Cipher Prime has the market cornered on the music of beauty, and the beauty of music. The startup game developer based in Old City recently released Fractal: Make Blooms Not War on the Steam network, which Cipher Prime co-founder and Creative Director William Stallwood terms the largest game distribution platform in the world, for Mac or PC in English, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.
With in-game titles like Clustodial Duties and Bippity Boppity Bloom, Fractal is a good example of Cipher Prime's philosophy of fun, creating a new genre of trippy puzzle games.
"I like pretty pictures and colors," jokes Stallwood, who is responsible for the gorgeous graphics that set apart Cipher Prime games like its newest title,
Pulse: Volume One, which Stallwood says was the number one selling iPad music game in the world in May 2011, and
Auditorium, the team's first title and its largest revenue generator.
Like the other titles in the Cipher Prime catalog, Pulse is easy to learn and hard to put down. A review in
Digitally Downloaded called the newest release of Fractal " a thoroughly charming and chilled out little puzzle game."
Co-founder Dain Saint is the soundtrack powerhouse of the duo, and Cipher Prime's music is set to spin off, with an upcoming CD release of game tunes.
Stallwood says the three and a half year old company is about to launch a fourth title, Splice, in the next month, although he cannot furnish details just yet. Stallwood, who is from South Jersey and attended the Art Institute of Philadelphia, and Saint, who grew up in North Jersey, are able to make a living having fun. Auditorium was a web based game that was then launched on iPhone, PS3 and PSP.
Fractal, built using Flash, initially didn't do as well, says Stallwood, hence the new and improved relaunch on Steam. Pulse began life as an iPad only game, and has won many
awards, with 10,000 downloads a day at the outset, and currently purchased an average of 100 times a day, at a price of $2.99. Fractal is available at the iTunes store for $1.99, and Auditorium on Steam sells for $6.99 per download.
Source: William Stallwood, Cipher Prime
Writer: Sue Spolan