Hello everyone! We need your help! Read on for an update on our Auditorium Duet Kickstarter and some new offers!

So our Kickstarter got off to a great start, and we raised over $10,000 in the first two days. But we hit the expected slump and we’re standing at 40% funding, meaning we still have to raise $36k in two weeks! But we are hopeful and working hard to get this Kickstarter funded (and we have faith in our wonderful fans!), because we really want to make Auditorium Duet an unforgettable experience for you. If you’ve enjoyed any of our other games, you can depend on us bringing the same creativity and attention to Duet.

New Rewards!

Since the last mailing list, the reward structure has changed.

• Pre-Order: $15 pledges get you a pre-order of the game.
• Duet Pack or T-Shirt: $30 pledges allow you to select either an extra copy of the game (the Duet Pack!) or a T-shirt.
• Fractal Bonus!: ANYONE who donates at least $1 will get a PC/Mac copy of Fractal if you don’t already have one. And this is retroactive, so it applies to everyone who has already donated!
• T-Shirt + Duet Pack?: We haven’t included a specific T-shirt + Duet Pack reward, but because a number of people expressed interest, if the Kickstarter is successful we’ll include an extra checkbox where you can add $10 to your pledge and get the shirt as well.
• Higher Level Rewards?: We also changed around some of the $200+ pledge rewards.

Support the Kickstarter! Visit the Kickstarter, watch the video, reminisce  fondly about Auditorium, Pulse, and Fractal, and pledge for rewards! You can pledge anywhere from $1 on upwards, and a $15 pledge will get you the game itself! If the Kickstarter isn’t fully funded you don’t get charged and we don’t get any of the fundraising (but we also don’t get to make the game!). If just 5% of the people on this mailing list pledged $15 dollars, our Kickstarter would jump up over 30%. If 10% of you pledged for the game, we’d be funded!

Publicity Efforts! In the last two weeks, we managed to get five articles about us in Joystiq.com, with lots of juicy info about us and the Kickstarter. We’ve also been reaching out to local Philadelphia blogs and news outlets. If you have other publicity ideas for us, please contact us, we’d love to hear them because they might make all the difference!

Spread the Word! We also need you to spread the word about our Kickstarter! We’re a young studio and we have to rely on grass roots efforts like word of mouth and networking, which can be very powerful, but we have to get the ball rolling! So please forward this email to anyone you think might be interested, whether they be family, friends, or colleagues. Post about our Kickstarter on Facebook, Twitter, on your blogs, or on any of your favorite sites and forums. Let people know how much fun you’ve had playing our games in the past! Every little bit helps!

Thank you all!

It’s been three days since the launch of our Auditorium Duet Kickstarter, and we’ve been floored by your support! As of this blog post over 400 people have offered to put together almost $16,000 to help Auditorium Duet get made!

We’ve also been very grateful to Joystiq.com for running a series of articles on our project, which have all generated a lot of discussion among readers about our project and the Kickstarter trend in general, you should definitely check them out!

• Auditorium devs look to Kickstarter for sequel funding
• Auditorium 2: Duet multiplayer wants you to make sweet harmonies with that special someone
• The price of independence: What it really costs to be an indie developer
• How one indie studio burns $15K per month (or: this graph looks like Pac-Man)
• The fourth article is all about this awesome infographic we made, which describes what our studio’s monthly minimum expenses are when we’re doing well!
• The Schafer stigma: How his successful Kickstarter went to your head

So what’s up next? We’re almost 26% funded, with four weeks left to go. It’s a lot of money (far more than we were expecting at first!), but we’re already exiting the “big backer bump” from the initial release, and now we’ve got a long, hard road ahead.

We are giving this our all! We’re reaching out to every contact we have, we’ve got some publicity initiatives (videos and fun stuff!) up our sleeves, and we’re listening to your feedback and trying to tailor our rewards to make Auditorium Duet as appealing as possible to everyone. Don’t fret if you’ve commented and we haven’t responded! You will hear from us!

So please help us out and continue to tweet and comment and blog about the Kickstarter! Reaching out in a thousand different ways can generate an astoundingly powerful response, and it’s what we’re depending on! And we know we can depend on our fans!

We’ve been dropping hints like breadcrumbs for weeks, and it’s time to let these doves loose: Its an Auditorium smörgåsbord, and everyone gets seconds. One-two punch activate!

Our first game, the one that started our whole crazy game-making careers, is finally available as a PC/Mac downloadable title!

As we’ve mentioned in previous emails, prior purchasers will have the option of receiving a free Steam Key to unlock the game through the Steam system, downloading the game from the Cipher Prime Store, or continue playing it through the web interface on the Auditorium Game page. Like with Fractal, we’re still working out details with Steam, but barring catastrophes we expect you guys to be able to get your hands on some CD-Keys in the next week or so. We’re also going to be changing up our sites in the coming months, so keep posted for news!

Now the big one.

The official Kickstarter page is live, so go on and check it out! For those of you unfamiliar with Kickstarter, it’s a fundraising website where creators can pitch their project ideas to the public and offer special rewards as a ‘thank you’ to backers who help fund the development of those ideas. Kickstarter has more thorough explanations over on their FAQ page, and some examples of other awesome projects as well.

Auditorium Duet will have its roots in Auditorium, but it’s going to be bigger, better, and — most importantly — it’s going to be multiplayer! The initial release is planned as a PC/Mac standalone, but we will be considering cross-platform support from the beginning; we’re just waiting to gauge interest and determine hardware requirements.

Please pledge what you can for the Kickstarter and we promise we will put our hearts into making this game! Without this funding, we won’t be able to afford making it, which will totally bum us out. Be sure to leave comments, and as always we are open to feedback! We’ll be posting frequent Kickstarter updates on our blog (not the mailing list), so check back frequently for the latest info. Thank you all for your support!

So how can you help out at this stage? Talk to us! Ask us questions! Email us, reach out to us on Twitter, post on our blog, just let us know what you think about Auditorium 2! And be sure to tell all your friends — we need all the help we can get!

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

After listening to your concerns, we’ve decided that making customers pay again for an app they’ve already purchased is too much to ask. We’ve decided to make Fractal free on iTunes through this Friday. We’ve just made the change, so it may take a little while to propagate to your region. Thanks for your understanding and support!

After the unfortunate mess with our publisher, Fractal for the iPad is back up on the App Store, along with a bunch of bug fixes! It now runs beautifully on the iPad 1 (i.e. does not crash anymore!).

We wanted to be able to simply transfer our fans’ existing Fractal purchase records (for the Fractal under our old publisher’s name) to the current Fractal (the version released under our name). Unfortunately, that’s not possible under the App Store’s current architecture, so we were faced with a difficult pricing choice.

We’ve decided that Fractal will continue to be a paid app, though for this week (ending next Tuesday, February 21) we are reducing the price to 99 cents. After that, Fractal will return to its original price.

There are several options for previous customers.

• One: You can simply keep your current version of Fractal; however, it will not be updated and you will not be able to reinstall it, because that version of Fractal is no longer in the App Store.
• Two: You can repurchase Fractal at the reduced 99¢ price this week. Each purchase of will really help us out, and will allow you to reinstall and update the app in the future. We hate to ask this of our fans, but we have to try and make our plea. The circumstances that forced the removal of Fractal from the App Store to begin with have made it so that we can’t afford to offer it for free. We, more than anyone, wish things had turned out differently.
• Three: if you still think having to repurchase the app for updates is unfair, please contact us directly and we can try and work something out.

We truly apologize for this unexpected mess. We are not trying to squeeze pennies out of our customers, we are just trying to recoup on business losses from a bad publishing deal. We’re sorry, and hope you can understand where we’re coming from. We love you guys and hope we have your continued support!

Patch Notes for Fractal v1.2.0 (iPad):

• Performance improvements across the board, especially on iPad 1.
• Reduced the memory footprint of the entire game.
• Removed some assets that were no longer being used.
• Reduced the overall CPU usage of the game.
• Fixed a logic error that could render puzzle 53 unsolvable.
• Fixed some bugs that unbalanced arcade mode. The difficulty curve in Run was too sharp and was knocking people out of it sooner than they should be.
• Fixed the apparent size of some of the levels in campaign mode.

We’d like to thank everybody for alerting us (via emails, reviews, and homing pigeons) about the desyncing bug on one of the new Pulse: Volume One tracks, Belly of the Beast, by Jim Guthrie. We have resolved the issue and the track has been realigned with the orbits of the planets, so go update your Pulse!

Also, the artist of the track Pop! has been corrected to Leemus Music. Happy tapping!

We’ve finally gotten around to creating a standalone version of Auditorium, and it’s heading to the Steam Store and the Cipher Prime Store! Expect to see it up in the next few weeks!

I bought the web-based Auditorium already. So, do I get a downloadable version?

Sure! If you are an existing purchaser, once everything is on the Cipher Prime Store and finalized on the Steam Store you will be able to redeem your game. You can download it straight from your products page.

Is there anything new in the game? Why are you releasing it as a standalone version?

No, aside from a new main menu, this version of Auditorium is the same as the classic full version. This standalone release is coming because fans have been asking for this for a while, and because we’re transitioning our titles away from browser-based games.

I’d rather just play on the PlayAuditorium.com website, can I still do that?

Yes. However, we are going to be moving the game from the PlayAuditorium.com website to a dedicated page on the Cipher Prime website. No need to worry about that, though, because PlayAuditorium.com will automatically redirect you to the proper place!

Will my progress from the web version be saved if I start playing on the standalone version?

Unfortunately, no. We’re sorry! In addition to moving the game off of PlayAuditorium.com, and to make the standalone version slightly better, we’re storing all the save information locally on the user’s machine. This includes the web version! In order to cut down on server fees we will no longer be maintaining the PlayAuditorium database, so the local save means your progress will only be saved on the machine you play on.

So, what else have you been up to? Anything new? How’s your mum?

If you’ve been following any Cipher Prime news, you’ll know we’ve been working on a neat little puzzler called Splice. Well, we’re putting the finishing touches on that game and you’ll hear more about it the near future!

And expect to hear from us soon about a KickStarter campaign we’re getting set to launch. Something to do with a sequel…a bigger, better, multiplayer one!

She’s doing well, thanks for asking!