It's a great time for reinterpreted Jordan Mechner games. First, Mechner announces a radically updated Karateka game, and now Ubisoft has released a new remake of Prince of Persia to the iOS App Store.

Prince of Persia Classic HD purports to be the original game with a new HD look -- likely very similar to that of the 2007 XBLA remake by Gameloft. But on your phone or iPad. If you prefer a more vintage presentation, that's also on the App Store as Prince of Persia Retro. It's a roughly SNES-era look.

I first heard about Kickstarter at San Diego Comic-Con 2010 in an early morning panel about black writers and artists in the graphic-novel industry, titled "Nappy Hour." I was there to secure a seat in the following panel -- which was a Dark Horse feature and may have included an appearance by the wonderful Gerard Way, writer of The Umbrella Academy and singer in this amazing band you probably haven't heard of (don't judge me) -- but "Nappy Hour" turned out to be one of the best presentations I saw that weekend.

Throughout the panel, author and performer Pam Noles mentioned Kickstarter as an underground, free-spirited way of funding creative projects, and said she had used it to fund a few of her own endeavors. I imagined an online co-op of artists and philanthropists holding hands and running through rich, green fields together, composing sonnets about how wonderful everything was, and supporting only the most remarkable of projects. When I got home and checked it out myself, I found a site similar to Etsy, but where the items for sale were half-finished, semi-formed ideas from people who seemed dedicated to carrying them out.

I thought it was wonderful.

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Waking Mars, a new iOS action-adventure game by Spider dev Tiger Style, does a great job of putting a console-style narrative experience on phones, matched to a simple method of gameplay that ensures easy touchscreen control and uncomplicated pick-up-and-play design. In short, it's one of the most successful "big" games I've played on my phone.

The game (formerly known as Lost Mars) is based on an extraordinarily unlikely combination: Martian cave exploration and gardening. Just ... stare at that sentence for a second. Enjoy the cognitive dissonance.

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The iOS spinoff Battlefield 3: Aftershock was abruptly removed from the App Store last month, when EA decided to "re-evaluate" the app following complaints about its quality. It has since been re-evaluated to death.

An EA spokesperson told Vox Games that the game will not be returning to the App Store. "In the interest of bringing consumers only the highest level of quality mobile entertainment," EA said, "EA Mobile has decided to suspend development and support of Battlefield 3: Aftershock and refocus its resources on other titles."

The servers will remain active through March 31, for those of you who want to enjoy the game as long as possible. Of course, the relatively small number of people enjoying Aftershock is the whole issue.

If you've been looking for a way to experience more video game and video game-inspired music, here's a pretty cheap one-way ticket right into the scene. Nubuwo is a site that's been created to cover exactly this kind of music, and over on Kickstarter they've compiled the talent of 12 different musicians across quite a few games into one big bundle for sale.

For $6, you can pick up either a 92-track "Vocal Pack" featuring the likes of Laura Shigihara, Floex, and the great Mega Ran, or a 150-track "Instrumental Pack" with the soundtracks to The Binding of Isaac, Bit Pilot, and ilomilo.

For $9, you get both of those, and for $15 you'll get 25 more tracks from excellent indie games like Spelunky and Antichamber, a couple interview segments with Final Fantasy composers Nobuo Uematsu and Kumi Tanioka, and a few other goodies. Higher donations can get you the tunes on actual CDs, and signed by the composers.

$15,000 sounds like a lot of money -- why yes, I would like to buy a brand new motorcycle, thank you -- and for an indie studio, it's just enough to keep the engine running. Indie Studio Cipher Prime know this better than most, having tried various funding styles for its three titles, Auditorium, Pulse and Fractal, and now banking on Kickstarter to finance its newest installment, Auditorium 2: Duet.

Dain Saint of Cipher Prime put together this handy visual breakdown of what $15,000 means for his studio, and for the likelihood that his team will be able to buy groceries each week. Co-founder Will Stallwood points out that the graph doesn't include health insurance, because they "opted for food over health insurance," and it doesn't list the debt Cipher Prime has piled up from using credit cards to offset slow months.

Check out the full graph below for a rough representation of Cipher Prime's expenses. Again, note that it doesn't account for everything, including equipment costs or the price of a pro license of Duet's engine, Unity, which runs $6,000.

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Will Stallwood is a gambler. He's had the same addiction for years, yet he's never stepped foot inside a casino.

He's never found himself hunched over a table fitted with worn green felt, sliding his last two chips between sweaty, shaking palms. He's never felt the sick dread as a slot machine whirs through its final frame; he doesn't know if he prefers red or black. Stallwood has been addicted to gambling on the success of his indie studio, Cipher Prime, since its triumphant launch of Auditorium in 2008. But this year feels different. This year Stallwood feels as if his lucky streak may finally be running out.

Cipher Prime isn't an unknown team of novice developers working out of a garage, but that doesn't mean they're rolling in dough either. Its previous titles were successful, but after a deal went raw with Fractal's publisher, Zoo Games, Cipher Prime was stuck with a rushed title and more debt than it ever expected.

Stallwood and Cipher Prime co-founder Dain Saint had to legally fight for the rights to their own game, eventually getting them back more than 200 days after Fractal launched on the App Store. Saint and Stallwood were understandably turned off of the old-school publishing route.

"We were not a fan of the publisher model before, because it just covers development and we never see royalties no matter how good the game goes," Stallwood said. "Now, we're just completely sour to the whole thing. We're not completely opposed if it means the difference between making games or not, but if there is any way we can avoid it and still make games, we're certainly going to try."

Cipher Prime has found another way -- it hopes -- with Kickstarter.

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Rod Green is a zealous, proud, card-carrying undeadist, and he's prepared to fight -- to the death -- for the equal rights of zombies across this nation's shopping malls, busy streets and suburban neighborhoods.

Green asserts that zombies are simply "misunderstood" and humans are "big bullies," said with much the same bravado as a big-cat trainer with his back to an open tiger cage. Unlike certain tiger trainers, however, Green may have a point, and he's set out to prove it with Brainsss, the first title from his two-person independent development studio, Lonely Few.

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Indie studio Cipher Prime has launched a Kickstarter project for Auditorium 2: Duet, the sequel to 2008's rhythm-physics title Auditorium, which is celebrating its debut on Steam today. Duet aims to be a polished playground built on the experience Cipher Prime has gained developing Auditorium, Pulse and Fractal over the past three years, but its most exciting feature is something none of the developers have attempted before -- multiplayer.

"When we first started our studio we were very nervous," Cipher Prime's Will Stallwood told Joystiq in an exclusive interview. "We created Auditorium by accident and had little game design experience. We've spent the past three years honing our skills so we could tackle multiplayer.

"Auditorium has been our playground since the day we started, so the only logical step is to keep her as our playground," Stallwood adds, unknowingly outing Auditorium as a female game, for those of you keeping score.

Auditorium 2: Duet will be optimized for two-player gameplay, and Cipher Prime will be testing it as a local feature to start, with tentative plans -- more like vehement wishes -- to include PS3/Steam and iPad/Steam crossplay functions down the line.

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Will Stallwood and Dain Saint of indie studio Cipher Prime don't want to buy new Ferraris.

Actually, they may want to do that -- because hello, Ferraris -- but that's not where their current focus lies. Cipher Prime wants to make a sequel to its first title Auditorium, titled Auditorium 2: Duet, and has turned to Kickstarter to crowdsource a portion of its budget.

Cipher Prime is the conductor behind a trio of ambient, subtly beautiful, rhythm-based brain busters. After launching the originally Flash-based Auditorium in 2008, the developer orchestrated two follow-up titles: Pulse and Fractal. Since then Auditorium has been ported to iOS, PS3, Xbox 360 and PSP, and today marks its launch on Steam -- and, Stallwood hopes, the launch of its sequel's development.

Speaking exclusively with Joystiq, Cipher Prime's Will Stallwood says development of Auditorium 2: Duet will only take place if the team manages to hit its sizable Kickstarter goal of $60,000. According to the developer, the goal represents half of what the team needs to complete the project, with Cipher Prime contributing the other half of necessary funds.

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