New iPad Puzzle Lets You Make Beautiful Mandalas

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Stockholm, Sweden– October 23, 2012– Independent game designer Jonathan Hise Kaldma, known for the poetic iPad game Flight of the Fireflies, has just released a new iPad app called Mandalarium. The app, best described as something between a puzzle game and an interactive artwork, lets you make beautiful mandalas and is available through the App Store for $2.99.

"Mandalarium comes from this idea I had of creating a puzzle game where all solutions are right," says Jonathan Hise Kaldma. "So it works like puzzle games where you have to match different symbols, but instead of giving you points, the symbols turn into beautiful concentric patterns. And you want to play it again and again to get even more beautiful patterns."

The app draws visual inspiration from the tradition of fortune cards like the Tarot and on the works of C.G. Jung. Sometimes symbolic objects appear in the mandalas– an hourglass, a cogwheel, a dagger, an eye– allowing the mandalas to be seen not just as beautiful patterns, but also as metaphorical expressions of the self. And just like a real mandala– a circular Tibetan painting made in sand– the mandalas in the app are ephemeral. When you clear the board, they blow away into the wind.

"In a way, it's the antithesis of most of today's games. There's no progress, there's no achievements, there's no saving. Every mandala is unique, and only exists right here right now. That gives the experience an immediacy that most other games don't have. It's almost like they're paintings done in digital sand."

The app can be purchased in the app store at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mandalarium/id535007024. The website for the app is www.mandalarium.com. Hi-res images are available at www.mandalarium.com/press.

About Jonathan Hise Kaldma

Jonathan Hise Kaldma is an interaction artist and game designer who explores the boundaries of video games as an artistic medium. His last game, Flight of the Fireflies, was a finalist for the Nordic Indie Game Award and the A MAZE Indie Game Award, and was shown at last year's Notgames Fest.

Web site: http://www.hisekaldma.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/hisekaldma

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/hisekaldma

Contact: press@hisekaldma.com

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