Cipher Prime

We were pretty smitten with the beautiful touch-based music game Pulse when we played it through for our glowing review. Judging by the fact that it quickly became the #1 music game on iTunes (eclipsing big-name offerings such as Rock Band, no less) and also the iPad Game Of The Week, it seems we weren’t the only ones to fall for its simple charms. We decided to dig a little deeper into the making of Pulse, and secured an audience with Cipher Prime’s creative director William Stallwood to tell us more.

infinitecontinues: Hi Will. Who are you and what do you do?

William Stallwood: I’m Will. You can call me Pink Deluxe. I guess you could consider me the creative director here, but we all wear many hats. Basically, I make pretty pretty pictures and do programming.

ic: Tell us a bit about Cipher Prime. How did the company start and when did you join?

WS: Dain and I started Cipher Prime in 2008. Obviously, I’m a co-founder, so yeah – I was here when it started. We started as an interactive company, and now we’re a game company. Yay!

ic: The thing we like most about Pulse is its simple, but brilliant, central idea. How did it come about? Did it arrive in your minds fully-formed, or did you arrive at it iteratively?

WS: I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Culver City, California, but it’s a beautiful place and the home of IndieCADE. During this past year’s event, we were drinking bottomless mimosas, and I presented the idea I had the night before on a cocktail napkin to Dain and Kerry. Basically, the idea has never changed since. A beautiful place breeds beautiful ideas. P.S. IndieCADE rules.

ic: What made you decide to make Pulse for the iPad rather than browser-based like your other games? Was there something about Pulse that convinced you it needed to be controlled by touch rather than by mouse?

WS: The whole idea was initially a touch concept, so we built on that.

ic: Part of our love for Pulse stems from its really beautiful minimalism, in both terms of its visuals, and in the fact that it strips out leaderboards, Facebook integration, achievements etc. Were you tempted to embellish at all? Did the minimal aesthetics and functionality evolve out of more ornate plans, or were they things you had decided on from the start?

WS: First off, I consider myself to be a minimalist designer, and I hope it shines through in my design. One of the key concepts behind Pulse was that it shouldn’t be initially competitive, and the experience was designed that way. Just because some things aren’t there now, doesn’t mean that they won’t be there in the future. We try our best to let the players of our game shape its future. So while there aren’t leaderboards now, there might be if there’s demand for it.

ic: Some people might feel that just 8 tracks, brilliant though they are, is a slight package for the price asked for Pulse. As this is subtitled ‘Volume One’, I take it we can safely assume that there is more Pulse on the way? Will these be free songs, in-app extensions or standalone apps?

WS: Funny thing about the “Volume One” label – the App Store currently does not allow duplicate names, and there presently exists an app on the store named Pulse, so we had to go with Pulse: Volume One.

Another reason why it’s called Volume One is that we cut development short. We started getting into the territory where we were adding our more advanced features. Somewhere in that process, we had a moment where we said, “Do we really need this? Do our players really need this? Let’s release this first and find out.” So, “Volume One” was wishful thinking that we believe will now become a reality.

As for the content, we’re releasing four new tracks every month – for free – on the iTunes store. They won’t be separate apps; they’ll be in-app updates, and they’ll be mostly Philadelphia artists, rather than just original content from Cipher Prime. Our hope is to grow the local indie music scene with more exposure.

ic: Have you been pleased with the reaction to Pulse since release? Has it outperformed your expectations?

WS: Are you kidding me!? The response to Pulse has been insane and well beyond our expectations. We’re so lucky to have such successes.

ic: What’s next for Cipher Prime?

WS: Ahhh….That question eh? Right now we’re finishing up the port of Fractal. We also have four other games in dev we’re playing around with. We’ve also been talking about teaming up some other teams to create even more interesting projects. Time will tell I guess!

ic: Thanks for your time, Will!

You can keep up-to-date with Cipher Prime by following them on Twitter (@cipherprime). While you’re there, be sure to follow infinitecontinues (@infinitecontinu) if you don’t already!