What is… Doomlaser?
Doomlaser is an independent studio building videogames, interactive software, and experimental creative infrastructure.
Plainly, we build tools and systems designed to support long-arc, human-authored creative artifacts.
The studio’s work spans indie releases, commercial titles, and research-driven projects, with roots at Tapulous, Niantic, and Apple.
Across all of it runs a consistent focus on systems, judgment, and the conditions under which creative work actually holds together over time.
We began with small, focused projects like Kernel Panic Screen Saver, Friend Photos (a Facebook screen saver), and Mac system tools like Cursorcerer.
The studio started as a solo effort by Mark Johns, and expanded when Kevin Coulton joined. Together, we created Space Barnacle, Doomlaser’s first fully original game, developed for the TIGSource B-Game contest.
Since then, Doomlaser has stayed intentionally small, hands-on, and oriented toward experimentation at the edges of games and tools, including recent exploration of neural-network-driven workflows for game systems and creative software.
Selected work
• Hot Throttle (Adult Swim, with the venerable Cactus)
• Space Barnacle (with Kevin Coulton)
• The Hunger Games: Girl on Fire (iOS) (Lionsgate)
• Das Cube (with Alec Holowka and Danny B)
• Standard Bits, Owl Country, and Shit Game
Experimental augmented-reality and future-facing technology work for Niantic (of Pokémon Go fame).
Co-wrote the hit iOS game Tap Tap Revenge and its spinoffs at Disney-owned Tapulous (along with this charming man).
Interned at Apple developing software for clickwheel iPod games, and appeared as a character in Apple’s Texas Hold’em.
Mac system tools including Cursorcerer.
Creative infrastructure
In parallel with games and tools, Doomlaser has spent the past decade exploring how abstraction, systems design, and institutional choices shape creative outcomes.
This line of thinking dates back to a 2015 public radio interview on WEFT 90.1 FM, where Mark framed artificial intelligence as a form of massively parallelized high-level algebra—powerful, non-mystical systems whose impact depends less on raw capability than on architecture, incentives, and governance.
That perspective now directly informs Doomlaser’s current work on Dream Factory: a performance-first creative infrastructure for working with scripts through rehearsal, iteration, and canonization, rather than one-shot generation.
Current focus
Alongside building original games and tools, Doomlaser occasionally works with other studios, founders, and research teams in a small, deliberately limited advisory capacity.
This work is not contract development or outsourced implementation. We instead focus on early-stage technical and creative judgment: helping teams clarify system architecture, surface hidden failure modes, and make high-leverage decisions before committing months or years of effort.
Typical engagements take the form of short, bounded conversations or reviews around topics such as:
• Game & tool architecture at early, unstable, or transitional stages
• Diagnosing complexity, technical debt, or stalled projects
• Creative tooling and AI-assisted workflows where human authorship matters
This work is best suited to early conversations, inflection points, or moments where a project feels stuck or directionally unclear.
If the framing above resonates and feels relevant to where your work is right now, you can reach out briefly at
killradius@doomlaser.com
Videos
Media
• Killscreen – How do you bring the magic of Spelunky to 3D architecture?
• Indiegames.com – Interview: Mark Johns (Space Barnacle, Rotrix)
• FingerGaming – Interview on Tap Tap Revenge / Tap Tap Dance
• Kotaku — Tap Tap Transforms from iGame Into iMusic Platform
• Arte TV (France) — Hot Throttle at Babycastles, NYC (Video)
• National Center for Supercomputing Applications: Best Hack award winner – NCSA
Links
Twitter,
GitHub,
Crunchbase,
YouTube,
Giphy,
Tumblr,
SoundCloud,
AngelList,
ArtStation,
Instagram,
MobyGames
Contact
killradius@doomlaser.com
