Auditorium 2: Duet multiplayer wants you to make sweet harmonies with that special someone

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.%Gallery-148865%Stallwood says he caught the multiplayer itch from other single-player-only games; the fact that he couldn't share a game with his friends or girlfriend was frustrating, and that irritation was only highlighted by titles that got it right, such as Portal 2.

We've spent the past three years honing our skills so we could tackle multiplayer.- Will Stallwood

Stallwood is inspired by his own fans as well, who have sent in countless emails explaining how they play Auditorium with their significant others.

"I wouldn't say Auditorium is really a party kind of game," Stallwood says. "But, we definitely envision couples, friends and family playing together at home. In fact, we know from customer emails that many couples would play Auditorium side-by-side and share their solutions as they went along."

Along with this picture of domestic bliss through video games (which you can see Cipher Prime's Dain Saint and Will Stallwood designing below), Duet is being built on the Unity engine and will include a slew of new features that Stallwood says have been popping up as he and Cipher Prime co-founder Dain Saint mess around with multiplayer ideas.

"The real difficulty for the multiplayer will be creating the levels," Stallwood says. "We've already started brainstorming about a multiplayer editor where two people can log in and create the experience together. This is both exciting and scary!"

The Kickstarter for Auditorium 2: Duet launched today and runs for the next 30 days -- Cipher Prime is pushing for $60,000 to help fund one half of the sequel's development, with the other half being financed by the indie studio.