United Kingdom,  March 13th 2012, in  All App News,   

[MobilePRwire.com] Buxton, United Kingdom -  The Pickford Bros, developers of Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint, the BAFTA nominated critically acclaimed #1 hit sports / puzzle game for iOS, today launched a video revealing how they designed the game with little more than a piece of chalk and a chalkboard.

The Pickford Bros, developers of Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint, the BAFTA nominated critically acclaimed #1 hit sports / puzzle game for iOS, today launched a video revealing how they designed the game with little more than a piece of chalk and a chalkboard.

"When we started putting the game together, we wanted to quickly prototype how it would play", said co-designer Ste Pickford, "so a piece of chalk and a child's chalkboard - and a lot of rubbing out - seemed like the fastest way to bring the game mechanics to life in a way we could easily visualise."

The hit game was based on a blueprint laid down by the Pickford Bros' great-great grandfather in 1888. After discovering the blueprint, the brothers spent a number of years adapting the principles behind the design of an ancient, mechanical, magnetic billiards machine to work as a modern, mobile, touch-screen video game.

"We've released the video of our chalkboard prototype to give players an insight into the painstaking process of design and experimentaion that goes into creating a hit, original game like Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint", continued co-designer John Pickford. "It was a lot of hard work to do before we even wrote a single line of code, but it seems to have paid off as the reaction we're getting from players is just phenomenal."

The video also includes quotes from some of the many, many incredibly positive reviews that have been flooding in for the game on Apple's App Store.

Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint is competing against Nintendo's Super Mario 3D Land for Best Mobile & Handheld game in the prestigious 2012 BAFTA awards. The game was also nominated for a Pocket Gamer 2012 award, earned second place in the Puzzle Game category of the 148apps.com 2011 Best App Ever Awards, has been named one of the 100 Greatest Apps Of All Time by Tap! Magazine, was crowned App Madness Tournament Champion in September, received a Gold Medal award from Pocket Gamer, and has secured a Metacritic rating of 81.

Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint is published by Zee-3 as a universal app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices, and is available on the App Store right now for free.

Chalk video
Pickford Bros website
Purchase URL
Magnetic Billiards website
Pickford Bros YouTube channel

Based in Manchester, United Kingdom. John and Ste Pickford have been working in the north of England as game designers and developers since the early 1980s. They first worked under the name The Pickford Bros when they went 'indie' in 2004, making small scale original games together for open platforms. Previously they worked at various studios on high profile console and home computer games. Magnetic Billiards is a registered trademark of The Pickford Bros, licensed to Zee 3 Limited. Copyright (C) 2012 Zee 3 Limited All Rights Reserved.

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Ste Pickford
Managing Director
+44 (0) 1298 21
ste@zee-3.com

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