Expensive Silicon Graphics machines were purchased with Warner's funding to create the visuals; musicians Rob 'n' Raz were hired to compose the soundtrack.

Having anticipated problems with GT, Daydream went public: its hit IPO drew enough capital for the team to repurchase Safecracker's rights in 1997 and sign new distributors worldwide.

While Safecracker's troubled release hurt its retail performance, long-tail sales at a budget price eventually carried it to 650,000 units sold.

[1] In Safecracker, the player assumes the role of a professional in the security systems business, who seeks a job with the fictional Crabb & Sons Company.

[1] As an audition, the player character is contracted by Crabb & Sons' owner to infiltrate his mansion headquarters and crack the safes within,[4] with the ultimate goal of breaking into the new "F-9-12" design.

[5] Phersson-Broburg immediately arranged an interview with Sanji Tandan, the head of Warner Music Sweden,[7] based on the logic that the publisher had a worldwide foothold in the CD business.

Papworth, a professional illustrator, wrote that he hurriedly "made 2 pretty crude visuals with colored felt tips on an A1 sketch pad that showed a start sequence and some examples of different safe puzzles".

[5] The team was called by the London-based Warner Interactive Entertainment,[7] whose executive Laurence Scotford expressed interest in the game and soon flew to Umeå to learn more.

A writer for the city of Umeå later remarked that it was "a tricky display with cumbersome computers",[5] but the parties reached a tentative agreement to partner on the game.

[11] The company persuaded Warner Interactive Entertainment to pay $50,000 for three workstations and a server,[7] which made Daydream one of Sweden's top three buyers of Silicon Graphics computers.

In an attempt to prevent the open structure from confusing players, the team included "exact instructions and advice" in the starting sequence, Papworth explained.

[13][15] It was one of the selling points in the Warner Interactive deal: Papworth remarked that the team hoped to "be the first developer to use [3D rotating panoramas] in a full sized game.

[16] To create Safecracker's visuals, Daydream used its Silicon Graphics computers to build wire-frame 3D models with programs from Alias Wavefront,[11] including PowerAnimator.

Once a textured environment was lit, the team inserted a camera to render 12 images in a 360° radius, and the results were image-stitched into a rotatable panorama with QuickTime VR.

[7] Hoping to increase the soundtrack's quality by hiring professionals, Daydream contracted Swedish artists Rob 'n' Raz to create a unique musical theme for every room in Safecracker.

[25] A writer for the city of Umeå noted that Daydream had "an uneasy feeling" about the deal, partly because GT Interactive was known for shooter games antithetical to Safecracker's nonviolent ethos.

[9] Attempts to obtain money from banks were unsuccessful, as they were indifferent to Safecracker and did not see computer games as valuable in comparison to staple industries like lumber.

This problem ultimately led Daydream to attempt an initial public offering (IPO),[26] after the brokerage firm Matteus Corporate Finance approached the developer and assessed its worth as 40 million kr.

[5] In early December 1996, during the run-up to the public offering, Safecracker won the "Best Entertainment Title" and "Overall People's Choice" prizes at the Macromedia European Users Conference.

[5] The Wall Street Journal reported that Daydream became "the darling of the country's stock market";[33] its IPO achieved a 25-time oversubscription, Matteus's biggest success by that date.

[36] Despite significant pre-release coverage,[5][17] Safecracker's many delays meant that the "momentum for the game ... could not be exploited", according to the academic researchers Ola Henfridsson, Helena Holmström and Ole Hanseth.

He reported that the publisher "did not advertise, [and] did not place interviews, reviews" or other press relations material for the game, and that he received silence when Daydream Software sought an explanation.

[38] Nigel Papworth noted that North America was "seen as the paramount market to crack" for international developers; its buying power was equivalent to the rest of the world's combined.

[39] Reacting to these delays, Daydream publicly reported trouble with GT Interactive Europe in late 1997,[40] and questioned the publisher's competence with and interest in Safecracker.

[7] In place of the GT Interactive contract, Daydream hired the talent agency Octagon Entertainment, a firm also involved with Fable and Starship Titanic.

Daydream offloaded marketing and unit production to each distributor, which Phersson-Broberg said would allow the company to "focus solely on developing more good computer games.

[43] By March 1998, Safecracker's display at the Milia festival in Cannes had secured it new distribution agreements in nine countries, including Germany, France, Australia and—with publisher PXL Computers—Canada and the United States.

[44] Daydream signed with Ahead Multimedia in June 1998 to re-release the game in Sweden,[45] attracted by the publisher's penetration of unusual storefronts such as post offices and gas stations.

[60] Charlie Brooker of PC Zone concurred: he dismissed the title as a dull, limited experience, and "the sort of thing that [only] impresses computer game virgins and Macintosh owners".

[59] Wildgoose joined Brooker in calling Safecracker's visuals technically impressive but nevertheless drab and boring,[60][59] and took a harder line than Strauch against the "witless, haphazard" puzzles.