Major Canabalt expansion under consideration

Genre-defining smartphone/Flash free-runner Canabalt could soon see a significant expansion, creator Adam Saltsman has revealed.

The prolific indie developer, better known as Adam Atomic, told Eurogamer that he's toying with some new additions to the 2009 original that would help justify a wider release for the stripped back one-button platformer.

"For some reason, Canabalt 2 sounds really dumb in my head," said Saltsman, clarifying that it wouldn't be a full sequel.

"This would be more like a pretty sizable free update to the existing game, to explore some ideas and give old or new players some new goals and experiences in the game.

"It would also hopefully flesh out the game to the point where maybe it could "deserve" to be on "real" platforms, like Steam or something."

Saltsman stressed it's not a done deal, and is "very, very early in the planning stages".

"Right now I am just trying to gauge audience interest and figure out how much we can do, how long it will take, and whether it will really be worth it, psychologically and financially.

"I don't want to get everybody's hopes up, but we do have a few simple ideas that I think would add a lot and be pretty fun to add... so we'll see how it goes. I also don't want to take too many resources away from [current project] Hundreds in the meantime.

"To sum up - definitely no sequel, but maybe a cool update if I can get my s*** together!"

That's all Saltsman would say on the topic, though he has posted a tantalising concept sketch on his Twitter feed, which you can see below.

In other Saltsman news, his latest game launched today. Somewhat unexpectedly, it's an official (and free) iOS tie-in for forthcoming blockbuster The Hunger Games.

How on earth did that come about, we asked.

"[Film studio Lionsgate] just straight-up emailed me, it was a bit of a surprise," he explained.

"An even bigger surprise is they were cool to work with and open to me not making a Canabalt clone or re-skin - though the game we ended up designing does feature both running and jumping.

"The game itself we're calling a 'teaser action game', a short-form arcade game with nice touch controls set a little before the beginning of the first film and book."