Posted by Kieron Gillen on February 9th, 2010.
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As the Independent Game Festival approaches, I thought a series of short interviews with all the PC-relevant short-listed entries would be an idea. First up is indie-Godhead Cactus who received a nomination for the Nuovo Award for the abstractly beautiful platformer Tuning, which looks like Nebulus as re-imagined by Escher. The interview and footage follows…
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Posted by Alec Meer on November 20th, 2009.
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Confession time! I have never played a game by mad-brained indie wunderkind Jonathan ‘Cactus’ Söderström before. No idea why – despite Jim regularly giving his games an approving nod, in that stern, stoic Jim Rossignol way of his, I’ve managed to miss every single one. Dungeon, his collaboration with one Arthur ‘Mr. podunkian’ Lee (what is it with these names? I’ve gotta get me one. Call me Alec ‘Windows Sound Recorder’ Meer from now on, if you will), rather confirms my opinions from afar – that the chap is making splendid but oddball independent videogames that will please anyone who doesn’t scream “pretentious!” the second they’re faced with something even slightly artistically-minded. Not that Dungeon is necessarily artistically-minded – it has another agenda…
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Posted by Jim Rossignol on February 11th, 2009.
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Jonatan ‘Cactus‘ Soderstrom is one of the most prolific and interesting indie developers currently working. During the IGF judging sessions I was fortunate enough to play an early version of Mondo Nation, the compilation of Cactus’ series of bizarre, unsettling FPS puzzle games. These games are, I would suggest, about as close as videogames have come to the weirder elements of a David Lynch production. Cactus cites Mr Lynch, along with plenty of other esoteric influences, in the interview below. If you want to set the scene for yourself, and get a little flavour of Cactus’ mad humour, then perhaps you should play some of his games before reading onwards. Mondo Agency, Psychosomnium, or SeizureDome are all good places to start.
Posted by Jim Rossignol on March 25th, 2008.
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My favourite indie soloist, Cactus, is now part of a duo, Lo-Fi Minds, and they’re working on a new platform adventure called Brain-Damaged Toon Underworld. They’ve just released a brief demo for the game, which will be out in full shortly. (And that’s probably days rather than weeks if Cactus’ usual turnaround rate applies here.) I’ve also just noticed that Cactus has created a 40mb (2.something Peggle) compilation set of his previous games. That’s a great place to start if you’re unfamiliar with his insane lo-fi coding.
