Backgroundese Fonts for Nonsense Text in Games

We’ve made a family of fonts we call Backgroundese for creating nonsense text in your games and other projects.

What is this?

Sometimes games will use nonsensical but consistent text in places where they want players to see something that looks like text, but where they don’t want to use real words.

You can see this in a number of modern Nintendo games like Splatoon, Animal Crossing and Pokémon.

You could use this because you don’t want to include different background textures for every single language your game supports, which would be time consuming and resource-heavy. Maybe you want the user to see some text on something in the background to make the world feel more alive, but you don’t want them to be distracted by the actual content.

That’s where these fonts come in. You can use them to create consistent fake text, which has the vibe of real text but… well… isn’t!

In this day and age, consistency is key. Garbled text could have the downside of looking like it’s AI generated at a glance. But if you’re using a known nonsense text, a font you can link back to, you’ll have your rebuttal lined up when you need it.

What’s Included?

• Backgroundese HD – a clean version of the font that works at all sizes
• Backgroundese Cartoon – a handwriting version of the font that works at all sizes
• Backgroundese 5px – a tiny pixel art version of the font
• Backgroundese 15px – a larger pixel art version of the font

All four fonts are included as .ttf files and .png images of each character are also included in case you find that useful. We’ve also included two sample textures to show you how the fonts can be used, like this background advert for some fruit:

The alphabets of all four font styles are the same, so the language will look consistent across your projects even if you use multiple styles.

License:

You may use these game assets for ANY and ALL uses including commercial use, with or without giving credit, except that you may not sell or redistribute the unaltered assets as your own game assets.