Gamekitchen, a New York game design and development shop, has changed its name to Large Animal Games.

The name change comes a year and a half after the company was founded by partners Josh Welber and Wade Tinney. In that time, the company has developed dozens of custom games for clients like LEGO and the New York Philharmonic. They’ve also managed to publish several original titles, including ‘QUEUE’ and ‘Unipong’, and to distribute these titles through partners like AtomShockwave and RealArcade.

So why change the name now?

Partner Josh Welber explains, “A lot has changed in the past couple of months. We moved to a new office space, significantly increased the size of our team, and most importantly, made a decision to focus more of our efforts on developing original game titles. We’d talked for months about changing the company name to something a bit less literal, and with all the other changes happening, this seemed like a good time to do it.”

But why ‘Large Animal’?

Partner Wade Tinney explains, “We came up with hundreds of names in our brainstorming sessions. The objective was a name comprised of everyday words that would be memorable and intriguing. We wanted something that had lots of associations and could be either scary or funny. Large Animal kept coming up as a favorite. Of course, the fact that the domain name was available was a big plus in its favor.”