IGM Issue 16 by Indie Game Mag

Issue 16: May/June 2011

Inside this Issue:

Auditorium

Fractal

Pulse

Ilomilo

Trine

Indie Game Magazine Issue 16 - May-June 2011

Staff Editors Mike Gnade Chris Priestman Art & Magazine Design Mike Gnade Michael Heald Zak Gebelein

Writers/Contributors Chris Priestman Mike Gnade Zak Gebelein Stephen Johnson Mark O'Beirne

Special Thanks BitMob.com FullyIllustrated.com Cipher Prime Studios Sponsors Moonpod Elecorn IndieCity

Cover Art Will Stallwood

+ Table of Contents Front End

Staff/Credits pg 2 Table of Contents pg 3 Pulse Preview pg 4 From Indie to AAA: Portal 2 pg 6 Interview with IndieCity pg 8

Cover Story

Cipher Prime Interview

Cover Story: IGM visits Cipher Prime Studios in Philadelphia

pg 12

Reviews

Dishwasher Vampire Smile pg 10 Aban Hawkins pg 11 Auditorium HD pg 20 Fractal pg 21 Trine pg 22 Ilomilo pg 23

About our Reviews We rate all of our games based on their graphics, gameplay, sound, and lasting appeal. Each category is given a score on a scale of 1-10 (10 being perfect and 1 being horrendous). The average of these scores is tallied to give each game a percentage score and grade (A thru F). Games are more than the sum of their parts, so we do adjust our average scores based on our final assessment of the game, its appeal, creativity, uniqueness, and overall value. A: 90-100% B: 80-89% C: 70-79%

D: 60-69% F: 0-59%

Preview + Ad

Pulse - www.cipherprime.com - iPad Fans of music games have something to look forward to: Pulse just came out for the iPad in May. Pulse is a music rhythm game in which a pulse emits from the center of the screen. The idea is that the player has to hit the notes that orbit the screen as the pulse passes over them. This game is all about multi-touch so you'll be using both your hands to keep up with all of the notes that litter the screen. A couple of us from the Indie Game Mag were lucky enough to play through a near final build of Pulse. The iPad does a great job of immersing you in the music (headphones are a must here) and does a great job of delivering the feel of an instrument with which you are creating music. The gameplay is simple and there is no way to fail out of a song; consequently the game lacks some of the difficulty that you will find in Guitar Hero or Rock Band. At the end of a song you are given a score. The scoring system was not final when we played but it will certainly add some replayability to each song.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when the Cipher Prime guys sat me down with an iPad and a set of headphones, and issued me to “Go for it!” I wasn’t even sure how to play Pulse - which was painfully obvious from my score on the first level. But by the third level, I was making music. Cipher Prime’s newest game is highly addictive and extremely entertaining. It continues with the musical leanings I have come to expect from the studio, but takes it to the next level by supplying a new interactive experience. The gameplay is pretty ingenious; a pulse radiates from the center of the field and points appear on the radial, which the player has to hit at just the right time. What follows is intense and spectacular. Like Cipher Prime’s other titles, Pulse’s graphics are elegant, stylish and sharp. The use of color transitions is flawless and makes for a beautifully put together game.

Pulse is really all about the music. It is an interactive album of eclectic tunes. There is a wide variety of genres represented in the game’s first 7 tracks. Sakura was by far my favorite level. The pink Japanese cherry blossom particle effects caught my eye and quickly became my favored graphical flair. The accompanying song was equally admirable and the difficulty was perfect for me. Later levels throw a lot of notes at you and I found that my hands blocked a lot of the notes on the outer edges of the screen. I definitely felt like I should have failed out of some of the final levels, but as this is not Rock Band my anxiety over missing these notes was misplaced. Pulse will be available May 5th in Apple’s app store for $4.99 and will include 7 tracks. Cipher Prime has announced that they will be releasing new free songs every week from local Philly artists for the next 6 months, so Pulse should keep you tapping away for quite a while. - Mike Gnade I will admit that sometimes I do need a tutorial, but what the guys did with this game was to create a learning process. The game itself teaches you how to play at first but seamlessly transitions this into actually creating a musical experience all by yourself. As the tempo increased and my fingers were darting all over the pad, it left me with a feeling as if I had just played a musical instrument. It might be a risk to design a game for multi-touch platforms. But after playing Pulse, my opinion is that the risk was well worth it. I haven’t seen anything else out there like Pulse and highly anticipate any future work that Cipher Prime has in store for us. - Zak Gebelein

guides Preview

+ Feature

From Indie to AAA Cupcake To Gateau: Portal 2’s Indie Story Portal 2 is not an indie game. Big surprise. What it is, however, is the most prominent example of how the indie gaming scene is the figurehead of innovation within the industry. As fellow supporters of indie games, it is our duty to be aware that both of the highly successful Portal games are the results of two, much smaller projects. With a fresh take on gameplay these two games were quickly swallowed up by Valve and transferred from an indie idea, into a AAA experience. Daydream Being an indie developer has always been a romantic affair in the game industry. The freedom of creativity and the ability to make your own decisions is but a dream while you are ‘slaving’ away at the unmerciful gripes of the producer or publisher breathing down your neck. Like most romances though, the truth is that being an indie developer is tough. Power battles, lack of money and lazy team members are just some of the entries in the long list of negatives of being an indie developer. Amidst the blood, sweat, tears and souls that go into making an indie game; there is a shy glimmer that provides the reason for this tortuous development journey. Hope. 6

But what is it that indie developers hope for? In all honesty the answer to this question is unique to every single individual making an indie game. But amongst all of these snowflakes, there is a general contention that links them all. Apart from the obvious need to sustain enough income from their projects to continue their existence, many indie developers hope to breach boundaries, advance gaming and be the spark of innovation that changes the way that games are designed. An ambition like this is understandably out of reach for a huge majority of those chasing it. Regardless of this fact, the overwhelming excitement of witnessing a tiny project stand out enough to become the driving force behind something much bigger is a huge motivation. Warp Speed The oddly titled Narbacular Drop started off as a small DigiPen project by a bunch of students. The idea was to create a game that utilized a completely unique gameplay concept that would blow people’s minds when they first played it. The team (collectively known as Nuclear Monkey Software) came up with their ‘portal’ concept for the game and worked around what they thought to be an exciting idea. For those who do

not know, in Narbacular Drop you play as Princess No-Knees and are tasked with escaping the dungeon that the she has been enslaved in by a demon. Aiding the player is a creature called Wally that is able to provide portals on the walls, floors and ceilings for the Princess to travel through. The game became an environmental puzzler of sorts and was recognized by the few players who had a chance to play it.

Feature At a DigiPen expo aimed at game developers, Narbacular Drop was noticed by Robin Walker of Valve who told the team to stay in touch. After hearing Walker’s criticism of their game the students decided that they would contact him for some advice before they presented the game at GDC that year. Their lives changed after showing Narbacular Drop to Gabe Newell and the rest of the team as they were given the opportunity to recreate their idea on the Source engine with Valve acting as advisors. You would be right to question the freedom the students were given but they have all said that they were the ones who put in all the ideas, effort and final decisions. Essentially they were part of Valve, but were able to work as the original indie team that had conceived the idea for the game in the first place. A small hive of indie creativity in the belly of a much larger beast. Graffiti There were many worries leading up to the release of Portal 2 - how can a surprise success like Portal be purposely replicated? Especially when the

sequel was being given a huge shove into the AAA category. It could be said that some of its indie roots had been cut off with this move, and this seems to be evident in the game itself. The focus of many reviews of the game is not innovation as much as it is the dialogue, presentation and the storyline of Portal 2. This is certainly not just a small indie affair. Given that the focus of Portal was its innovative gameplay mechanics, some of us indie gamers were not so impressed with Portal 2 as we were with

its predecessor. It was a game of the blockbuster status and consequently did not take many risks in game design. Not to say the game is not good, in fact it is a great game but one that sits comfortably outside of the indie sphere. What did put a smile on our face was that the most outstanding innovation supplied in Portal 2 came directly from the indie gaming scene. In a practically identical story to Narbacular Drop’s; a group of DigiPen students (known as Tag Team) made a game called Tag: The Power of Paint, which led to their infusion into Valve. Tag is a very fresh platformer puzzler that was released in 2008 and was immediately recognised for its accessibility for fun; even winning the Student Competition at IGF 2008. The player has a paint gun and can spray different coloured paints on to the environments to aid them in traversing the levels. Green paint allows players to jump and bounce to great heights, red paint accelerates the player’s movement, and the blue paint enables the player to defy gravity and walk on any surface. None of this should be unfamiliar to those who have played Portal 2. Bottoms Up Portal 2 is a unique game in which indie meets AAA head on. It’s an odd mix that works to great effect. What seems to be proven here is that indie developers are an important aspect of the industry that can experiment with design in a way that the bigger companies cannot afford to do. The indie gaming scene

is certainly becoming more and more recognised for its innovations by players and developers alike. While they cannot hire superb comedy actors like Stephen Merchant, indie developers continue to supply the freshest and most exciting gameplay ideas. Unfortunately not all indie developers are recognised on the same scale as the DigiPen students for their work, which is where us players come into hand. While there are many aspects of Portal 2 that have a distinct Valve flavour attached to them, the core mechanics and ideas that drive the game are born entirely out of the indie gaming scene. While many may argue the case, Portal and its sequel certainly seem to be hard evidence that indie gaming is at the cusp of creativity and can actually outdo their AAA cousins when given the chance. It is an amazing showcase of how indie developers can reach out to gamers and make some incredible games that only lack the means to mass distribution and exposure to effectively take over the world. Narbacular Drop and Tag are two extremely rare cases in which the indie scene has spread into more mainstream gaming. But when it does, we are proven that our support for indie developers is not just some ignorant underground cult indie development is at the forefront of gaming. The proof is in the pudding. - Chris Priestman 7

+ Interview

A new distribution platform for indie games is on the way. IndieCity is coming this summer and will offer a unique sales portal to Indie Developers. Chris Swan of IndieCity answered our pressing questions and explains what makes IndieCity stand out.

IGM: What is IndieCity? How will it be different than Steam or other digital distributors? Chris Swan: As a strapline IndieCity is meant to be the one-stop shop for all things indie gaming. Whereas the likes of Steam and the other major portals all have their own approval systems that often aren't obvious to the developers, and focus on mainstream titles. We're going the other way, and aim to have EVERY indie game, but to not allow the mainstream. So a major point of focus for us is the long tail of game distribution. We want each gamer to get a personalized experience and be recommended the games that appeal to their particular taste. IGM: So if I'm an indie game developer, I can get my game on IndieCity - no problem? Chris: Yep. We are going to have a peer review system, to check that the game is virus free, has appropriate screenshots and so on. IGM: So you’re making a site dedicated just to selling games from indie developers? Chris: Yes and a great side effect of creating an indie-only site is that we’re able to bring indie devs together, which allows us to provide additional 8

services. So far we’ve already held a couple of marketing workshops where the devs decide on the agenda and we collectively discuss the issues, and we’re looking forward to hosting more of these. Then there’s the developer-only subsite of IndieCity that is being filled up with useful guides and FAQs such as how to best work with the press, how to make your XBLIG game PC friendly, legal advice and more. IGM: Are you only selling paid games? Chris: No. We could never become a one-stop shop for all thing indie gaming if we didn’t support free games, but at the same time we can’t afford to soak up all of the hosting costs of free games with our minimal revenue share. Our solution is to therefore provide a game download client that allows the community to opt-in and help share the up/downloads of the games. By reducing our overheads in this manner we’re also then able to support free games and in-progress versions too. IGM: So you’ll actually be hosting unfinished games too? Chris: Yes. Our plan is to allow for as many business models as possible for the developers, and our download client really helps with this flexibility. We’re creating a whole other section of the site called the IndieCity Underground,

which is going to be like the Wild West of indie games. This site is where developers first put their games, which can be at any stage of development and either given away free for feedback or sold. We’re currently calling this the Pay to Finish model; which Notch did so famously well with Minecraft, and we believe it could be very successful for developers who want to get a community on board early and involve them in development. We’re also looking to allow the platform to provide feedback mechanisms such as automatic bug databases and forums per game. When developers are happy with the version of their game, they can then flag it to go on the main site, at which point the lead users will review the game and check it plays ok, doesn’t crash too often, allows alt-tabbing etc. IGM: It's great to allow everything on your service, but how will you be sure that the 'best' games rise to the top? Chris: Aha, that's where the recommendation engine kicks in. All of the other portals (including XBLIG) focus on serving the same front page to every gamer. And there's a great battle to get on those pages no matter what the massive discount that will be required. But we're going in the opposite direction, and will give each person their own homepage showing the games that will appeal to them.

On Trial Interview IGM: What type of Rev Share will you be offering indie game developers? Chris: We're aiming to give the best possible revenue share to indie devs, while still being able to keep the site running. So if you integrate with our wrapper the developer will get 85% of the revenue (after card processing fees) and 75% if they don't integrate. The reason for the difference is that we want devs to use our wrapper and offer our leaderboards and achievements for as many games as possible. The more games that offer this, the higher our expected customer retention rate, and the lower the revenue we need to keep up and running. IGM: So will you have your own achievement system and download client (like Steam and Desura)? Chris: Kind of. We'll have our run-time libraries that allow for leaderboards and achievements. And the launcher will work a bit like a boot-strapper to do the digital hand-shake so that it knows who you are.

like Terraria and bright flashy games such as Neon Lights. I have fallen for the trailer of Proun too, so that would probably be on there. Aside from falling for Minecraft, I'm mainly into seeing just what games can do, and believe that I'm only going to find this from the indie game scene. I'm not a fan of formulaic re-runs, which the mainstream offers all too often. IGM: What is your favorite game of all time? Chris: For me it's probably a tossup between Skool Daze on the ZX Spectrum, and Dungeon Master on the Atari ST. I truly dread to think the number of hours I've spent playing Dungeon Master. I completed it again last year when I was off sick for a few days! Eilte was awesome too back in its day... IGM: Other than publish your indie game to IndieCity, what advice would you give Indie Developers?

Chris: It depends what kind of indie developer I'm talking to. If it's someone who seriously wants to earn a living by making indie games then I would tell them to focus on the marketing. And be prepared to spend a large amount of their time doing this. Too many great devs spend all their times with their heads down coding and then pop up with a finished game at the last minute and there's no hype, no build up, no initial lead user base. If I was talking to indie devs who love the act of making the game itself I think I would have less advice to give. Except to not listen to much advice and keep their craft pure! IGM: When can we expect to see IndieCity launch? Chris: Well we're in a closed beta test at the moment with a handful of our lead users. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be opening up the flood gates to the developers around June, and then to the gaming public in July.

Interviewed by Mike Gnade

IGM: So IndieCity will feature a recommendation system, but will it also feature indie reviews, news, daily deals, etc? Chris: Well the absence of any publishers means that we can focus on making the developers the stars of the show and allow them to engage with their audiences. So we're aiming to provide a blogging platform for the devs that also slots into the recommendation engine. IGM: Can developers link to their own website and blog? Chris: Yep. If possible we want them to also be able to pipe their site feed into IndieCity too. So that gamers can become fans of either developers or their particular games, and get pushed updates as and when they occur. IGM: What's your favorite indie game right now? What would be on your Indie City homepage? Chris: Good question! Given the heavy number of hours I've put into Minecraft over the last 6 months I think some of those clones would be there: Ace of Spades for one plus feeds of games

+ Review

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile - www.skasoftware.com - XBLA If Shank, Limbo and Fear were to have an illegitimate love child, the result would be The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile. Combine the gratuitous violence of Shank, the simplistic beauty of Limbo and the psychotic chilling story of Fear and you have an idea of what to expect. There are two separate solo campaigns available. These run in tandem with one another for a large part of the game. In one, the player takes on the role of Yuki, the step sister of the protagonist (The Dishwasher) of the original title. The opening sequence harkens back to the first title where The Dishwasher battles Yuki. After being reanimated, she experiences a series of nightmares that give the player an idea of the surreal imagery that is to follow. She must break out of the prison and set out on a quest to take revenge on the three figures of power responsible for her incarceration. These are her three marks on the world: Banker, Judge and General. For those who have played the original, the player resumes the familiar character of The Dishwasher. He sets off to find and assist Yuki. The player must battle through a sleuth of enemies in a bid to track down Yuki. Upon meeting, the story takes a darker turn which you will have to play to enjoy! The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile looks great despite an abundance of grey and somewhat simplistic visuals. What it may lack in graphical detail, it more than makes up for in violence and gameplay quality. The game is quick but accessible. For the technically minded, it is possible to string together massive combos that expand beyond the typical, “Mash X”. Both characters have the ability to dash, which allows for avoiding attacks, moving through gates, and getting from one enemy to another in the blink of an eye. 10

The game employs comic strips in order to tell its story. The images used are chilling and dark but are excellently drawn and implemented. They don’t take all day to scan through, avoid the risk of poor voice acting, and can be skipped. Players have plenty to aim for when playing. There are times when it is better to go against the sign posted route. Exploration often leads to gifted items, powers or minigames. Yuki is a proficient violin player while The Dishwasher is a dazzling guitarist. Here, the characters can bring some colour into the world as fireworks explode as the “concert” reaches a crescendo. Regardless of how good the player is at hitting buttons in time, the game will not punish as bum notes are not implemented. Players who lose track of the controller layout will simply be rewarded with a lower percentage. And of course, to top it off, the instrument of choice gets slammed into the ground. If Yuki and The Dishwasher weren’t trying to exorcise demons, they would be chart toppers. Each level gives a tally of the player's score, highest combo, time taken and so on. Competitive players may replay levels multiple times to perfect a run. There is also a speedrun difficulty. For those who need variety, there is a co-op storyline along with an arcade mode and the Dish challenge. The latter features an online leaderboard where players can showcase their best run for slicing and dicing waves of enemies. Finally, for those that seek perfection, there is a practice room. The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is not for the faint of heart. Battles are fast and frantic. In co-op it can be especially tricky to work out where your own character is on screen. The coloured arrow overhead

is helpful but doesn’t always stand out enough against the backdrop of spraying blood. Blood splatters on the walls and screen, and executions result in characters being sliced or torn from limb to limb. For those who believe that games are turning people into killers, there is plenty of ammunition as multiple rooms feature screens that flicker between “WAR” and “KILL”. Don’t tell Microsoft but The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile is a steal at just 800 points. If you love fast, fluid combat with plenty of over-the-top violence, this is the title that will make your year. Finally, players can feel like a bad ass without actually facing physical harm. Dodge, duck, dive, and dip with the greatest of ease while slicing enemies in two. And if you get bored of that, crack out a violin or guitar solo or two. What’s not to love? - Mark O'Beirne

REVIEW Gameplay: Graphics: Sound/Music: Lasting Appeal:

10 8 9 9

Score: 90%

Grade

A-

On Trial Feature

Aban Hawkins and the 1000 Spikes - 8bits.nukimi.com - XBLIG It does not happen very often, but sometimes I can tell just from the very first impressions of a game, that there is something special about it. In this case, all it took was the sight of Aban Hawkins’ 8-bit portrait of horror as those classic bloodied spikes closed in on him. This was the start of a very odd relationship though; Aban Hawkins treats its lovers mean in order to keep them keen. The basic premise of the game is that you are adventurer Aban Hawkins. You have a map left by your father that tells of treasures lying within some ancient tombs. Aban is determined to reach that treasure, no matter how many traps lay ahead. Little did he know that what was waiting for him was certain death. The game is not shy about being damn hard; labeling itself as the “hardest, extremist, craziest platform adventure”. In all honesty though, the game is just plain unfair, and it will be this that puts the majority of people off. Each level contains an unprecedented amount of spikes, as well as: scorpions, lava, false floors, dart traps, boulders and any one of these things can take away a precious life upon contact. Not too much of a worry as you are supplied with a rather handsome looking 1000 lives at the start of the game. However, as you enter the tomb you will begin to realize that those 1000 lives are precious. The game is retro through and through; from the visuals, to the sound, and even down to the controls. Aban Hawkins returns its players to a time when games were unforgivingly hard. It winds back the clock to a time when developers were able to make the game how they wanted it, and did not have to sacrifice difficulty because the publisher feared it would reduce sales. In this way, indie and retro come hand-in-hand; In Aban Hawkins, it is a beautiful marriage.

I may sound ungrateful of the lures of modern gaming now, but the truth is, Aban Hawkins had me gasping many more times than its modern counterpart, Uncharted. On many occasion, spikes emerged from the ground when I was genuinely not expecting them figuring that the developers “would not be that harsh”. Aban Hawkins is an outstanding indie title. It is a true challenge throughout its entirety, and as long as you can keep your cool, it is extremely satisfying when you complete each level. Level design does not get much simpler than avoiding traps, collecting a key and then using it to open the exit. A change in environments and a gradual introduction of different traps and enemies ensures this simplicity does not become bland. Every screen is filled with so much activity for you to concentrate on that you are glad there are no major distractions. Aban Hawkins is nothing outstanding; it is not original or innovative for instance. What it is though is a genuine video game; it does not use cinematic techniques, a complex story or any of these other forms borrowed from unrelated media. The game is true to form and is appealing through its challenging and addictive gameplay. In all honesty, if the game is so hard and frustrating that you refuse to play it in favor of something “more enjoyable” then you fail to realize a pure gaming experience when one is presented to you. I can guarantee that you will die several times on each level because the game does not give you a fighting chance from the get-go. The idea of the game is to master it, learn the tombs’ many traps and then pull off the right maneuvers at the right time to reach the exit. It is a simple formula that has been lost amongst the mass popularization of the video game, and it is this ability of the indie game that enthralls me and

keeps me loyal. Modern games rarely treat us to an experience such as the one offered in Aban Hawkins. This is what indie games are all about: celebrating the medium and making games that would not exist otherwise. Aban Hawkins is a game made by gamers for gamers and that is what really shines. Satisfying gameplay, a retro palette and simplicity itself are what makes Aban Hawkins stand out, and the very fact that it does for only these reasons attests to the gradual loss of the purity of the video game. Nevertheless, if you enjoyed Super Meat Boy and thrive in those glorious moments of satisfaction that can be had from mastering a truly challenging game, Aban Hawkins & the 1000 SPIKES was made for you. - Chris Priestman

REVIEW Gameplay: Graphics: Sound/Music: Lasting Appeal:

9 7 7 8

Score: 78%

Grade

C+ 11

+ Cover Story

Interview with Cipher Prime Studios

IGM had the pleasure of sitting down with Dain, Will and Kerry of Cipher Prime studios this month. Their office is located in the heart of Philadelphia. The office space is a converted loft that allows for an excellent open work environment with windows that look out onto Chestnut Street. We started with Lunch and Margaritas at Q and then had a chance to go back to their office to play through a near final build of their upcoming iPad game, Pulse. Dain: Well, I’m Kerry Gilbert. I live in South Philly…and I don’t actually know… that’s about it. Will: You really don’t know enough about Kerry. Kerry: C’mon, make something up! Will: You love bicycles. You like the guitarist for the Galaxies; you have your own solo EP. Dain: I’ve done a lot of dental work down at the Sexploritorium. Kerry: My name is William Stallwood. I’m a golden stallion and I gallop gallantly through the fields… My name is Kerry Gilbert. I’m the content developer for Cipher Prime Studios in Philadelphia. I’m not going to lie. Will: Personally, I’m Dain Saint. I was birthed by righteous animals… fire breathing…mostly squirrels more 12

than 2. I had an interesting birth. I was involved in the Corona Wars of 2010 – frequently published in the Gay Philadelphia Times. Dain: Are we bad at this? Will: I’m actually Will Stallwood and I make pretty pictures here. IGM: When did you guys start developing games? Will: I started with Quake Mods as a kid. I built quite a few successful ones and a lot that were just horrible. I built a couple games in college. Auditorium is our first game together. Dain: I made some stupid trivia games in Qbasic back in the day because Qbasic is the best programming language. Will: It’s really cool when you can change the color of text. That’s hot.

Dain: I actually wanted to get into 3D modeling when I was younger. I had this whole Mega Man Movie that I was doing and now he makes pretty pictures because I’m not very good at it. I never got very good at it. Will: Auditorium was 3 years ago. Dain: Has it really been that long already? Will: Auditorium was the first time we ever built a world and an editor and configured levels in a world. Dain: Did proper beta testing…actually listened to user feedback. Will: Yeah, that was a painful process. I distinctly remember making game. There was a lot of game. Nothing was procedurally generated. It was game.

Trial CoverOn Story IGM: How did you guys meet and come together to create Auditorium? Will: We met at a Smash Brothers Brawl game. We had a party where we played Smash for Shots. This is a game where you have Dixie cups and boxes of wine and whenever you die, you take a shot of a Dixie cup of wine. Dain: It’s very classy. We had the Franzia. Will: It’s our personal way of handicapping. People program around it; we drink around it. We met there then showed each other our portfolios and we kind of united on this whole idea of making cool stuff. We were going to start an interactive company, which we did. Auditorium was basically just our digital business card at the time. We had to make a project to show clients and say look this is the kind of work that we can do. At the time we made it, Auditorium was a really big step for Flash and a lot of things were really unique especially all the bitmap data manipulation that we were doing. That was our piece. We didn’t really expect it to take off the way it did. Dain: What’s funny is that the game we were trying to make when we made Auditorium is not Auditorium. We liked the old school shmups where you go and blow a bunch of crap up. Naturally the first thing we started on was the particle engine to make these explosions. After a couple of days, we started realizing that we had so much fun playing with the particles that we just decided to make a game around playing with the particles instead of finishing the rest of it. We just fell into Auditorium. I think that’s good. I think it’s good to realize what fun is and then make something around what’s fun rather than try to force it to be something it’s not.

in has a purpose, even the colors. If you look at the first level of most of our games, there’s no color. Auditorium is monochrome. First level of Fractal is monochrome and you’re just learning the mechanics. Once you have the mechanics then you start getting the color. The color becomes something that you are rewarded with instead of something that you take for granted. Everything that goes in has this sort of thought process behind when can we add something and when should we take it away. What gives the most impact to the viewer? He’s fantastic at getting that across. Will: A lot of people think that color just has this aesthetic value and that’s it. I drive in a car and I get so depressed because I don’t know if you’ve looked at your car’s interior lately but it’s one of three colors: it’s grey, black or a horrible tan color yet the outside is probably blue. Why is the outside of your car blue and the inside isn't? If it’s really something that is supposed to personify you, I would think that the part of the car that you see the most is the part of the car that should be in color. These are the type of details that I like to think about as I design stuff. It’s really simple design but everything sort of follows the form.

Dain (left) and Will (right) face off in a game of Pulse; Kerry cheers them on from the couch.

Will: If we liked Unicorns more, we probably would have made a game called Peggle. IGM: Where did the name Cipher Prime come from? What’s the meaning behind it? Will: I had nothing to do with it. Dain: Cipher and Prime individually are loose synonyms for zero and one and because we were doing this digital art I wanted to sort of embed that into the company. It’s nice. It has that cadence where there’s a two syllable word and a one syllable word…so Cipher Prime. It sounds nice…not as easy to spell as I would like. IGM: Your games have a very distinct art style. How would you describe it? Will: I’ve been designing for a long time. I really have been designing since I was about thirteen years old and I just love it. I went to art school. It was my big thing, but I just really, really love clean design. I try to do a little bit of a different thing each time, set a mood, but really love clean crisp design. A lot of the Cipher Prime stuff is not typical to the client work that we do. It’s a break from the mold of the monotony that we do 90% of the time so we try to branch off a little bit. The big things they have in common are that we always have lots of contrasting colors. It’s always really light or really dark with really vibrant colors that pop out. Basically if you look at a rainbow, it’s the same kind of thing. The rainbow stands out so that’s what we try to do. Dain: It’s very functional design. Everything that Will puts

+ Interview

IGM: The other unique thing about your games is the incorporation of music. Dain: With the music for Auditorium, Fractal and Pulse, one of the things that I have noticed lately in the game industry and even in movies and TV is that you don’t have composers really working with motifs or theme songs. I would create a single piece of music that will get stuck in your head that personifies the project. That is something that I really pride myself on: creating music that really gets stuck in your head. Even in Fractal where all the music is generated on the fly, it still has a theme song and there’s still a thematic element that repeats and says this is the personality of the game much in the same way that Will approaches the colors. What am I trying to say with it? What am I trying to communicate? And what do you walk away with? That’s how I approach the composition there. With Pulse, Kerry and I have been working on it. Will: I want to hear Kerry talk about the Pulse stuff! Back story stuff: Kerry is new to the team and Pulse is the first time that he’s making original content. He did all the Auditorium HD levels, but he’s done most of the audio for Pulse. Kerry: Well, Dain and I shared a good bit of the audio on Pulse. As soon as we figured out we were making a music rhythm game, we just started messing around with ideas trying to find the right style or the right genre for this game. Ultimately what we ended up figuring out is that it’s better not to just settle on one thing. Instead of trying to figure out what theme to go with here, it was just like let’s try making a sea shanty today and see how that works out. Oh that’s cool and it works with the music so we’ll put it. Will: I remember the “Let’s Roll” day. Kerry’s working on this track. It’s an 80s throwback and he comes up and he’s got this Woooooooowowowow (motions air guitar) that he comes in with. So the whole track was basically how can I incorporate a whammy bar in this track without anyone thinking it’s horrible. Kerry: It was definitely a lot more playful. Well I can’t speak to how you wrote the other… but it was a very playful experience writing that. Dain: Auditorium was a very…because the first part of it comes from a very personal place and a lot of childhood stuff. There are things that I am 14

definitely trying to say with it and then the modern soundtrack I created this whole story and world. I was trying to do the traditional orchestral movement where you’re telling a story but only with music. It was very intense music for me to come up with. And then with Pulse, I was like you know what I’m just going to sit here and press these keys and throw on these beats and just have a good time. I had a much more relaxed outlook. I credit Kerry with bringing that into the creative process. Will: Now I don’t do music, I’m not the music guy, but personally I like the music in Pulse the best. Dain: It’s a lot of fun. There’s a lot of life in it. Kerry: I think I knew what I was going to be designing the levels and I knew how the game worked in advance so when I sat down to start writing the music I was intentionally making songs that I knew wouldn’t be too hard for me to make into a level. Whereas some of the songs that Dain did… Will: Not pointing fingers… Kerry: A couple of Dain’s tracks in the game are songs that weren’t even originally written for Pulse. It was just stuff that he had made recently or done on his own time, so he said, “Why don’t we put this in Pulse!” and I want to kill him now after spending hours and hours listening to his song at 0.25 speed trying to figure out where to put all the notes. That was impossible, but I remember trying to keep it simple for

myself. Dain: The latest track we have, Sakura, I actually did write for Pulse after all his complaints. IGM: We’ve heard a lot about Auditorium and Pulse. Auditorium was sort of by mistake and a lot more popular than you expected… Will: Totally more popular…that was beyond a doubt a huge surprise…and awesome. Dain: It was really nice waking up on Thanksgiving and needing to call up server support because we were dugg and our server has too much traffic. It brought the whole thing down. This is the best thanksgiving ever! I’m on tech support! IGM: But we haven’t heard a lot about Fractal. Would you say that you sort of had a Sophomore Slump?

Interview Will: The problem with Fractal is that a lot of it had to do with the engine. We came up with this great concept which was all based on recursion. You have this Hexagon and you form more hexagons into a hexagonal shape and they clear. What was great about it is that you would make this board and once you completed it, you would get sucked into it and that would be a small part of the board above it. It was awesome…great…yet don’t do that in Flash, you can’t. A year of development basically had gone by with us trying to get across an idea that we were never able to get across. So we stripped everything off and we made a really simplistic puzzle game which we like but it’s not the game it was ever supposed to be. We wanted to do dynamic audio…generate audio on the fly so you (Dain) built the audio engine. Dain: It took me…15 months to write that engine in Flash. Will: It’s still Flash so we’re generating synth…you just can’t do anything visual. We had all sorts of problems with Fractal where we’re trying to batch graphics. We can’t really do it because we’re using all this CPU for audio then if we batch the graphics, the audio would chunk up. We had a lot of technical hurdles. The big solution for that is we moved to Unity now. We still do all our prototyping in Flash because it’s a beauty for that. It’s really great for making things quickly, but with finished products we’re doing Unity now. We’ve really only had to make two big sacrifices with our development for Unity and they weren’t sacrifices that I felt we chopped off our arm for. We haven’t had to change the concept of the game in any way, shape or form. Whereas Fractal was one game that we set out to make and the game that we came out with was nowhere near what we wanted to make and I don’t think we are entirely happy with it. Dain: With Fractal. I can definitively say that Fractal is a good game. Will: It’s really fun. Dain: Every person that I’ve seen sit down and play Fractal after a couple minutes says they love it. The problem is that in screenshots, it looks like every other puzzle game that’s out there. Trying to sell even the watered down version of this really complex mathematical thing that we had in mind on the strength of that sort of gameplay while maintaining the clean graphics made it sit at a weird marketing place. Where people weren’t exactly sure what to make of it and what they were

getting. We were so burnt out at the end of it that we didn’t really put all the thrust into marketing that we wanted to. Will: Personally, I don’t even think anyone knows the game exists. It’s been up for awards and it’s done really well. Dain: It was nominated for audio design. Will: It is a good game, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t think we had a single press release run by a single video game company out there. I don’t remember any articles going live. We got a couple articles on blogs of our fans but besides that we weren’t able to get any press at all. It’s mainly because I believe Hexic…is that it Hexic? No it was the galaxy quest that was a puzzle game with hexagons that came out. It was so atrocious that our game had hexagons in it and I don’t think anyone… you can put that on the record. You ruined our marketing! So I don’t think anyone wanted to look at hexagons. Dain: There was some fundamental problems with the marketing pushes that we did. There are people that know Fractal and say, “Fractal is great!” and there are people that know Auditorium and say, “Man, Auditorium is great!” But those people don’t know that we made the other game. The people that love Auditorium don’t know Fractal exists and vice-versa. That’s a problem. Will: We’re not very good at that. We’re much better at the making the game part, so we’re still trying to figure all of that out, but that was a major problem with Fractal. But what we are doing now is rebuilding the game from the ground up in Unity. Kerry: It’s getting a second wind. Will: It’s doing awesome. We went with Zoo as a publisher on it and while we typically don’t like publishers, this has been really good for us. What the arrangement specifically allowed us to do is make the game for the iPad, but we’re able to rerelease the game to everyone who has the game for free. We’re basically giving everyone who has the game a version that works better, looks better and plays better. IGM: So there’s a new Fractal coming? Will: We haven’t given up on it at all! A lot of the mistakes that we’ve made, we’re trying to fix. We’re happy with the new version. It’s great.

Kerry: Also, it feels really nice on the touch interface. Will: Yeah it was built for it. You came on when we were making Fractal, so that was the first game that you saw.

Kerry: I met you guys when I was betatesting for Fractal. I played Auditorium first; that’s how I heard of you guys. IGM: Let’s do a Quickfire. Favorite Feature of Auditorium? Will: It’s two things. Learning is cool. That’s a big thing that we did. Dain: People learn how to play Auditorium. Will: But what’s really cool is learning how to game the system. Auditorium is no holds bar solve the puzzle any way you can. You can have a level with 5 controls that can be beaten with 1 control. You have this stream of light that looks like it’s one thing, but you can use 2 controls to split the stream. There are no instructions for that! Kerry: There is no right way to solve an Auditorium level. Will: There’s nothing wrong with that! You can totally do that! It’s cool. Other people that make games may say that is wrong, but for me that’s the coolest thing in the world. We would have people solve levels with only 1 control and then people who would solve the levels and make a picture. That is so cool. Kerry: From a level designer standpoint, my favorite feature is one that nobody else got to see and that was the level designer and editor. The level editor is just as fun as the actual game: throw portals down, send this color over here. I had a ton of fun making those levels for the PS3 version. Other than that, still being stumped by my own puzzles is great. It’s always a completely fresh experience. Dain: I guess I’ll go with two things as well. I’m a big fan of the deflect control just because you can bounce stuff on the inside and outside of it. You can get some really really cool patterns out of it. From a technical standpoint, I’m a big fan of the way auditorium loads because when you look at the game you have over 150MB of game delivered to you in a browser in Flash and you have no idea any of that loading is happening. 15

+ Interview

IGM: What is Pulse all about? Will: Pulse is all about music and it’s really a collective soundtrack. For us it was a chance to have a really good time with music. It’s a traditional music rhythm game. What makes it different is that it’s a touch game and it supports multi-touch. There’s really not a lot of touch games out there that do that. There are not even a lot of multi-touch games. There’s Tap Tap for the iPhone/iPad but even that doesn’t take advantage of multi-touch. We’re trying to introduce multi-touch in a new way. It’s really simple, a Pulse comes out from the center of the screen and you tap a circle when it’s on the pulse. It gets more complicated than that since there’s multiple things to touch at the same time and lots of different rhythms going on. Kerry: I think what is also different about it is that most of the other music games that we’ve seen before have notes coming at you this way (mimics towards himself) on a scroll. Will: They always are aren’t they…. even Frequency. Kerry: Frequency was great. Will: Yeah Harmonix! Way to make a good game! Kerry: But in Pulse you have this whole area to work in. You’re looking at circles from above instead of these lines of notes coming at you so it definitely makes for a different game experience. Will: You’re playing definitive measures of music. You either have 6 rings or 4 rings; it’s either 4/4 or 3/4 depending on the time signature so you are literally playing a measure of music every time a pulse comes out where traditionally a bunch of stuff is just coming at you. Dain: One of the nice things about Pulse is that it’s familiar because we’re using the same rhythm game elements that you’re used to but at the same time it feels a bit more immersive. At least that’s what we’ve heard from the people who have gotten to play it. People feel like they’re playing an instrument on the iPad. They feel like they’re really involved in the music. As with most of our games, we don’t really punish you for not being all that great at it. People will come in and say, “Man I’m really bad at these rhythm games.” We say just play it and have a good time. A couple minutes later they are there hitting on time and bobbing their head. 16

Will: You don’t fail out of a game and we do not baby you. Dain: Both sides of it. You get in and play and have a good time and once you get used to it then we do challenge you. We make sure there’s a challenge for people who want to get in there and prove that they can get 99% of the beats. We try to cater to both. I think we did pretty good. I’m happy with Pulse. IGM: So are you confirming there are game center achievements for Pulse? Will: Whoa achievements! Who said that? Dain: I think bragging rights are the greatest achievement. Will: We are going to let Pulse grow a little more organically than our other games. Fractal we had 3 game types and we decided people needed all of these different things. With Pulse, we’re taking this approach where we built a game. The game is going to ship with 7 tracks. It’s $4.99 and then every week after that we have a local Philadelphia artist who’s doing their own track and we’re just releasing free tracks. We’re going to do lots of updates in the meantime but we’re going to listen to people and see what they say and what they like and what they don’t like and we’re going to build off of that. We did

that with Auditorium and it was great and we didn’t do that with Fractal and it was a mistake. We might very well put in achievements. Personally, I’m not an achievement guy but if a lot of people like achievements we are here to make a game for them so we’ll make achievements. IGM: What is your favorite childhood game – or favorite game of all time? Will: My favorite video game of all time was Interstate 76. Dain: I actually learned to play bass by listening to the Interstate 76 soundtrack. Will: Best soundtrack of any game period! Dain: Those bass lines were just… Will: …and Jane was hot man! She had like 3 polys… Dain: Polygons in all the right places. I still like those blocky girls. Will: 70s cars, funk music, guns mounted on things…when you were driving your car, you could point your handgun out the window and shoot somebody in the other car. What!? My god! Best game ever! Vigilante 8, Eat it. You sucked. You came out 10 years later and you still weren’t any good. Interstate 76 was an amazing game and it introduced me to programming.

Interview fell into this industry.

Dain: It’s my favorite game to play right now. I wouldn’t go as far to say All-Time because it tickles a lot of the same parts of my brain as Chess and guns. That’s a really great combination, but there are times in my life that I don’t really feel for Chess and guns. At those times, I wouldn’t say that Starcraft is the best game of all time, but it’s a good diversion. Too good of a diversion.

Dain: It’s the sort of thing that we did fall into it but both Will and I and Kerry since he works with us…we are all go with the flow sort of people. We enjoy doing things that we enjoy doing. That sounds really self referential but a lot of people say, “Oh, I’m going to do this because I should or because they will be comfortable or I’m going to do this because my parents think that’s the best idea.” We enjoy doing things because it’s what we enjoy doing so we’re making games right now because we enjoy making games. We were doing web design before because we were good at it and enjoyed working for ourselves. Will is a fantastic juggler so we’ll come in and do juggling things and take a break and learn how to juggle for a little while.

IGM: How about your favorite Indie game right now? Will: Who plays indie games? There are so many good ones. I hate to play favorites but I really like all the little arcade games. Mike and Greg did Solipskier and I think that game is awesome and it’s not because I played that game while they were building it. I am in love with it and Greg’s just an amazing designer. I really like that game a lot.

I was doing hexadecimal editing just to figure out how to get new guns on my car that I hadn’t actually earned. Cool, okay… Awesome. Love you Interstate 76. Kerry: It’s not quite as easy for me. I grew up on PC or whatever we had back home and played a lot of Prince of Persia Classic. I actually found a download of that very recently and started playing it again. Will: It’s killing his productivity. Kerry: So Prince of Persia Classic. I really like ChronoTrigger a lot and was definitely a big RPG fan so ChronoTrigger, ChronoCross and all that stuff. More recently I’ve played a lot of Halo and now we play a lot of Starcraft 2 at the office. Will: We will get out of Bronze league one of these days, I swear. Dain: I’m not sure Starcraft 2 counts as a childhood game, but if it was I probably wouldn’t be where I am today so I’m grateful for that. Will: Your life would be gone if they had Starcraft 2 when you were a child.

of all time?

Dain: There was a game that was at the student showcase in 2010 called Igneous that was fantastic. You get in there and you’re this little pebble rolling down hills and hopping off of lava slopes and the impression of speed that you get from the game is probably the best that I’ve seen since Burnout Paradise. As far as getting that vision warping speed, Igneous was really good at it.

Kerry: That’s definitely the best part about this job. I never ever, no matter how hung over I am, I never wake up and think to myself that I don’t want to go to work today. I always want to go to work, no matter what. It doesn’t feel like work. Will: We have fun. Kerry: We do. Sometimes it gets stressful and then stressful fun happens.

Will: I think my favorite multiplayer indie game was Shot Shot Shoot on the iPad. I don’t know if anybody has played that amazing game but its so cool. You’ve got these 5 blocks on one side and 5 blocks on the other side and you just flick across the screen. The trick is that you only have so much ammo. If you only have 1 thing flying, it goes really fast. If you have a bunch, it goes really slow. Jesus, Nidhogg, jesus… Dain: Nidhogg is literally just the fighting engine from Prince of Persia and nothing else. Will: That doesn’t make it bad. Dain: And that’s awesome. Kerry: But it is sped up like 50 times. Dain: You’re just stabbing people in the face and punching them in the jaw.

Dain: I would be in a basement somewhere…

IGM: What does it mean to be an Indie Developer? Is this what you always dreamed of doing?

IGM: Is Starcraft 2 your favorite game

Will: That’s such a hard question. We

+ Interview

Will: Our days are long and they’re hard but that’s what we want in our days. I don’t know. The game company thing is hard because I don’t think of us as a game company; we’re a lifestyle company. We all want to live a certain way and I think this allows us to do that because we make games and games are fun. We love games, but we may not always be making games that could change. I know you both want to do music stuff. They are able to do music and I’m able to do art. We all develop and we’re able to put it together and that makes great games. Dain: It’s one of the really nice things. For all intensive purpose, I can be a professional musician but not have to live off of my music. That’s great. I don’t have to worry. I would be a very dead person but by doing games we can try out different things and throw the music in there, throw in different art aspects. We’re making music games right now because we enjoy doing that but we’ve got some games in the pipeline that we really want to make that are nothing like the games we are making right now. It’s about doing things that make us want to get up in the morning and say “F@&%! Yeah I’m going to do that!” I guess that’s what indie game development should be like but I can’t speak for anybody else. IGM: If you guys were to give advice to aspiring indie game developers, what would it be? Will: The one lesson that I’ve learned is unfortunately people think indie games is all about making games. It is. Making games is about games. If you want to continue to do it, you may want to start thinking of it as a business. I always

get a lot of slack for that whenever I say it. The biggest lesson for us is that while it should be fun and it should be great and you should be learning things all the time, you do have to ante up, you do have to work. It is a business even when you work for yourself. Some days you don’t want to do the things you have to do. You have to suck it up and do it. There’s more to games than just making the game. There’s a lot more. In fact, making the game is probably 40% of it. Dain: Making games is the easiest part of making a living off of developing games. Will: And it’s the fun part! It’s the cool part. If you’re not psyched about that part don’t even try anything else because everything else is going to suck. It’s going to be a lot more work than you ever expected. Dain: If you want to get a company to start doing it, my advice would be to find a really good accountant. I go in and see him twice a year. Every time I go in there I have a smile on my face because he saves us so much heartache. Not just the money, he takes care of a lot because that’s what he wants to do. He’s an accountant. I don’t want to be an accountant. I don’t want to deal with numbers. I want to make shit blow up. He allows me to continue making shit blow up. Know what you’re good at and find people that are good at the things that you’re not good at. Find a good accountant. If you’re not a good artist, find an artist. If you’re not a good programmer, find a programmer. Will: What do you have Kerry?

Kerry: I’m still receiving advice. Will: C’mon. I’m actually curious. Kerry: Man, you’re putting me on the spot here. I was too busy absorbing your wisdom to take the time to come up with my own useless bit of wisdom. I got nothing. Pass. IGM: What’s the biggest challenge being a small studio? Will: This has to do with our studio and how we work, but the biggest challenge that I see is that if one of us isn’t working then no one is working. We’re in an open air office, so if I’m playing Starcraft and want to take a 10 minute break and somebody turns around and sees me playing Starcraft, they’re not going to be working on particle effects. They’re not going to be building the shader. So what happens is I’ll stop playing Starcraft and turn around and they’re watching a YouTube video. Now I’m curious about the YouTube video. Working on a team in a really small room where you can all see each other’s monitors is hard. Dain: Staying on task. Will: Staying on task is super hard. On top of that, we don’t have anyone telling us what to do. You have to get a little bit of gumption and somebody has to be the jerk and say these are the things we have to do. It sucks if just one person is that jerk. It’s not that easy being the person saying you want to get things done because if you do and it fails then you’re that guy.

Dain: The benefit is that you’re working for yourself and nobody tells you what to do. The downside is that you’re working for yourself and nobody tells you what to do. You have the freedom to do anything but there are really only a few things you should be doing. At the same time, there’s a very direct correlation between how hard I work and how well I eat. I think that’s good. That’s great motivation. Interviewed by Mike Gnade

Photographs by Zak Gebelein

Interview

+ Reviews

Auditorium - www.cipherprime.com - PC, Mac, iPhone, PSN Much like the grand theaters it shares its title with, Auditorium delivers a potent blend of light and sound. The first game from Cipher Prime is a puzzler in which you must bend the flow of light and transform it into music. Combining unique gameplay with a complimentary orchestral score ensures that Auditorium is a game that simply must be experienced to appreciate. There is a free Flash demo of the game available at www.playauditorium.com. Auditorium is also available on iPhone and the upgraded Auditorium HD is available on the Playstation Network. Auditorium’s gameplay is innovative and unique. It is much easier to pick up and play than explain. The objective of the game is to manipulate light particles and fill audio destinations with the appropriately colored particles. Every level in Auditorium gives you a different set of controls to manipulate these particles. These controls range from the basic four directions to the more complex black hole and reflector controls. The freedom to experiment and solve every puzzle however you want is what makes the gameplay so enjoyable. Effectively, there is no right or wrong way to solve a level. This freedom makes each level feel more like a playground than a puzzle. The diversity of puzzle solutions coupled with no time limits and no failure conditions makes Auditorium a relaxing and enjoyable interactive experience. Despite the lack of failure conditions, Auditorium’s puzzles are still 20

challenging (especially Auditorium HD’s Modern Levels). Whereas some levels can be solved in mere seconds there are others that will have you stumped for minutes, hours, or even days. The simplicity of the gameplay and cleanliness of the user interface enable Auditorium to feel more like interactive art than a video game. Including a timer, lives, and other intrusive HUD elements would certainly have a negative impact on the experience. Auditorium benefits from a simple design, excellent visual effects and a sublime soundtrack. The visuals of Auditorium are simple enough; colored particles fly across a black background. In motion though, these particles bend and move to create some truly mesmerizing visuals. The dynamic nature of the special effects is amusing and supports the experimentation and freedom offered in the gameplay. As the name indicates, the real star of the show in Auditorium is the excellent music and orchestral score. What is the point of a game about turning light into sound if the sound is abysmal, right? Fortunately the developers have composed an excellent soundtrack that serves as more than just a pleasure on the ears. As you get closer to solving a level’s puzzle, the music will evolve and become richer with more instruments and musical elements being added to reward the player. Every puzzle is neatly wrapped up with an excellent snare drum roll effect and a slick visual fade.

Auditorium excels because all of the elements come together to create an enjoyable whole. However, Auditorium does have its shortcomings. The slow pacing of the game is not for everyone and apart from fulfilling any curious desire to find additional level solutions, there is not much replay value to be found here. The methodical gameplay is not meant for long play sessions and Auditorium is best experienced in short bursts. Auditorium is most effective when you boot it up to relax and experiment with the dazzling lights and sounds. Approach Auditorium as an interactive art experience and the $10 admission fee is an absolute steal. - Mike Gnade

REVIEW Gameplay: Graphics: Sound/Music: Lasting Appeal:

8 9 10 8

Score: 88%

Grade

B+

Reviews

Fractal - www.cipherprime.com - PC, Mac Fractal by the Philadelphia based Cipher Prime crew is a puzzle game. The player manipulates or “pushes” hexagon fractals to create combinations of 7 called “blooms.” When the 7 fractals come together, the bloom is complete and explodes. Various combinations can come together to produce huge clusters of blooms. In the main campaign mode of the game, the player only has a limited number of pushes to utilize, so every move counts. Under the surface, the game is complex and extremely intuitive with an organic feel. Fractal offers the player three modes of play: Campaign, Puzzle and Arcade. Campaign is the traditional linear model with the player completing and progressing to the next level. The Puzzle and Arcade modes included hosts of irregular patterns as the name Fractal implies. The game isn’t as simple as pushing fractals to complete blooms, as you get deeper into the gameplay there are specialized fractals which allow for clearing multiple tiles, such as exploding fractals, lightning fractals and others I’m not too sure about. All the modes have scoreboards which rank the top players for each; it adds an element of competition so the player isn’t just playing themselves. Looking at the Campaign Mode, things start off pretty basicj complete the bloom and move to the next level. Each level has a number of bloom points needed to progress and the game becomes increasingly more complicated as the player moves along. There are only a few save points, so the player has to ration their pushes or risk starting over again. It can be both fun and frustrating. Puzzle Mode offers different puzzles with objectives that need to be accomplished with limited fractal pushes. Sometimes this means clearing a whole board with one or two pushes causing a chain reaction.

There really are a lot of ways to play and the puzzle mode will exercise your skills for the campaign mode. It’s almost like a tutorial of different puzzle sets. The sets, once unlocked, become progressively more complicated and require some strategy. In the Arcade Mode, levels are timed and broken down by player style. Each style highlights different constraints based on Speed, Agility and Confidence. For example, Speed allows for maximum bloom explosions and one playable color, while Confidence has two colors and a higher difficulty when it comes to creating blooms. The objective is to keep the clock from timing down which will end your run. During the course of the gameplay, there are specialized fractals that pop up and add more time to the countdown. The player also doesn’t have to worry about running out of push fractals, which makes for a fast pace and sometimes chaotic time. There is much to be said for simple clean looking graphics and the boys over at Cipher Prime really capitalize on that style. The graphics simultaneously give both the sense of elegance seen in the best mainstream games while maintaining the feel of an indie studio. The luminous color combinations bring a dramatic impact to the simplicity of the style and richly reward the player with a fan-freaking-tastic color orgy for the eyes. The studio has cleverly included helpful little hand-drawn tips into the level backgrounds. In the earlier levels these serve as the tutorial. Some of these tips are as simple as “push here” or quirky like “good luck, sweetheart.” I’m a huge fan of the design of this game. The player can tell that Cipher Prime spent heaps of time paying attention to the details of the game. This detail goes right down to the “spiffy” comments that scroll across the game after particularly good combinations of blooms. I have to admit, my favorite still is: “Holy Hasselhoff.” Like Cipher Prime’s Auditorium and

forthcoming Pulse, music plays an important role. In Fractal the tempo of the music increases along with the tempo of gameplay. The music builds upon itself incrementally chord upon chord, which seems to incorporate fractal points which can be found in music theory. Ultimately the player is pushing fractals out to some serious beats. In terms of lasting appeal, Fractal has hours of complex and satisfying puzzles. Fractals in mathematics include irregular patterns which often cannot be expressed by classical geometry; as such, Fractal the game lends itself to varying degrees of complexity and unique play each and every time. If you’re looking for a smart and sophisticated game, be sure to try Fractal. - Zak Gebelein

REVIEW Gameplay: Graphics: Sound/Music: Lasting Appeal:

9 10 10 9

Score: 95%

Grade

A 21

Interview + Reviews

Trine - trine-thegame.com - PC, Mac Following last month’s release of the Humble Frozenbyte bundle, I thought it’d be a good idea to revisit the developers works. You know, just to make sure you don’t just feel good about your money going to charity, but you feel even better about buying some indie greats. First up; Trine. Trine is a side-scrolling action platformer with some added RPG and puzzle elements thrown in the cooking pot. You play as three unlikely protagonists who were silly enough to hang around during an undead invasion. They all touched a magical item called the Trine that binded their souls together and thus must find a way to free themselves and save the kingdom from the army of the dead. The characters are unique in skills and have personalities you wouldn’t normally associate with heroes. The hungry knight has a selection of melee weapons and a new-found hobby for kicking skeletons in the face. The thief wields a bow, grappling hook and is seriously regretting trying to steal treasure that binds you to a soldier of the kingdom. Finally, the wizard may not be able to cast a fireball but should really consider a career as a builder. Just because this is a side-scroller, that doesn’t mean the developer’s skimped on setting. The visuals have been pulled from a fairytale book and polished to an extent that you wouldn’t normally expect from an indie developer. No matter how many undead are thrown at you, Trine’s world is always a nice place to be. The limited story doesn’t put you off either. Frozenbyte have opted for a simple storyline that is both accessible enough for casual play but caters just as well to a hardcore audience. Combined with the superb voice acting 22

of the characters and the narrator, the developer has created an atmosphere that’s difficult not to lose yourself in. To traverse through Trine’s 15 levels, you’ll need to manoeuvre it’s physicsbased puzzles by switching between your protagonists. As you aren't limited to solving a puzzle in just one way, there is some room for creativity. You could cross a spike-filled gap by using the thief’s grappling hook or you could use the wizard’s architectural expertise to make a bridge. You’ll find energy and experience vials along the way, which combined with killing monsters will level your characters up, enabling them to strengthen their abilities. Further unlockable skills and equipment can also be found, making your adventure a well-rewarded one. Alternatively you can plug in some controllers and give the multiplayer a try. The game increases in difficulty level this way as you have to make sure all players reach the end of the level. This is much easier said than done due to having the added danger of your friends plotting behind your back. Once everyone gets passed the killing each other phase though, you’ll find it adds a fun challenge to an otherwise fairly easy campaign. Multiplayer is limited to local play unfortunately and is a little confusing to find due to being hidden away in the options rather than a menu selection that most people would be accustomed to. The only other nitpick I can add other than the multiplayer is the enemy spawners. They most frequently generate extra enemies both in front and behind your character, which can overwhelm you and almost guarantee some hits being taken. It seems like

it was added to increase difficulty but only leads to frustration. There’s nothing worse than having to run back to the last checkpoint to resurrect your team because of a particularly mean ambush that’s left you with only your wizard still alive. Trine’s levels should take around 5 hours for your first play-through, making completion a little short. However, there is still replay value due to secrets items, achievements and most importantly it’s multiplayer. If you're one of the people to snatch up the bundle offer, you’ll be happy to know you have an enchanting journey, chaotically exciting multiplayer and a sequel to look forward to that’s due for release later this year. Those who missed their chance, you should definitely give Trine another look. - Stephen Johnson

REVIEW Gameplay: Graphics: Sound/Music: Lasting Appeal:

9 10 9 6

Score: 84%

Grade

Reviews

Ilomilo - www.ilomilo.com - XBLA Ilomilo is all about coming together. The objective of every puzzle is to get these two cutesy characters back to each other by traversing levels crafted out of paper and quilt supplies from SouthEnd Interactive's local arts and crafts store. The gameplay is simplistic but Ilomilo has a lot of charm and is perfect for the casual and family market. The world of Ilomilo has a unique patchwork art style that lends itself to the storytelling of the game. The levels are 3D but are laid out on a grid made up of cubes. If you've played Bug! on the Sega Saturn, then you have a good idea of what this type of level construction is like. Your movement is very limited in this game since the challenge comes from traversing this fantastical world, defying gravity and reuniting this pair of friends. The game does a good job of introducing new gameplay mechanics throughout the entire story. The

challenge of the puzzles is well paced and the game doesn't force you to beat every level before progressing to the next chapter of the game. You start off by moving simple blocks but soon enough there are elevator blocks, animals to ride and more. Despite the puzzle complexity, you never need to fear death and the controls stay simple: move around with the left stick, pickup and place blocks with the A button and switch between Ilo and Milo with X. The switching mechanic adds a nice wrinkle to the game since switching characters helps you look at puzzles from a new perspective and makes you feel that you are never too stuck. The graphics of Ilomilo are pretty enchanting and help pull you into this unique fairy tale. The presentation is elevated by delightful sound effects and catchy music. Despite the solid execution, Ilomilo will not be for everyone. Its slow methodical pace and its cutesy graphics limit it to the casual

crowd but the later levels' difficulty will likely frustrate younger and more casual gamers. There is a good amount of game in Ilomilo. Along with the single player campaign there is a cooperative multiplayer mode and an arcade mini game. Each level has some replay value since there are gallery items to collect. You can also attempt to solve each puzzle in as few moves as possible. Despite the excellent production values and whimsical story I did tire of Ilomilo's puzzles, especially during long play sessions. Ilomilo is best played in short spurts of fancy. It's a good game just not a very memorable one. - Mike Gnade

REVIEW Gameplay: Graphics: Sound/Music: Lasting Appeal:

7.5 8.5 8 7

Score: 75%

Grade

C 23

Indie Game Magazine www.indiegamemag.com 24