Cipher Prime pushes hexagons in abstract iPad puzzler Fractal: Make Blooms Not War

Best known for its arch, abstract, music-oriented releases such as Auditorium (a Pocket Gamer Gold award winner) and Pulse: Volume One, US start up Cipher Prime's original game was actually a puzzler.

Sure, it was an abstract puzzler with a strong colour palette and 130 BPM soundtrack, but nevertheless Fractal, originally a Flash game, was all about moving blocks to make shapes.

Now released for iPad, under the typically pointed title Fractal: Make Blooms Not War, it demonstrates, once again, the striking nature of Cipher Prime's take on interactivity.

The basic gameplay has you tapping around the perimeter of a hexagonal-based grid to push blocks one unit into the grid. You can only tap a perimeter block that's in contact with a block - you have to push something after all - but some locations will push one block, while other may be contact with two blocks.

The point is to create a bloom - a flower shape consisting of seven blocks - which once formed will explode, throwing out more blocks into the grid, and hopefully creating combos, and more points.

There are three modes: the main 30-level Campaign, which limits the amount of pushes you have per level and is points-based; the timed-based Arcade, which offers three different mechanics/difficulty levels; and the Puzzle mode.

All of these are presenting in a clean, cutting edge user interface, and supported with leaderboards via OpenFeint and Game Center.

Fractal: Make Blooms Not War is out now for iPad, priced $1.99, €1.59 and £1.49.

You can get an idea how it plays in the following video of the original Flash version.

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