Jonatan Söderström

{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2023}}

{{short description|Swedish video game designer}}{{More citations needed|date=May 2024}}{{Infobox person

| name = Jonatan Söderström

| image = Jonatan Söderström (Cactus) - Game Developers Conference 2010 (2).jpg

| caption = Söderström at the Game Developers Conference in 2010

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1985|10|09}}

| birth_place = Sweden

| death_date =

| death_place =

| occupation = Game designer

| years active = 2005-present

}}

Jonatan Söderström (born 9 October 1985), also known as Cactus, is a Swedish video game developer. He is best-known as the co-designer and programmer of Hotline Miami (2012) and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015), but had prior to those games developed over 40 small freeware games, many of which were positively-received.{{cite web |last1=Curtis |first1=Tom |title=Cactus goes commercial: How one indie moved beyond his freeware roots |url=https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/cactus-goes-commercial-how-one-indie-moved-beyond-his-freeware-roots |website=www.gamasutra.com |date=13 July 2012 |language=en}}{{cite news|last1=Stuart|first1=Keith|title=Interview: Cactus Games|url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2008/apr/21/interviewcactusgames|website=The Guardian|date=21 April 2008 }} His game Clean Asia! was nominated for both Excellence In Visual Arts and Excellence in Audio at the Independent Games Festival in 2008.[https://web.archive.org/web/20080227090236/http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17203 "Road To The IGF: Clean Asia! Takes Aim At Innovation"] from Gamasutra In 2010, he won the IGF's Nuovo Award, which honours unconventional game development, for his puzzler Tuning.{{cite news |last1=Purchese |first1=Robert |title=IGF 2010 winners revealed |url=https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/igf-2010-winners-revealed |work=Eurogamer |date=12 March 2010 |language=en}}

All of Söderström's games prior to Hotline Miami were created with Game Maker, and he was one of the most-influential developers in the Game Maker community, together with others like Derek Yu.{{cite book |last1=Werning |first1=Stefan |title=Making Games: The Politics and Poetics of Game Creation Tools |date=2021 |page=49}} At the GDC 2009, he delivered a talk called "The Four-Hour Game Design", describing the methods he uses in producing his games.[http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1243/(304)-The-Four-Hour-Game "The Four-Hour Game Design by Cactus"] from the GDC 09 event list

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".{{cite web |url=http://timothycourtney.io/interview/game-talk/hotline-miami-game-developer-jonatan-soderstrom-interview-with-timothy-courtney.php |title=Game Talk: Developer of Games Like Hotline Miami, Norrland, Clean Asia! & Mondo Medicals, Jonatan Cactus Soderstrom Interview with Timothy Courtney |website=timothycourtney.io |accessdate=9 July 2016 |date=5 March 2016 |first=Timothy |last=Courtney |archive-date=5 May 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190505234806/http://timothycourtney.io/interview/game-talk/hotline-miami-game-developer-jonatan-soderstrom-interview-with-timothy-courtney.php |url-status=dead }}