From Civ and XCOM to cute monsters: How Firaxis went casual with Haunted Hollow

Haunted Hollow’s origin story isn’t as grotesque as those behind the mummies, goblins, and zombies it proudly depicts. The turn-based free-to-play strategy game is from the minds of lead designers David McDonough and Will Miller. It’s coming to iOS devices later this spring. But it would take a few years — and some fortuitous timing — before their idea became a reality.

Both men got their start in the industry at Firaxis Games (McDonough as a producer and Miller as a gameplay programmer), a studio known for such hardcore strategy franchises like Civilization and the more recent XCOM: Enemy Unknown. At different points in their careers, they left Firaxis to work at the now defunct Big Huge Games as system designers on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. They barely missed the ax: A few weeks before Big Huge shut down last year due to the (very public) financial collapse of its parent company, 38 Studios, Firaxis asked them to return to work on a new mobile game.