missions. And GTA 5’s Online feature is even favored over the main story. The cover art featuring this logo with a collage of illustrations additionally gives the games a unique design over others.
