Adam Saltsman

Adam Saltsman, also known as Adam Atomic, is an American indie game designer best known for creating Canabalt, the 2009 one-button game widely credited with starting the endless runner genre. He also made the open-source Flash framework Flixel and co-founded Finji, the Grand Rapids, Michigan studio and publisher he runs with his wife, Rebekah (Bekah) Saltsman.

Saltsman built Flixel, a free ActionScript library for making 2D games, which became a starting point for many indie developers and lived on as HaxeFlixel. He used it to make the vertical climber Gravity Hook in 2008 and then Canabalt in 2009 for the Experimental Gameplay Project's Bare Minimum challenge. In Canabalt, an unnamed runner sprints across collapsing rooftops and the only input is jump. The game spread virally, was ported to iOS, Android, PSP, Ouya and even a Commodore 64 cartridge, and in November 2012 it entered the permanent video game collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Under Semi Secret Software he co-created the minimalist iPad puzzler Hundreds with Greg Wohlwend in 2013, and he collaborated with Keita Takahashi on the experimental game Alphabet. In 2014 he and Bekah relaunched Finji as a studio that both develops its own games and publishes others. Finji's own titles include the post-apocalyptic tactics game Overland (2019), and it has published Night in the Woods, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist and Andrew Shouldice's Tunic. Finji has said it takes a smaller share of revenue than typical publishers.

Saltsman is directing Usual June, a third-person action-adventure Finji announced at The Game Awards 2023; its Steam release is now set for January 20, 2027. He also mentors developers through Finji's in-person sessions in Grand Rapids. His career spans the Flash-era indie boom to modern indie publishing, with open tools and fair deals as recurring themes.