Jonatan Söderström
Quick Facts
Biography
Jonatan Söderström, also known by his internet pseudonym Cactus, is a Swedish video game developer best known as co-designer and programmer of Hotline Miami (2012) and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015). Prior to that, he developed over 40 small video games. All of them were created with Game Maker. When asked about his game design style in an interview, Söderström replied "Variation can be good, but so can consistency. When I make games I try to keep them unified and to the point, so I don't drift off too far. It's also one of the reasons most of my games are so short, when I feel like I want to turn the game in a new direction I usually explore that new direction in a separate game instead". This further explains Söderström's unusually high output of concentrated games, most of which were developed within a span of two years.
In 2008 his game Clean Asia! was nominated for both Excellence In Visual Arts and Excellence in Audio at the Independent Games Festival. At GDC 2009, he delivered a talk called "The Four Hour Game Design", describing the methods he uses in producing his games.
Games
The games Söderström has created include:
- Ad Nauseam
- BlockOn!
- Burn The Trash
- Clean Asia!
- Decontrologic
- EVAC
- Fractal Fighters
- Fuck Space
- God Came To The Cave
- Hot Throttle
- Hotline Miami
- Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number
- Illegal Communication
- Insect Invade 2
- Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf
- KrebsWelte
- Krytza
- Life Is A Race!
- Minubeat
- Mondo Agency
- Mondo Medicals
- MSoids
- Ninja Flu
- Norrland
- Precision
- Strings
- Protoganda II
- Psychosomnium
- Retro
- Retro II
- Retro 4
- Saru Ga Daisuki
- Seizuredome
- Shotgun Ninja
- Space Fuck!
- Stallions In America
- Ted's Wet Adventure
- The Birthday
- The Design
- This Is Infinity
- Tuning (winner of the Sublime Experience award at IndieCade in 2009)
- Unholy Stage
- Xoldiers
- xWUNG