Along with the community we’d been building up, I’m playing and reviewing many of the entries for our first ever indiePub Games Independent Developer Contest. There’s plenty of variety and creativity on display here, but there’s one game that sticks out to me the most. Its minimalistic visuals and haunting audio drew my attention at first, but it was the unique gameplay that kept me in. That game was Auditorium.
Conceptually, you are transforming light into a symphony of sound. If you’ve played it before, you know what I mean. If you haven’t experienced Auditorium yet, you’ll have that “a-ha!” moment after a level or two. And then you’re hooked.
Turns out I wasn’t the only one who felt the same, and soon enough, Auditorium was voted and crowned the winner of the competition.
Following their victory, we at Zoo Publishing and indiePub partnered together with the folks at Cipher Prime to bring Auditorium to PlayStation consoles. Along with developer Empty Clip Studios, we’ve collaborated and put together what can be considered the definitive version of the game: Auditorium HD.
This being our first major release out of indiePub, we and Cipher Prime really wanted to do something for the fans. So not only do you get the original, 72-level Auditorium experience in full 1080p HD, now dubbed “Auditorium Classic”, you get a lot more. “Auditorium Modern” is an entirely unique experience exclusive to Auditorium HD. We’re talking 78 original levels and audio; essentially a brand-new Auditorium game in itself! And they’re really challenging—during development, I had to rely on the debug build level select cheat in order to see all of them. It’s not that I couldn’t have eventually figured some of them out, I just really wanted to see and hear what cool things were coming up next!
Besides that, you can also thank Empty Clip Studios for coming up with stereoscopic 3D and PlayStation Move support. 3D was done in a more subtle manner that compliments the gameplay experience very well. If you’ve got the proper 3DTV display, it’ll be a nice visual treat. And you’ll be glad to know that you can use your PlayStation Move controller to play through the game as well. The DualShock 3 is no slouch in the controls department, but I personally preferred the immediacy that the PlayStation Move brought when playing.
And there you have it, from indiePub contestant to full-fledged PlayStation 3 game. It’s been a fun ride getting here, and I’m excited that you’ll all be able to play the game soon. Auditorium HD for PlayStation 3 is slated to be released November 23 for download via the PlayStation Store for $9.99. I and the rest of the Zoo Publishing and indiePub gang will be here to answer any questions or comments you might have about the game up until release when you can finally experience it for yourself!
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