So Adam, You have a history of flash game development, crafting brilliant games such as Canabalt and Gravity Hook. Now that you’ve released 2 games on the iPhone, are the flash days behind you?

Never! Flash is by no means perfect but for prototyping and sharing your work with the rest of the world it is the best anything ever. Flixel (http://www.flixel.org) is still going strong, and will see some pretty rad updates in the coming weeks…

Canabalt has been out about a month now, has it been as successful as you had hoped? Has piracy affected your game in any way?

I think I secretly hoped that it might go crazy top10 nuclear, but I am absolutely satisfied with how well it’s done.  It was a fast and fun project and is playing a big part in our ability to develop new original games for the iPhone.  I really can’t be bitter about that!  As far as piracy goes, it’s been quite low – it started out around 12%, and is up to maybe 25% or 30% now.  We’ll be talking more about that in the future, but I think having a playable demo of your game online, right next to the buy button, is a good way to put a dent in those pirate numbers.  However, to be 100% clear, I do not and have never believed that piracy has any effect on sales.  So while our low numbers are interesting, I don’t really believe that it has affected our sales.  I could go on and on about iPhone piracy but I will save that for GDC or something :P

Canabalt takes place in a dystopian world, correct? What was your inspiration behind the game?

Correct!  In no particular order, Canabalt was inspired by District 9, Banlieue 13, Half Life 2, War of the Worlds (the book, not Spielberg’s ridiculous movie), Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, and in a kind of counter-inspirational way Mirror’s Edge.  The game itself was created for the Experimental Gameplay Project, with a themed constraint of “Bare Minimum”.  Dystopic future landscapes are usually pretty effective ways of evoking a compelling mood without needing a lot of detail; a silhouette of a destroyed city automatically raises a lot of questions!  I wanted to first make a jumping game inspired by Super Mario Bros., but with the unending attraction of a classic arcade experience.  Once that basic process was working it became clear that it needed something, and usually when something needs something I lean toward alien invasions :)

canabalt

Canabalt was originally a flash game on your website, now released on the App Store. Do you think we’ll see it on any other platforms like XBOX Live Arcade or WiiWare?

I would love to see Canabalt on XBLA with a kind of visual boost and more interesting camerawork, as well as sloped surfaces and some other things, but we don’t really have any concrete plans along those lines at this point.

Do you have any plans to release any more of your flash games on iPhone? (I’d especially love to see Gravity Hook :D ).

I can’t really say at this time :)   We are working on something cool in this basic area though!

According to your site “Retro Racer” is your new game. Can you shed any more light on what this game is about?

Retro Racer Revival is very much that, a kind of homage to Super Sprint and RC Pro Am and Super Offroad and Micro Machines and all that good stuff.

Any release date?

We’re planning on a February launch at this point, to make sure that it’s 100% rad.

Final Question, What’s your record in Canabalt?

I just did an 8000m run this morning while testing a bunch of the new updates, that might be my farthest!

Thanks Adam for the interview, Can’t wait to hear more about your upcoming projects!

The flash version of Canabalt can be played here.

Get the iPhone version here on the iTunes store.