By popular demand, we’ve extended the Fractal Preorder deadline to May 24th, 2010!

Why May 24th? Umm, well you see, the thing is…

OFFICIAL FRACTAL RELEASE DATE: MAY 24th, 2010

On Monday, we’ll flip the switch! Everyone who has preordered will be able to download their games; everyone who hasn’t will have to pay full price! Don’t miss your chance to save!

Totally not the piano I'm gonna play on.

For those of you near Philly, I’ll be performing solo piano at the Naked Chocolate in Center City at 18th and Chestnut next Thursday, July 23rd from 8pm to 10pm. I’ll be playing selections from Auditorium, some original improvisational pieces, and a couple previews of songs I’m working on for our new projects. Come on down and hang out with us! Will’s gonna be there handing out some Auditorium swag. And tons of chocolate. I don’t think I can emphasize how much chocolate these people have. I recommend the Mexican hot chocolate, but hey, I like spicy things.

On a side note, since someone keeps pestering us (I’m looking at you, hipster glasses…), we’ve finally bitten the bullet and gotten a Twitter account, so those of you that want to keep up with us every waking hour of every day can finally do so in a socially acceptable manner by visiting twitter.com/cipherprime.

And finally, following on the theme of eroding personal boundaries, we’ve added an Upcoming Events list to our sidebar, which lists events on our public iCal, which you can also feel free to subscribe to. Take that, Internet! Hope to see you next Thursday!

To paraphrase Psychotronic:

AAAAAA I CAN’T HIDE IT ANY LONGER! WE WON WE WON WE WON AAAAAAAA HOLY MACARONI AAAAAAAAAA KERMIT ARMS AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Wow! I’m thrilled to announce that Auditorium has won the 2BeeGames Indie Game Competition! Thanks so much to everyone that voted for us — we definitely could not have done it without you. There were so many good games in the competition; personally, I’m a big fan of Storm. Coded in just two weeks (!), I’d love to see what it could do with more time and funding, so I’m keeping an eye out. I also thought Bucaneer Battle was a lot of fun — great manic brawler.

Congrats to Terence Lee, Edouard Mercure, and Dream Builder Studios! We’re absolutely thrilled to have been in such a great competition with you guys.

And once again, to everyone that voted, everyone that reads the blog, and everyone that supports us — we 100% could not have done this without you! You’re the best fans in the world.

Okay, I’d seriously better stop before I go into a tearful “I’d like to thank the academy…”. If you’re Stateside, have a great 4th of July Weekend!

Right then.

So we have weeks worth of updates to give! Like Will said, we’ve been pretty much slammed with customer support, and just got back from an awesome week in San Fran for the GDC. We met a ton of cool people, and we’re psyched to be back with a ton of new game ideas that you’ll hopefully get a sneak peek at soon.

The award looking awesome in our office

Oh yeah, we were lucky enough to win Most Creative Game of 2008 at the first annual Flash Gaming Summit! I… don’t really know how that happened actually, but whatever — it looks awesome in the office.

Thanks so much to Mochi Media and the FGS — and of course, all you guys that made this possible

Moving forward, we’re going to have new features and announcements coming up really soon, so keep checking back!

P.S. For those of you waiting on the soundtrack, things are moving forward…

I’m pleased to announce that we have rebooted Auditorium with a completely new system! Not only does this update come with smoother gameplay, faster load times, and a sleek updated look, it also lays the foundation for the full online release. Go check out the new site, and stay tuned as we get close to announcing our release date. As always, we really appreciate your feedback, so write us and let us know what you think of the new layout, as well how the game plays — faster, slower, etc.

P.S. The preview has been changed to include a new modifier, for anyone that cares to play around with it

Alright, so first off, happy holidays to every denomination! Things have been a bit sparse around here as we’ve taken time off to visit family and such, but I wanted to give you guys a quick update. Progress on the game is moving forward, as we build out the community site as well as the new levels and audio. We’ve put as many hours as possible into the game for a 2008 release, but year-end business often gets in the way of, well, doing business. We are very confident for a January 2009 release, and should hopefully be able to give you guys an exact release date in the next two weeks. Thanks for staying tuned, and have a great New Year!

P.S. Speaking of holidays, we’ve been getting emails from people who have donated but not received their gift. This is an automated process, so we’re looking into the issue and should have some answers for you soon. Thanks again!

After literally weeks of waiting and hoping, we are incredibly proud to announce that Auditorium has passed 1,000,000 plays! I can’t tell you how excited we are to see our creation flourish. I also can’t tell you how proud we are of our server, which has withstood a constant flood of traffic from several Diggs, untold thousands of links, and the especially ridiculous outpouring of visitors from Penny Arcade and VGCats. Thanks to everyone who has played, and especially to those that have played more than once to see all the possibilities!

Everyone has been giving us great feedback, so I’d like to touch on a few of the major ways we can improve Auditorium. I think you will be happy to know that we are going to implement an “Accept Solution” mechanism, so that players can enjoy their creations before progressing to the next level. As you can imagine, this is probably the most-requested feature.

Sneak preview of the Level Editor

Additionally, the full online release of Auditorium will include a Level Editor. We also have plans for sharing and rating community-generated content.

Another request that has come in a lot has been the ability to add your own music, and we are looking into how we can set that up without (possibly) violating copyright laws — pesky RIAA. You’ll have to keep your fingers crossed there.

One of the more surprising requests I think has been for a Color Blind feature — surprising, to me at least, because I’m happy to know that the game is compelling enough without it for you guys to both finish playing it and write in to us. We are looking to how we can best implement this feature, so some feedback from the community would help, like information on the best contrast ratios and color choices, etc.

Many of you have expressed concern that Auditorium won’t make it to the PC or the Mac, but fear not — the full version of Auditorium is being produced as a totally online experience, complete with community features.

Coming soon?

Many of you have also asked — pleaded, really — for an iPhone version, and we are actively looking into development on that platform. So yes, we are trying to find a way to get Auditorium on the iPhone. It’s still far too early to set a release date or say anything for sure, but you can stay tuned here for more news on that as it develops.

Last but not least, a lot of you are asking about the Auditorium soundtrack, and while I’ll write a bit more on that later, I will say that we are going to make a complete album with fully-orchestrated tracks available after the release of the full version of the game.

So that’s it for now. Thanks for your continued support as we keep working to make this the best experience on the web! Let us know if there is something we forgot!

Welcome to the Cipher Prime Blog! If you’re so inclined, you’ll be able to keep track of what’s going on here, from inane things (like what we had for lunch) to things you actually care about (like when Auditorium is coming to your favorite console). Feel free to comment, post, and email us – we read everything, and the feedback lets us know you care (as trite as that sounds).