Just don't let Iron Man play this.
July 22, 2011
[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Game Developer and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press]
The Pickford Brothers :
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Manchester, UK, 22nd July 2011
Veteran game designers John Pickford and Ste Pickford (The Pickford Bros) have launched their first iOS game, "Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint" via the Apple App Store.
The game is free to play, available as a universal app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices via a single download, and supports full HD graphics on retina displays and iPads.
Additional content and game modes are available for purchase within the app, and The Pickford Bros are working on further content expansions to be released in the coming months.
In summer 2007, while trying to decide what their next project should be, John and Ste discovered a mysterious bundle of papers hidden in the attic of the family home.
The papers were the lost life's work of their eccentric great-great-grandfather Joseph Pickford. The brothers knew very little about their ancestor, other than that he'd died in mysterious circumstances in 1888. Joseph, it turns out, was a game designer too, and something of a crack-pot inventor. The bundle included a newspaper clipping referring to an 'electric billiards' game he'd announced, the very day before his untimely demise.
John and Ste were intrigued... A lost game from 120 years ago? Further investigation revealed a tatty blueprint showing the design for the Magnetic Billiards table itself. The brothers knew what their next project had to be!
In honour of their great-great-grandfather, The Pickford Bros present their faithful recreation of this long lost sport for your entertainment.
"Finding that dusty old blueprint sure was a stroke of luck," said co-designer Ste Pickford, "then coming up with - sorry - discovering the story that our ancestor was also a struggling game designer just like us was a real inspiration for John and I," he continued, "and I think the end result is the best video game we've ever made."
"We were very fortunate that the game our great-great-grandfather originally designed in 1888 was so perfectly suited to being a video game, and particularly well suited to a touch screen handheld like the iPad," said co-designer and programmer John Pickford. "I mean, once we worked out how to read his handwriting we found a list of nearly 100 achievements, several Leaderboards, three Arcade mode variants, and 40 different fiendish tables designs," he continued.
Ste concluded, "We're still trying to decipher the rest of the blueprint, so we're keeping it under wraps for now. We're hopeful we can, ahem, uncover some more long lost Victorian game design secrets that we can adapt for future expansions."
ENDS
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Contact Ste Pickford: [email protected]
Links and Resources
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Press pack with photos, screenshots, logos and background information: http://www.zee-3.com/z3/press/mbb_press-pack.zip
Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint is available now on the App Store: http://itunes.apple.com/app/magnetic-billiards-blueprint/id432152950
(Over 100 5-star ratings and over 70 glowing reviews within days of launch on the App Store!)
Magnetic Billiards Development twitter feed: http://twitter.com/#!/MagBilliardsDev
Magnetic Billiards website: http://www.zee-3.com/magneticbilliards
Zee-3 website (for all Zee-3 products, press centre, etc.): http://www.zee-3.com
The Pickford Brothers website (for background, history, softography, blogs and archives): http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros
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