Fractal: Make Blooms Not War

Overview

Developed by the same team that created the acclaimed Auditorium, Fractal is a PC and Mac puzzle game. The game was released on May 26, 2010 (at 12:14 pm EST, due to various issues with their host, Media Temple, which was under a DDoS attack on the scheduled release date of May 24, 2010), with the team releasing an MP3 of the main theme of the game on May 25, 2010 as a bonus for those who preordered the game.

Fractal was released on Steam for Mac and PC on November 29, 2011 under its full title, Fractal: Make Blooms Not War.

Gameplay

The purpose of the game is to arrange seven Fractals into a hexagonal shape, which is also known as a Bloom. To do this, the player must push the Fractals. Pushing a Fractal creates a second Fractal in the first Fractal's place, and moves the first Fractal one space in the aimed direction. Once seven or more Fractals have been arranged into a Bloom (multiple Blooms form Clusters), the included Fractals disappear, as more appear on the playing field.

Additionally, when creating a Bloom, the Fractals on the edge of the reaction are pushed back one space. These Fractals have a chance of forming a Chain Reaction with other Fractals in the playing field, allowing for the possibility of long and impressive combos involving a variety of Blooms, Clusters, and Chain Reactions.

In the later levels of the Campaign Mode, multiple colors and power-up blocks are introduced. Multiple colored stages are organized by the color of the next Fractal, whereas one push will cause a pink Fractal and another will cause a blue Fractal. The power-ups range from lightning (which "zaps" any same color fractals that are touching each other), explode (which blows up a hexagonal amount of fractals), and even mode-specific fractals that add time to the clock (particularly in arcade mode).

The game includes three different modes. The default Campaign Mode is a traditional single-player mode of 30 levels. Checkpoints are given after every ten levels, with new concepts introduced periodically.

Puzzle Mode includes over 50 levels of varying difficulty. These are challenges with specific requirements that become increasingly difficult over the course of the game. Arcade Mode is the only timed mode in the game, as well as the only mode to give players infinite pushes.

System Requirements

PC

• OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
• Processor: 1.2 GHz Dual-Core or higher
• Memory: 2GB or higher
• Hard Disk Space: 50MB

Mac

• OS: OS X version Leopard 10.5.8, Snow Leopard 10.6.3, or later.
• Processor: 1.2 GHz Dual-Core or higher
• Memory: 2GB or higher
• Hard Disk Space: 50MB