We developed the official iPhone game for the first Hunger Games movie—along with the creators of Canabalt, Sonic Mania, and The Binding of Isaac
Back in 2011 and 2012, I was living in a cool century-old American Craftsman bungalow in Champaign, Illinois. While living there, Adam Saltsman contacted me and Paul Veer to start development on a game for Lionsgate‘s film adaptation of a popular Suzanne Collins book…
I listened to the audiobook version of her first Hunger Games novel as we began development, and I really liked it. It was obviously influenced by Battle Royale, one of my favorite cult movies, and one that Kevin and I showed when we ran the EIU student film club in 2003.
We only had until 3-4 months to develop the game from nothing, and get it released the day before the movie went into wide release, so it was a very hectic development. I was the lead programmer and enemy & boss combat designer. I brought in Kevin to help on other things like some of the effects and the Apple Game Center high score integration.
It turned out well.
Over 10 million people played the game, mostly young adolescent women who were fans of Collins’ books and hyped for the movie.
I’m proud of what we were able to put together within limited time and with a very small team.
While development was occurring, I recorded the clips in the video above from that cool old bungalow. I’ve edited them together into a nice piece now, in 2026, for a specific reason, that I’ll get to in a bit, below.
Fun fact: I was originally going to write and record all of the game’s music as well, but I ran out of time while programming everything, and so we brought on a previous Doomlaser *and* Adam Saltsman collaborator, Danny Baranowsky, to write the game’s musical score. He’s a way more pro music producer than me, anyway!
Despite the fact that Eurogamer has raved about the game, and Screenrant lists it first in their top 10 games influenced by The Hunger Games, it is not currently available in the iOS App Store, as it has fallen behind on iOS updates. I’d love to bring our code up to Apple’s 2026 iOS standards so that a new generation can enjoy the game.
Maybe this will happen, but if not, I hope you enjoy this behind the scenes video from Doomlaser at work (and at play), and that readers like you might get a glimpse into our internal studio culture.
There’s a new Hunger Games movie coming out at the end of this year. It would be rad if Hunger Games: Girl on Fire could make its return!
