5th Cell's logo
5th Cell are a game company stationed in Bellevue Washington. It was founded by Jeremiah Slaczka, Joe Tringali, Brett Caird and Marius Fahlbusch in 2003. Ever since they have managed to produce several franchises of games such as the Scribblenauts series which they are mostly known for.
Overview[]
Slaczka first met Tringali in Hong Kong where he was starting his gaming career at En Tranz Entertainment. The two then decided to found Epix Interactive another game company. They started by publishing "Spy vs. Spy: Arctic Antics" a downloadable game developed by First Star Software. However the company shut down aofter attempting to develop "Fate" a huge Xbox 360 game. This was apparently because the game was too big for a first.
Along with Caird and Fahlbusch they founded 5th Cell deciding to start with small nokia games. THQ soon agreed to publish their first three mobile games which took place over the next couple of years. In 2006 the publishers announced that 5th Cell would be transitioning to Nintendo Ds Games.
Jeremiah soon had several ideas for games in his mind though didn't like any of them. This inspired Slaczka to develop a game where the player could have the ability to design as well as the developers. He soon thought of Drawn to life where the player could draw their own hero, weapons, objects ext. It was released in September 2007, and sold several copies putting it 61st on the best selling games of the last twelve months. Drawn to life was also nominated for an award for Outstanding Story Achievement as well as winning one for Most Innotiave design from IGN.
Soon the company wanted to do something different and building things came into mind. However soon they began to question "why would they build these things in the first place?". They decided to create a game where players built things in order to protect their towns from enemies. In e3 2008 they announced Lock's Quest a game about a world full of soldiers named archineers who built things in order to protect their world. The all out game was about a boy named Lock who wanted to become the greatest archineer ever but was soon faced with the challenge of protecting his entire region from enemy archineer's objects.
The company soon grew an interest in games such as Nintendogs and Brain Age which made them want to impress that section of the games industry. One night Slaczka had a dream about being stuck in an Aztec temple with several paintings inside having to solve the puzzles in them. This inspired him to create a game about a notebook which could type anything into existence. He soon told Marius the Technical Director about it who was determined to create it thinking the idea was incredible. The two soon planned out how to make the game through the little resources they had but the other members doubted they could develop it. In early 2009 development for the game didn't go too well seeing as they couldn't manage to put it out by themselves. They soon visited several companies who wanted to publish it and felt that Warner Brothers was the best one.
When the developers decided they needed a good title for the game "Wordplay" was taken into account but sounded a bit "generic". Eventually they decided to name it Scribblenauts.
Once the company discovered that Warner Bros couldn't publish the game for Japan they soon found that Konami the publishers behind Metal Gear. They were allowed to use some of their characters such as Solid Snake.
The game was released in 2009 and was a great hit receiving tons of sails. It also won Game of the Year and Best of e3 Overall. The team got a standing ovation at their e3 presentation and got a load more sales.
During the development of Scribblenauts the team decided to make a Drawn to life sequel and got permission from THQ to do so.