Grooving into the holiday season with style, Cipher Prime has added 6 new gaming levels to Pulse:  Volume One for iPad, coupled with nearly 20 epic minutes of fresh music tracks!

 Fractal, featured on the Mac App Store, and also a Hot Game in the Games category!

Local game developer Cipher Prime, award winning creators of the games Auditorium and Pulse, have recently released an updated version of their addictive music/puzzle game called Fractal. Featuring colorful graphics, cool music, various play modes, and deceptively simple gameplay, Fractal will keep you hooked for hours.

Puzzle games that trade in honeycomb hexagons crowd the gaming landscape. But Fractal: Make Blooms Not War (from Auditorium and Pulse developer Cipher Prime) shares only a few strands of DNA with the tired match-3 genre, instead asking that players clear seven like-coloured hexagons in a game of block shunting of often confounding complexity.

Over the last few years, Cipher Prime has quietly built themselves a reputation as one of the top developers in the world of music games – and after playing Pulse it’s not hard to see why.

Upon first playing Fractal: Make Blooms Not War’s campaign, I wasn’t convinced. It reminded me of many other puzzle games that have a good concept, but fail to give the gamer the tools to understand and complete objectives. What ends up happening is that each move feels more like a wild stab in the dark than a calculated decision. However, after discovering puzzle mode – the game’s tutorial in all but name – it all started to make sense. This, and arcade mode, improve the concept profoundly, making it an accessible, yet deep, brain teaser. Even if the campaign takes more of a backseat.

Jeff and Brad attempt to find world peace in the wide world of fractals.

Here at Refresh and Reload we certainly love independent game developers. Those funding games out of their own pockets who despite that, willingly take more risks in creating a unique gaming experience than most triple A studios dream of. I had the pleasure of picking up Fractal: Make Blooms Not War off of Steam from indie developer Cipher Prime for the cool price of $6.99. A damn fine music driven puzzler is what we get here, but Cipher Prime manages to put a tremendous amount of character in a game filled with inanimate objects.

Mindy Douglas says: “This app offers a unique blend of addictive tapping gameplay combined with beautiful imagery and nice atmospheric music. Our teens fight over this one on the iPad. “

After long last, Cipher Prime Studios achieves the coveted milestone of publishing its first title on the Steam platform. Tuesday saw the release of Fractal: Make Blooms Not War in the Steam Store. Before the day’s end, it had risen to the #1 position on the Top Sellers chart for Casual games; and held the #7 position for Top Sellers in the Indie genre. If you haven’t had the chance to play it yet, show some love and check it out. Fair warning though, the addictive nature of this game may induce visions of fractals blossoming in your dreams.