We sit down with prolific Swedish freeware developer Cactus to find out what makes him tick.

Many of us here at Gamelab are fans of the quirky, unique freeware games made by Swedish developer Cactus - his shooters, adventure games and experimental titles have a visual aesthetic that combines mathematical precision and unruly chaos, and their gameplay is tight, balanced and challenging. He agreed to answer some questions about his work.

Q: Introduce yourself to us - who are you, how old are you, where are you from, is game-making your full time job, if it isn't what do you do with your days?

A: My name's Jonatan Söderström, better known as cactus on the net. I'm twenty two years old and live in Gothenburg, Sweden. I'm currently studying Japanese at the local University. It's my last term unfortunately, as I can't take further courses without going to Japan as an exchange student, which I don't want to for several reasons. One of them being my girlfriend since two years, and also because I have no real passion for the Japanese language. And I hate memorizing kanji.

Q: What attracts you to the shooter genre as a designer?

A: The great thing about making shoot 'em ups is that it's such a basic concept that it lets you play with pretty much every aspect of game making, although I mainly enjoy trying out different visual styles, as well as obscure gameplay mechanics. All you must include is something to shoot with and something to shoot at. You only need to make small changes to the concept to create something that can be seen as "innovative". It's also a genre that lets you keep things concise and to the point. I'm a bit scared of venturing into the world of big projects, as they require much more inspiration and a lot longer time to be developed.

Q: Many of your games are completed in very short periods of time. Why is that?

A: When I get an idea for a game, I get a big burst of inspiration and feel like dropping everything I'm currently doing so that I can try the idea out. The inspiration gradually disappears after hand, and I start losing interest in the idea I had originally. At this point I either need to come up with another idea to implement or try to wrap things up so that I can move on to other ideas that pop up. I also use competitions to get a sense of a goal and a deadline that doesn't seem too far off. This probably contributes a lot to the short amount of time I spend on developing a lot of my games.

Q: Your games have a very unique visual aesthetic - a combination of minimalism and chaos. How did you arrive at that style? Where do you think you will take it in the future?

A: The visuals in my games are largely a result of trying to create something that looks cool while being easy to produce in necessary quantities. The sprites that I use in my games would probably look uninteresting and bland if taken out of their context. I like making them come alive through programming instead. Makes it feel like a pleasant surprise when you see how it'll actually look when playing. With a few exceptions, I wouldn't want to create more advanced visuals than I'm able to at this time.

Q: What do you use to create your games and why?

A: I use Game Maker to create my games because it was the first thing I tried. I had no prior experience with game development and didn't intend to become a game creator when I first downloaded the application. I was merely trying out something new. I had previously tried drawing comics, making films, playing in a band and writing stories, but there was nothing that I really excelled at. The GM community is very friendly to beginners that behave, and as such it gave me a very positive experience when I showed my games to people on the net. And I'll gladly admit that a huge part of what I do when I make games is practically begging for attention and affirmation. I don't have any deep or artistic ambitions. I create things that I would've liked to see others create, and I feel a lot of satisfaction when people express that they like what I do. And if GM allows me to do this then I see no reason for giving it up for a potentially more powerful developing environment. I do however consider trying to learn more advanced programming languages in order to start making money off of the games I create. My economy will soon crash on me, and I hope that I won't have to take a full time job, as I fear that that would put an end to my game making ambitions.

Q: What inspired you to start making games?

A: I first got a NES when I was five or six years old, and loved it immensely. I tried to replicate game ideas on paper in kindergarden together with my friends, which somehow turned out to be a lot of fun. I never pursued the idea of making real video games in any sense untill five or six years ago. I always thought the programming seemed to be a bit too complicated (which is ironic, since I now think the process of drawing graphics is much more tedious), so it wasn't really untill I found a tool that proclaimed that you didn't need to write a single line of code to be able to make games with it. Which was Game Maker.

Since I've generally been quite a creative person (I've played in bands, drawed a lot of pictures in my younger years, and even tried film making) I didn't have much trouble coming up with small ideas that turned into playable games quite quickly. They were still quite unimpressive, though, and I didn't take the whole thing very seriously. But as I went out on the net and ventured into the various Game Maker communities, I quickly realized that you didn't need a lot of skill, nor especially good ideas to become a popular name. Anyone who's seen an archive of Game Maker games probably knows that a lot of people settle for making shit, and despite that their games are obviously crap, they're still happy with them. But there were also those who by using the nifty application to create marvelous little gaming experiences had gained crazy amounts of respect from other users. These two factors inspired me a lot, since the situation made it seem rather easy to stand out, and get a lot of appreciation. Which most definitely is not the case when it comes to other forms of entertainment (movies, books, music etc). I think this is what ultimately made me stick to making games, instead of trying to find a more generally accepted sparetime hobby.

Q: What other game designers or games do you find inspirational?

A: I find quite few games inspirational to be honest. When I started making shoot 'em ups, I looked a lot at Warning Forever and the games by Kenta Cho, which are all quite amazing experiences. I also played a lot of games made by a fellow GM user called jph_wachesky, who's audiovisual style is unlike anything else I've ever seen. I quickly noticed that I was more easily impressed by abstract graphics, than with games containing detailed sprites and realistic backgrounds. The neon lines that should've felt retro seemed to me as something completely new, as I hadn't seen much of games like these on any of the consoles I had owned prior to getting a computer. The mix of simplistic but stimulating visuals with cool sound effects and fitting music was very impressive to me, and definitely left a mark in my mind.

As for other games, I really love the graphics and some of the general ideas in Killer7. The game was a nice experience overall, but I was dissappointed by the plot and I didn't enjoy the humorous bits that much. I haven't played Rez, but watched a lot of gameplay videos that looked amazing. And just reading about Shadow of the Colossus has given me a lot of inspiration as well (which was strengthened by watching Jodorowsky's "El Topo"), although I haven't managed to manifest it into any of my games yet.

Half-Life is my all time favourite game, because it felt like a much more mature approach to games than I was used to when I first played it. Gone were the "cool" cutscenes that plagued so many other games, and the game lacked attitude in general, which made it feel more serious and immersive. I really wish I could try to create something similar, but I doubt I'd ever be able to top it, no matter how much I tried. Speaking of Valve, watching a video of Portal a year ago (together with playing messhof's geniusly twisted "Punishment") kinda lead to the creation of my game "Mondo Medicals". I had earlier tried to capture the feeling I got upon viewing the trailer in an earlier creation called "Organic Units", but it was never completed. The influence that lead to the cutscenes in the game probably came from watching a lot of David Lynch's stuff, as well as aformentioned Killer7.

I could probably come up with a few more games and developers, but that's quite a large portion of my list.

Q: What game of yours are you the most satisfied with and why? A: That's a hard one. I guess I'll have to say Clean Asia! since that's the game that received the greatest reception among gamers. Personally, I like Mondo Medicals and Burn the Trash a lot.

Q: If you had unlimited resources, what kind of game would you make?

A: A game as mainstream and spectacular as possible, so that I could make enough money to keep making small freeware games for the rest of my life without having to worry about making ends meet.

Thanks to Cactus for agreeing to do this interview and congratulations on his Clean Asia being chosen as a finalist in the 2008 Independent Games Festival.

Visit Cactus's site.

Visit the Game Maker site.

Discuss this article in the Forums.