History
Morpheme Game Studios was a former developer for Eidos Ltd (which is now part of Square Enix). Founded in 1999 by Matt Spall, Lucy Reed and Andy Fitter the studio was an early player in the mobile phone game space. In 2002 the studio was acquired by independent developer Argonaut Games.
Morpheme released their signature mobile game Balloon Headed Boy in 2003. Morpheme also had their first major hit in The Fast and the Furious mobile phone game. All told Morpheme has produced over 50 mobile games by this pointHowever parent Argonaut went bankrupt in 2004 and Morpheme reacquired themselves. In 2005 the company switched focus away mobile phones to a flash games and other platforms.
In 2007 Morpheme was acquired by Eidos Ltd. Previously the company released their first and last game for the PC, Nintendo DS an acclaimed puzzle game called Prism: Light the Way published by Eidos. The game is still commercially available on mobile phones and remains the title they are perhaps best known for in America.
Morpheme had also developed a web portal of free to play browser games called gimme5games.com
The studio was shuttered along with Rockpool games by parent Eidos in June 2008 as part of a cost cutting move. Many of the staff left Eidos to form a new causal gaming portal, honeyslug.com Subsequently in fall of 2009 the intellectual property of Morpheme and gimme5games.com was acquired by Zattika Ltd. Morpheme staff members Matt Spall, Ian Willey and Ronny Batty joined the new company. The Morpheme brand was retired after the acquisition.
For a former Morpheme developer's retrospective on the company see here
http://citystate.co.uk/archives/morpheme-1999-2008/
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