Yay! Finally a new game! Well, we’re not quite there yet. But, it’s about time we at least tell you what we’ve been up to. The name of our new little baby is Pulse. She is a wonderful mix of music and rhythm game for the iPad. Rather than go on and on about her, though, we figured we would just show you her baby pictures and let you listen to her first words.

Since she’s all music oriented, it only seemed right to release a few singles as we gear up to launch. We’ve taken a little bit of a different approach here and released the first single “Porcelain Doll” on both iTunes and the Cipher Prime Store for $0.99. Porcelain Doll takes on an eerie tone, but don’t worry — we’ve got more kinds of music than a baby has moods. Pulse has a lot to say, and we plan on letting her!

We’re really happy with where this title is going and we’ll be releasing more info and audio as the weeks drag on. But, here’s that promised baby picture for you:

Not only do we currently have our Cipher Prime Bundle happening, we are overwhelming excited to announce the debut launch for another Philadelphia Studio: Space Whale Studios. As of yesterday, they launched their first title called “Return All Robots” on the XBox Live Marketplace. And today, they are launching their PC version right from our very own store! This is a huge win for Philly and I’m very proud to see my friends succeed. Now, for a little look at Return All Robots:

• Return All Robots is debuting at $2.99.
• The (AWESOME) Soundtrack is available for $8.99.
• The Game and Soundtrack can be purchased together for $9.99.

For more information on Space Whale Studios visit http://www.spacewhalestudios.com

This is a big step for us and hopefully a lasting one. This is the first of (hopefully!) many titles to be launched individually on our platform. Over the course of the next couple months we will be changing the site around and making it more studio focused, giving each developer the spotlight. If you are interested in hearing more about this or getting a game up on our store, be sure to get in touch!

For those of you who have come to see us at our old office, things are changing! As of this week, we’ve moved into our new space right on 3rd and Chestnut Street! We are overwhelmingly excited. Not only is the space 5 times larger, it’s an awesome location with great food at almost exactly the cost we were paying before. For us, this is just our dream come true. It actually feels like we’re turning into a real company =)

Unfortunately, moving takes a lot of time and money. Which means, we’re going to have a moving sale! So, what is the moving sale? Both Auditorium and Fractal will be offered at $4.99 each. We’ll be giving you Iterate ( the theme to Fractal ) with any Fractal purchase and we’ll be giving you Autumn ( the 1st Auditorium single) with any copy of Auditorium.

On top of that, we’re going to be opening up donations for the duration of the sale. This is rather huge for us and something we haven’t done since we created the demo of Auditorium. Dain and I are currently trying to figure out what we can give to anyone who donates, but rest assured we’ll figure something out. This is a really tricky time for us right now and we sincerely need your help. I promise no donation will go unnoticed. If anyone has any ideas for what we could give away for donations just let us know!

If all goes as planned it looks like the sale will start mid-next week! For anyone who is local, you know we have a few t-shirts laying around. We’ll be working on getting those online soon as well!

So, now that our little baby has been unleashed into the wild we’ve been able to find a few of those silly bugs. We have also had plenty of feedback on the updating system and have changed over to a much better method. Unfortunately, that fix will not be present until you upgrade. In no particular order, here are the currently fixed bugs in v1.0.1:

• Score Loading Bug – Scores were not always loading properly, resulting in what looked like a loss of data. If you had this bug you will now be able to see scores saved previously.
• Resolution Positioning in OSX – Occasionally the screen would not center itself after a resolution change had been made.
• Intermittent Black Screen on Load – Very rare, but in some cases the game would not initialize the display properly.
• Windows Users Will No Longer Have to Uninstall to Update
• Arcade Scoring – arcade scores will now save to the newely selected scoreboard once you change modes
• Update System Changed – hitting “No” when asked to update will tell the application to ignore the update for one week
• Added Native Resolution Option – this is a double-edged sword… Fractal will look fantastic, but we doubt that the performance rendered by this option will be bearable for anyone. We decided that it should be added as an option anyway, because it’s been one of the most requested features.
• Random Performance Tweaks ( We are still actively working on performance related issues )

This update of Fractal is available now on the Cipher Prime Store. Please give us a holler if you find any other bugs. Enjoy!

For all you tuned-in cats, we’ve been having a rather… interesting time these past two days. We had to postpone the Fractal Launch until this afternoon because of server related issues yesterday. Today, Media Temple was DDoS’d and we were thrown for another loop. Internally, we’ve been having stupid issues with Windows 7 permissions and uninstalls. Fast forward to 12:14 AM EST, and we’ve obliterated all our nice little “obstacles” with a smile on our face ready to say, “You can now download Fractal from the Cipher Prime Store.”

We will be posting an Official Announcement tomorrow along with a reminder email for everyone who preordered or is a part of the mailing list.

If you preordered you’ll also notice a nice freebie in your account. Dain whipped you ladies and gents up a sexy Fractal Theme. Since you love us enough to preorder, we love you enough to give you something a little extra. For anyone who missed the preorder, the track will also be available for $0.99 at www.playfractal.com

Thank you so much for all your patience. As with any release, I’m sure there will be bugs. Please shoot an email to support@cipherprime.com and we’ll do everything we can to help!

Thanks from the Fractal Team (Will, Dain, and Ben)!

I sure hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we’ve been running a lot of download tests today and we just weren’t happy with the results. Preorders have really picked up over the past few days, so we wanted to make sure nothing goes wrong and that everyone will have a happy fast download. Unfortunately, we were not very pleased with these results earlier in the day. Luckily, we have now reworked the downloading system and are extremely happy. All the tests we’ve done in the past few hours have been superb to say the least.

However, it’s very late over here now and we’re a bit hesitant about hitting that button. No matter how much you test, you never know what can happen. For this reason, we are holding back the Fractal Launch until tomorrow afternoon ( Tuesday, May 25th ). I cannot apologize enough. In the end, we are only trying to make sure everyone has a better experience.

We are incredibly excited and cannot wait until tomorrow afternoon! See you then!

Since the launch of Auditorium on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad we have received a lot of feedback on the price. Luckily for you, we listen. We have talked at length with EA Mobile about what we can do for you. So, for a limited trial we are offering Auditorium on the iDevices for FREE!

This is really exciting and we hope it works out. Please help us keep this trial going by spreading the word and downloading your free copy today. I really hope we’re able to keep the base install free and start presenting a much better business model for you guys.

Please Note: Additional act packs will still cost 99 cents.

Please let us know your thoughts or concerns!

So, we have been INCREDIBLY busy. Let me tell you a little about what we’ve been doing.

I had the pleasure of speaking at the Flash Gaming Summit about “Monetizing Your Game Outside of Sponsorship” with Colin Northway(Fantastic Contraption), Daniel James(Three Rings), Sian Yue Tan (Rocketbirds) and Moderated by Andy Moore(Steambirds).  I think the panel went well and you can always watch it online at the Flash Gaming Summit Site and let me know what you thought. I really enjoyed having the opportunity to hang out and relax with everyone from the panel. Overall the FGS was a great experience and a MASSIVE upgrade from last years event.

After the FGS we quickly went right to the Game Developers Conference. One talk in particular by Kellee Santiago and Robin Huncki (thatgamecompany) called “How to Manage an Exploratory Development Process“, ignited a fire here in our tiny office. We spent the remainder of March refining what we were doing and how we could do it all faster and with less frustration. Making original games is a ton of hard work and requires a lot of positive energy. We also talked at length about Nick Waanders and Kees Rijnen (Slick Entertainment) session called “SCRAP METAL: Pushing the Envelope with a Team of Two.” Learning more about their process helped us identify a few things we have been doing right and just didn’t even know it. All of this learning has played a major role in the development of our new title Fractal. Overall the GDC was well worth it and has helped us a lot. We also had the pleasure of meeting so many fantastic ladies and gents.

Right now, we are in the final stages of testing with Fractal. As long as everything goes as planned we will be releasing in just a few weeks. Tentatively, we’re setting our release around the beginning of May.

The Indie Love Bundle was a huge success and it looks like we’ll be unifying our whole purchasing system to work on the framework we built for the sale. I have been actively communicating with a few other Indie Developers and it looks like we’ll be able to throw up a new bundle not very long after the Fractal Launch. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll have any titles in that bundle, but it will be a great value all the same.

I apologize to everyone for the lack of updates on our side. Everything has been CRAZY and we’ve been feeling very overwhelmed and just haven’t had the time to keep everyone in the loop. We’re going to start making a much more active effort in that regard. If you feel like we’re not staying on top of things make sure you drop us a comment and let us know!

We are currently having a bit of a problem with the latest update of Auditorium on the iPhone. This bug only affects you if:

1. You already own the full version of Auditorium on the iPhone
2. You already own additional level packs of Auditorium on the iPhone
3. You upgraded Auditorium within the past 24 hours

If you are among the people who meet these three guidelines I apologize, but it seems like your DLC content will not work at the moment. That said, we are working with EAMobile and Apple right now to get a fix ready ASAP. I will let you know as soon as this issue is resolved. If you meet these requirements and have not currently updated I would hold off until we’ve given the word.

If you are purchasing Auditorium on the iPhone for the first time this update will not affect you at all and you shouldn’t have any problems. Please accept our apologies while we are working to resolve this bug.

Thank you, MTV Game Awards Germany!! Germany just loves Auditorium and we love them. Not only have we been lucky enough to be nominated for a Game Award we’re also in the category “Working Class Hero.” I can’t even begin to tell you how cool I think that is. I enjoy seeing any sort of love for the indie game company.

Windosill, Scary Girl, Paper Moon, and Little Wheel were also nominated. If you haven’t had the pleasure in trying any of these great games you really should. Good luck guys, your killing it! It’s really great to see indie gaming recognized. Please checkout the entries and vote for the indie game of your choice!