78: The Art of Fauna - Klemens Strasser

0:02Welcome to Launched. I'm Charlie Chapman and today I'm excited to bring you the developer behind the new iOS game, The Art of Fauna, Clemens Strasser. [Music] Clemens, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's uh it's been fun. We've hung out relatively recently uh in random parts of the world. Uh and you've like I I I'm starting to think it's like a a meme to only myself at this point that I start the show with you've been on my list forever, but that's because I haven't been doing episodes enough. So, everybody's been on my list forever. Uh but I'm very excited to have you on. I

0:47feel like uh you kind of hit another like niche. I haven't had like a game indie game developer on in a while. uh maybe since like Ryan with Blackbox. Yeah. Uh so there's a whole it's a whole different kind of world but obviously overlapping a lot. So I'm excited to get into that. Yeah. I'm super happy to be here. I'm listening to Launch for a very very long time. So I didn't think that I will ever be in an episode. So I'm very

1:15excited. Awesome. Well uh before we get into all of your games, uh I want to give everybody kind of an introduction into who you are. So, the three questions I always ask to kick off this show is where are you from? Uh, do you have a formal education related to what you do? And then we can kind of talk about what your career was leading into the sort of

1:34indie uh game dev that you're doing now. So, I'm from Gratz, Austria. I I'm basically born and uh raised here or around that area. So, not too far away. I actually grew up in a very small village um like couple of 2 hours away something like that um from here but then uh moved to a smaller town near Gratz and now live in Gratz for 8 years and yes I do have a formal education. I did do my uh first we we in Austria have something like a technical high school

2:12thing and I did learn to program there. So, this is part of like primary school or is it like post normal school? Like this is an optional thing. Just curious. No. Um I mean I'm I'm not even sure how that relates to to US school years, but it's like when I turn turned 13, I went

2:34to that school. So I think it's school. So yeah, that yeah, that tracks. So it's um I think when you're 14 in Austria, you have to do one more year of uh education and then you could do something else. But uh basically most most people actually finish or or most people is also not not completely true but many people um then do high school here and um for me the choice was that uh technical school it's one year longer than the other education but you get uh taught more the technical stuff and like electrical engineering was big part of that but also programming and um so I

3:20learned to program in C and in like very uh languages that are close to hardware first and then moved on to some higher level stuff and nice after that um I went to university here in gratz and uh did a bachelor's and masters in computer science and while I was doing my um my bachelor's I started programming iOS and

3:51then kind of got into all of that. That's interesting. Like I just from following you for a long time, I kind of assumed that your background was in design. Uh cuz that seems to be a big part of like your focus and and what you like lean really heavily on. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's interesting because I'm I was never taught anything design-wise. I never worked the design job or did anything along those lines. I um I'm a computer programmer by trade and that's basically what I always did. Nice. So, okay. So, you have you have that degree then. Uh and then you went into the

4:36field and started programming. Was it like mobile or iOS work at the beginning or Yeah. What were you doing? So, so I was um I was currently I was doing my bachelor's and um the the one of the things that I had to learn um during my bachelors in at university was regular expressions and um I did not really enjoy how they were taught at university. So, I thought I could make

5:04something more interesting out of that. And uh always wanted to um start learning how to program for iOS. I didn't own an iPhone or anything like that, but I owned a Mac and I had an iPod touch and I wanted to do something because the the platform very was very interesting to me. And so, I thought I'm going to do a crossword type puzzle game around regular expressions. And so that thing could teach me both how regular expressions really work and also how to do Objective C programming. That was in 2014 where we didn't have Swift yet. So early 2014. And so I started to learn

5:47all of that. And then when I had my exam um about regular expressions, I uh I made that exam. So that uh worked out very well. So, I knew how to work with them afterwards. But the the game that I built wasn't super exciting to me anymore. So, I stopped working on that. A cross word puzzle about regular expressions wasn't just taking the world by storm. Yeah. I I I mean, the New York Times is bound to uh you know, add that

6:16any day now. Uh I was super into the idea at first and then afterwards I thought yeah this this is not the sup most interesting thing in the world. So I just stopped working on that because it didn't have anything that really excited me or catched me. And um and then basically a couple of uh weeks or months went by and I uh was sitting at my couch at home and was staring at my watch. It was a mechanical watch back at the time because the Apple Watch wasn't announced yet and we knew that that thing is going to come out at some point of time, but

6:57we didn't exactly know when. So there were bunch of rumors around that. And I was looking at my watch and had this idea of having like a very simple quiz game where you have just statements that are right or wrong and you swipe up or down to say if it's correct or wrong. So a calculation like 1 + 1 is two, you would swipe up because it's right or a statement about geography like Paris is the capital of Germany and you would swipe down because that's not right. And I thought uh just a super simple quiz-like game. you get one minute and have to solve as many questions as

7:35possible. Uh would be kind of interesting for the Apple Watch, but as I said, wasn't announced. So I thought I just do it for the iPhone and then can easily port that to the Apple Watch. Wasn't super easy. Um when we got the SDK, we didn't have UI kit on uh on the Apple Watch. So that um the the whole thing needed a a bigger rewrite than I expected initially. But but you built

8:04the you built the whole thing for iOS. Did you release that? Yes, I did release that as an iOS app. Uh it was called Elementary Minute and that was the the first thing that I put on the on the app store. I released it on 1st of December in 2014. Um, I chose that date because in Austria if you have a business you have to pay a certain fee to a government thing um, which is 100 bucks a year and you don't have to pay that when you do that on uh, in December. So I shifted the launch to the first of December because I thought I'm never

8:45going to make that those 100 bucks with the app anyway. So I can just avoid paying it for one year. and so released it um for for iOS and then in the meantime Apple Watch was announced. I think we got the SDK in February of the following year. Well, before that, how did the how was it received? Like, did

9:11anybody pick it up? Was it making money? Like, so it was not making lots of money. So, it was I don't know like uh it was sold for 99 cents and it got like one or two downloads per day, but it was still nice especially. Yeah, that's enough to make up your hundred bucks uh if it kept up. Yeah. Yeah. And especially um like the first couple of days I saw mostly people in Austria download it. So, I knew that those people are probably my friends, but then people from uh from the US downloaded it and I didn't know anybody from the US back then or people from China or from

9:49other places in the world just downloaded it. And that was just an amazing feeling that somebody else in the world is just playing my little game that I made in my bedroom. It never gets old. Yeah. There's something about it being people you have no idea who they are. That something you do had some impact on their life and you have a little string on a website that proves that that happened. Uh something about that is just magical. Yeah, that's that's like really really insane to me that things like that are possible. And yeah, that that was a super good feeling and uh super nice and the the whole

10:27release. Um, for me it went well because uh, yeah, people were actually playing it and um, but it didn't bring in enough money to uh, cover all my my spendings and so I continue but I it didn't have to anyway because I was studying and I didn't have uh to to um, pay for my flat or anything at that point of time. And so I um continued working on it because it was just fun working on it. And uh we got the SDK for the Apple Watch in February. And I had the the goal to release the game for the Apple Watch launch in April, I think it was. And be

11:15part of Day One. Be part of Day One. and then sent out some some press emails before that and some trailers and that those things got picked up and uh generated a bit more downloads and then actually was part of day one. I think there were like four or five games uh on the Apple Watch on day one and one of those were elementary minute and that was very nice. Uh thing is I didn't know that it's like playing games on the Apple Watch is not so the most fun experience because you have to uh stand there and hold your hand like this and Yeah. Cuz you'd only been able to build

11:55it in the simulator, right? Exactly. I I was not even be able to buy an Apple Watch on day one because it was only released in the US first. Oh yeah. And then then it got released a couple of months later in Germany and I think Austria only got it at the end of the year. So, uh very very late. Did you did you drive over to Germany or did you wait for it to come to Austria? I did um drive over to Germany to buy mine in I think September, something like that or or August. Yeah. Um we had to the

12:31edition watch I assume, right? The gold. Yeah, definitely. $10,000 one or whatever. Yeah, I assume. Yeah. Yeah. what you're wearing right now cuz it's timeless. Yeah. I I think I never saw that thing uh life anywhere. So I No, no, I don't I don't think there were I think the vast majority of them were given to

12:54celebrities. That was my impression. Johnny IV has like 12 obviously. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. But then um it got it released and that generated some uh more attention for it because it was featured in bunch of uh Apple Watch release stories. Then I got my first feature from Apple um which was a 20 under 20 feature where they featured apps made by people who were 20 years or younger. Oh, nice. Was

13:27that for the Apple Watch specifically? It was not not for the Apple Watch, but I think Apple only got aware of me because of that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And uh Vit from Lookup was also in that list, which was Oh, nice. We only discovered that or I only remembered that we both were in that list I think last year when we were sitting uh at uh Indian place um to have dinner together at DUPDC and it was like super interesting that 10 years after that feature aired on the app store we were just sitting together bumping into each other. It's such a small world. And

14:08Vidett uh being like the fifth guest I've had on this show, four or six or something, he was very very early talking about. Uh yeah, that's cool. Yeah, that was like that was a super nice moment when we when I actually when that clicked. Um so at this stage you you know you're getting some press I assume then downloads are increasing and everything. Are you still in school at this point? Yeah. Yeah. I'm like uh I think I was in the second year or yeah I think second year of my bachelor's and bachelor is 3 years long and yeah I was still studying at university at that

14:48point and then I um got the through some very good coincidences uh got the chance to uh go to DUPDC this year. So I um could fly to uh to the US to actually join Apple at WTC which was like insane to me. I was never traveling alone at that point of time. I was never uh I've never been outside of Europe at that time and then I got the chance. Now you're flying to California and you're in the whirlwind. What year? What year was this? This would have been Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it was the big blowout version of Dubdub. Yeah, when it was still in San Francisco and at

15:35Moscone and how how was that? So I I have only experienced WWDC as a uh a person who was already kind of somewhat known in the in the industry or whatever you want to call this thing that we do. Uh because I kind of jumped into it right before CO and then everybody was locked down for a long time. Yeah. Um, so I'd already made a bunch of friends online and I've only experienced the postcoid version where there's only one day. It's a small much smaller group of people and then you sort of you have to

16:11do a bunch of work to fill time. Otherwise, you just sit in your hotel room alone. But if you can do that, it's an amazing experience. But I've heard from people that even in the before times, if you didn't already have a group of people, it was sometimes still hard to uh like you still had to be active about making sure you talk to people in lines and like form friend groups or else you had that same kind of experience. What was that like for you? Uh for for me like the the also being very especially back then very shy and not very forward speaking to to people

16:48or or not not the person who uh just goes up to people and talks to them. uh was definitely a bit difficult but I just always um had like interesting people around that I started to listening in and then started to chat with them. So, so it kind of always worked out for me and I I think um not also in this year but especially in the years after I was at DWPC again in 2017, 18 and 19 and um especially at those years I made so many friends that I'm very good friends uh with today. So, um it was even though I didn't have like a big following on

17:35Twitter or like knew many people uh over the web, I still found people that I I could relate with at Dubdc and those people are now my friends. And that was like super amazing. And yeah, especially I got in there with um like we're we're jumping around a bit, but uh makes sense to talk about that now. Um I got in to dodc in 2017 18 and 19 with a scholarship. So, which is now called the Swift Student Challenge, but back then it was the the scholarship program. And um I met so many people there who also got a scholarship and we were um we Apple back then paid for the for dorm

18:24rooms near to um which were located in the San Jose State University and you um were always in a room with another scholar. So somebody that uh went through the same experience with you and forcing you to interact with them and then there were certain so social gatherings where you had met other scholars and uh a group formed there naturally with uh whom I still have a

18:53group chat and still interact with them. Yeah, the Swift students uh thing even going now and the scholar program as it was called back then I feel like is such a cool thing because like I I was never part of it but like anytime I go to Dubdub I you can feel those crowds of people who like came up through that program whether they became friends during it or even if they were like from different years there's a little bit of a it's almost like being an alumni at a university where you have this sort of camaraderie or something like that like you all experience this crazy whirlwind thing

19:32that's very similar um and those networks like you know being an indie I mean a big part of me starting this show was to try and create one of these for myself like having some kind of network whenever you're uh whenever you're alone working as an indie in a small town somewhere you're not in New York or California or whatever Uh it's so just crazy valuable. Yeah, definitely. Uh both in the like keeping your sanity, but also in the like I'm running into something weird. I just need to like talk through it with somebody. And to have somebody who's like, "Oh yeah, I

20:09ran into that and here's the answer." Just like ridiculously valuable. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I I don't I don't ever know like what the best advice is, but it's I feel like when people go to these conferences, especially developers who are usually more often the type of people who are not walk up and talk to people openly, it's it's usually a more shy, especially the indie crowd by nature, you're like the type of people who work alone. uh being incredibly intentional uh to try and build those networks even if it's awkward is I cannot recommend it enough. Um definitely yeah dubdub is hard now. I think you

20:52have to be very intentional and I'm hoping like every year I've been hoping that Apple does a little bit more to like create spaces for this. Um and again I'm hoping this year that maybe we get a little bit more of that. But if they don't, it's like find every event you can be a little awkward and join anything that you can and talk to people. Um, and the flip side works for

21:14people who already have the networks. It's like, yeah, bring people in. Try to include uh more people. If you see somebody who looks like they're interested in coming, invite them, you know, that kind of thing. Cuz yeah, it's it's a super weird experience, but and that applies to any of these tech conferences like Yeah. Uh, it changes everything, I feel like. Yeah, I think uh dubdub before was very easy because also after the sessions people just went to places, downloaded the new uh betas, played around with APIs, you saw somebody working on something that you are also just looked at and um I don't know that that whole kind of thing uh

21:53created a basis for you to talk to some stranger or if you picked up lunch at a line and you weren't with your folks at that moment, you immediately started chatting to to other people who were just grabbing lunch. Well, I have a shared interest and a shared experience that you can always kick off with. It's especially nice for not Dubdub, but for other uh conferences that are like single track where everybody is watching the same session. It's like you can literally just bring up one of the sessions and then yeah, even if the person missed it, then they'll be like, "Oh no, what' they talk about?" And then

22:29you boom, you can go on on with that. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's nice. But anyway, so yeah, you you got to go to Dubdub. Crazy experience and then I sidetracked you as I as I'm one to do. Uh so it sounds like that was a valuable experience for you. Yeah. Yeah. the first dubdub. I mean that was really really insane because again I did not know any other iOS developer other than a friend of mine who did also bit of uh coding in grats but other than that didn't know anybody and um then finally or got the chance to go to the conference and uh was looking up on

23:09online uh what to do that you have to stand in line for to get into the big room for uh for the conference uh hours before. So I uh flew to to San Francisco. I couldn't sleep a second in the plane. I um then went to my hotel in in Chinatown and uh the guy at the hotel told me that um they were over booked and they don't didn't have a room for

23:38me. Which was also an interesting experience. And the second guy uh also arrived with me at the exact point of time and had the same problem as I did and they started screaming at each other and I was just standing there and didn't know what to do and my goodness. Yeah. Uh was very interesting. But I then went with that guy to the next Starbucks and I booked another hotel and um complained a bit that I'm super tired and yada yada that um it's an interesting first experience in the US and yeah, welcome to America. Yeah. And but then the the guy just said, "Yeah, uh let me make

24:23your day a bit nicer. I'm actually working with Google in the San Francisco offices and if I want to get a tour through the San Francisco offices of Google and then uh he just took me to the offices and showed me around. Oh my gosh. You know what? That is a very American experience, right? Brash uh weird and then also like welcoming and like, "Hey, let's just be friends and go hang out together." Uh yeah, that's that that's quite the introduction to the stance. Yeah, but it was like that that whole experience was like the start was a bit weird and uh I don't know. I

25:03didn't know where to sleep at first, but I found the hotel. Most of the rooms were booked because it was DC and 5,000 were in San Francisco. But I found a place and I um went to to the Google offices and those were super interesting to me. uh also me coming out out of Austria who would have never thought to uh step foot in one of these offices and yeah uh went to sleep and then woke up very early I think at 4:00 a.m. or something like that to go stand in line for DUPDC and um while standing in line I saw at I think 6:00 a.m.ish something a

25:45guy standing in front of me wearing an Apple Watch and I said, "Hey, here's a dollar. Could you download Elementary minute for me so that I can actually see if that thing is working on the Apple Watch?" I just didn't know. I never saw it on on a real device. And he said, "No, don't have to give me anything. Uh, download it." And gave me his Apple

26:06Watch and I could play around with it. And uh that was the first time I actually saw it live on the watch. Uh which was crazy. And yeah, then met a couple of people while waiting in line for adopt DC. Sat down to to see the conference. Um and then I was back then I was in touch with with a person from Apple um who is responsible for developer relations in Austria, Germany and Switzerland and he always sent me messages. So, hey, go to um go to to the main conference or the keynote. Uh we will meet there. And then right before it started, he said, "No, I couldn't

26:55make it, but we will meet up later." And then again, state of the union. He wrote me, "Hey, go to the state of the union." And then, "Ah, couldn't make it, but uh we we will meet at the Apple Design Awards." And then went to the Apple Design Awards and he said, "Yeah, again, I'm sorry for time. couldn't make it,

27:12but I definitely will see you around. And um then sat down at the design awards. Um John Gillins started talking there and um introducing the design awards and said something about student winners. And here's the first student winner. And suddenly my face appeared on the screen there. Oh my goodness. And I had no idea at all. So you you had no clue. I had no clue. Absolutely none. Wow. And yeah, they got announced that Elementary Minute got the Apple Design Award for um for the in the student category, which was a thing still back then. And uh it was so mind-blowing to me especially I've never like I said I never saw

28:05elementary minute running on an Apple watch before that day. I also back then I think one thing that I never said publicly anywhere is that I wasn't even an iPhone user back then. So I didn't have an iPhone. So you had did you have an Android phone in your pocket? No, I did not have an Android phone in my pocket, but I I couldn't afford an iPhone back then. So, I had an uh some Google Nexus phone. And when I got the chance to go to WWC, I asked my uncle to borrow his old iPhone

28:414, which was had to be the guy. Yeah. because I didn't wanted to be the guy with the Android phone on the Apple conference and uh was running around with the phone always plugged into a power bank because the battery was broken. Yeah. And but I I had that and like coming from that place and then actually receiving the Apple Design

29:07Award was insane. Wow, that's so funny. And also uh it was announced that I got the design award and I was sitting there and I didn't know if I had to go upstate up to the stage or anything like what you were supposed to do. Yeah. What I'm am I supposed to do? And I was sitting next to a stranger and asked him, "Hey, do

29:28you know do I have to go to the stage?" And he said, "I have no clue, but congratulations." And um you if you see the video you can see that it takes me a minute to go upstage but I eventually come there get my cube and then went off stage and the guy from developer relations was just standing there and saying to my face I told you we will

29:50meet eventually. Well played. Yeah. Oh that's so crazy. Yeah. He so he just nudged me into sitting down to the Apple Design Awards and said it before for the other events so that it didn't feel awkward to me or that I didn't notice that something is on there. So, I had absolutely no clue and then um got the design award, was sitting down in front because we were taking a photo later and my backpack with my passport and like everything I I had was still standing back at my original place and I I didn't even notice for for a while. And then um after we did the photos, the guy who was

30:33sitting next to me was still sitting there because he was watching my backpack and that was like super nice also. Yeah, no kidding. So so many nice experiences um after like the first impression was I didn't get a room in San Francisco, but then uh one nice experience after the other. No kidding. Wow. Well, I think I can say pretty confidently that that is exactly what most people's experience going to Dubdub is always like. Uh all of those events will happen to everybody. Yeah, definitely. So, you should you should

31:09come to California. Yeah. That's crazy. So, that was Elementary Minute. You're still in school. Yes. Uh what next? Did you come out with more games or more apps while you were in school or does everything else kind of happen after that? Yeah. the um at that WTC I was standing on stage uh next to the people from um from Flexibits, the people who do ah fantastical and cart because they won the Apple Design Award for uh Fantastical 2 that year. and we just started chatting and exchanged emails and um a couple of months later uh Michael reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to have an summer internship

31:57with them um in I think 2016 then or 2017. Okay. can't exactly remember but it wasn't in the same year but bit later uh if I wanted to join flexibits for summer internship and I was a huge fantastical fan back then I downloaded even though I didn't have an iPhone I had uh had fantastical on my Apple touch not because I was in need of a calendar but I just love the design of fantastical and I downloaded a bunch of those apps just to play around and see um the

32:33different effects and things in there. And then being able to actually work for that company was like mind-blowing to me. Wow, that's really cool. That's And Michael uh Simmons, also a former guest uh on on this very program. Uh oh, yeah, that's cool. And yeah, working with the flexibits people must have been just a great experience of kind of seeing how people build these uh much more complicated than kind of what you had been doing obviously at the time. Uh apps and so that was after you graduated then. No, it's also I was still in school. So that was internship. Okay, cool. It was um still it was an

33:14internship and I was still in school and I was um always working. So after the internship I uh continued working on uh Fantastical or at Flexibits until I think 2021. Yeah, 2020. Okay. Um, and I eventually quit at Flexibits to finally finish up my master thesis because I went I had a point where I um first I only worked a couple of hours at Flexip and then I increased and increased and I eventually started working full-time for them and I had it um besides doing all of that I also built games and I we can talk about that in a minute but I always uh built my games on the side. I had a

34:04full-time job with 40 hours and I also needed to finish my master thesis and that all didn't work out very well in timewise. So, um I had to at one point just to say stop and uh quit the job at Flexibits even though it was hard quitting there because I enjoyed working with them very much and um especially like I I learned so much from Kent especially uh he's the the technical brain behind uh behind Fantastical and um those years were super valuable for me. So, it was hard to quit there, but I knew I had to just um do something to

34:47finally finish off my master thesis. Yeah. So, and then did you did you finish that? I did finish that. Yeah. I Nice. Well, congratulations. Yes. Thank you. And so, but during that time that you were working there, like you mentioned, you were you were releasing games. Yes. And I think like at least my understanding from following you is that they were all like games of some sort,

35:10right? you app, but you have uh like subwords, letter rooms, ancient board games, collection, study snacks. Uh all of these are kind of like interactive puzzle game and word game kind of things. Is that an accurate Yeah. uh explanation of the general like style? Yeah, most most of them are. So that's basically the my my main focus especially um letter rooms and subwords are uh those quiz type of games or or yeah quiz type of games is probably the best explanations and elementary minute

35:56before that um also quiz type of game. Um I had asymmetric in in the meantime um or in between this was my second game which was a puzzle game which didn't work out well. So that Oh really? Like it didn't work in the sense that it didn't make much money or not a lot of people used it. Um so people who played it actually enjoyed it but not a lot of people played it. So yeah, only to this date have like I don't know 1,000 downloads or something like that for that game. And just like context at the sort of top level, you building these games, was the

36:35idea that you eventually kind of liked the idea of going indie and you were trying to build a business or was this just a creative expression like fun thing? So it was obviously a little both, but it was kind of both things. So in the ideal world, I definitely always wanted to go indie with my games. So that was always like kind of the main goal, but I knew um also from France that the game business is hard. Um yes, um not the the easiest business to be in, you can also see it right now that um with people getting laid off left and right and the the and the conditions

37:17that people who actually work in those companies are still sometimes under. um like game business is not the easiest one. So I always build my my apps and games uh with native technologies. Um so with Objective C, Swift UI kit, Swift UI, Sprite Kit and stuff like that. So I did that uh because of two reasons. one is um because that way I can make them as accessible as possible and the second reason is also accessible in the uh like disability accessibility features sense not obviously it's less accessible other platforms uh compared to like Unity or something but I I wanted to to create the best experience for those

38:02games and apps on a limited platform but then still even though I can only focus on iOS. I wanted to make it really good there instead of making it for iOS, Android, and other platforms and then have a meh experience across the board. So, yeah. And like sort of at a business level, you know, uh with elementary minute, it your distribution model was

38:31Apple promoting it basically, right? Like that's how it was getting all of its users. Yeah. So your second app or game, no matter how good it was, if your entire distribution model was based on Apple featuring it, if Apple doesn't feature it for whatever reason, because of internal reasons. Yeah. Uh it's like you have nothing. So throughout all these games as you're building them, did you start building up uh sort of marketing, whatever you want to call it, mechanisms for how do you get this to people, which maybe the answer is you kept doing Apple, but you found out how better to make sure Apple distribution

39:08was consistent or were there other sort of methods that you were learning through all these apps? I think uh definitely it was mostly Apple and getting to learn how to better do that. And I think with the art of fauna I um kind of figured it out how it work how it works. Yeah, I have I have a long list of uh it seemed like you you have a good playbook that you played out with the Art of Fona, which is why I asked that question because I'm like I guess you were sort of learning that through

39:39all of these through all of these apps. Yeah. But you it's always um I mean even though something works out it uh and I have that playbook um even I if I apply it again it can still happen that because of some reasons it doesn't work out with Apple because yeah it's a higher risk. Yeah, it's definitely a higher risk, but um also I definitely got integrated in the whole community more. So I um have more people reposting about it on social media. I know how to better do social media. I have people who are fan of my games and apps that I did over the years that come back to the

40:22new stuff. So, it's basically building up on the success of the previous games and then hoping that people will return for the next one. And that kind of worked out well for the other fun. Yeah, that makes sense. And also, I guess to the point of making them with native code and making them specifically for Apple platforms. That is another uh quiver in the arrow on getting Apple to want to promote it cuz they want to promote very Applecentric using Apple technologies type type apps. Yeah, that makes sense. So I guess uh let's like kind of kick off the the actual the art of fauna process. So I have a lot of

41:01questions about the actual like I said the business side of promoting it but the the app itself where did that or game itself where did that idea come from? Like how did it kind of come into being? Yeah. Um, so the the first time I had the idea for the auto founder was from just stupidly scrolling through Instagram and then getting um because I'm following a bunch of nature um profiles and fe um stuff like that. I got um suggested the profile of the biodiversity heritage library which is a project based I think in the US it's mainly sponsored by the Smithsonian or hosted by the Smith Smithsonian and um

41:47this organization scans in uh old books and then makes them available online for free. So um those are old books from so not any old book but old books that feature um drawings of animals and plants and stuff like that and they had this Instagram feed where they had they just posted different old drawings of animals and I got one suggested for one of those animals and it was super beautiful and I clicked on the profile and I couldn't stop scrolling there. So that yeah it's a very now that you say that it's like uh what were what are those people called that are not necessarily

42:30scientists but people who catalog like specimens. Uh it's it's good good question. Darwin was really big on that, right? Like that was one of his things. Yeah. Uh but but there's a very specific like vibe to that. Those scient pseudocientific drawings, they're always on parchment. So the paper has that sort of sepiaone. I now that you're saying that out loud, I did not put that together that that is the artifana style, but that is exactly Oh, that's cool. That's cool. These are I mean these are really they they were used back then in the time um by scientists to study those animals because um yeah,

43:07I don't want to say it's not scientists. I mean like uh it it was like a a community. That's the word I'm looking for. Like I feel like a lot of them were just like a lot a lot of them were scientists but there was also a bunch of them that were just quirky people who that was

43:20their hobby. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Also, but yeah, we I mean there there are artists like um John Gul is one guy where I have a bunch of uh images in there and he did expeditions with Darwin and also to Wow. um he he did an expedition to Australia and made I think five or six books about the animals in Australia and drew them and um those drawings are now heavily featured in the art of fauna because they're super beautiful and they are uh just they're to use for free because the people are long dead and it's their copyright has long expired. I didn't realize that those were sourced like that. Okay,

44:05interesting. Yeah. And I so my I just so so coming back to the Instagram feed, I just scrolled through them and I bookmark I think 200 images at that time just to look at them and didn't even think of making something out of that. And then I realized when looking at the dates when they were drawn that they were drawn a long time ago and that I could potentially use them. And back at that time I was deep into um like puzzle games both physical ones but also um there was the the game patterned on Apple Arcade. Then also um I I like those I I was deep into um Alba um I

44:50think Alba it's called from the the people who made uh Monument Valley um which was that cozy nature game where you just run around the island and uh explore freely and listen to the nice animal sounds. And both those games kind of inspired me to do something similar where I used those old uh drawings um that were just sitting there for free

45:16and uh make a puzzle game around that. And that's basically how the whole idea started. That's interesting. So it wasn't the mechanic that came first. No, it was the it was the vibe. Yes. Uh, first it's like the combination of these old drawings that were inspiring and just nice and pleasing looking and the sort of cozy game style, not even necessarily puzzle cozy games. Obviously patterned is, but like Alba is not, right? No, Alba is Yeah. And then you you thought, okay, how can I take these two elements plus your house style and what you know and make something out of that? Yeah. And it's interesting. It's

45:57the first time it worked out like this because otherwise I always come from the gameplay side or from the game ahead. Yeah. Yeah. So, um yeah, was interesting how that just came to be. But um I mentioned earlier that I'm deep into u making things accessible and very interested about that. I wrote also my master thesis on game accessibility. I'm giving a talk about game accessibility next week at the Arctic Conference and stuff like that. So, um, don't bring

46:30that up right now. I'm I'm in pre FOMO. I guess when this releases that will either be happening at the time or have already happened, but uh, man, I wanted to go to that one so bad. But anyway, yeah, Arctic Comp. Uh, I guess buy tickets for next year cuz it's too late now.

46:46I want it to happen again so I can go. Yeah, you should definitely go next year. I think it's going to be a blast. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so I'm deep into accessibility and I um my main focus is in voiceover accessibility and making it accessible to blind people and making a visual puzzle game isn't very easy to make it accessible to blind people. So, I always have that one rule in there that if I can't make it accessible as I want to, then I'm not going to build the app. So, uh found a first I had this idea, but I stopped working for it for a

47:30little while because I couldn't figure out how to make it accessible. And then I had the idea of like if you go to Seuss or to to museums, you often have um an animal or an animal drawing and next to it a text about that animal, a description about it. And I thought um instead of having that next to each other, I just put the text on the back side of the puzzle or of the of the drawing so that you um can either solve the puzzle through um solving the painting or it's like putting the the painting back together or you can uh press a button and flip it and then uh

48:11put the text back together and that way I had something uh that could work. Oh, interesting. blind people because they could just use the text site to actually play the game. And so it's almost like a separate game then in that sense, right? In kind in that sense kind of a separate game because um the one side is like this relaxing um really basically relaxing game um where you can just uh put your mind off and put that thing back together. And the other side is you have to read through the text a couple of times to bring the sentence in sentences in the correct order again. So

48:54um it's kind of different game. The one is more like a traditional puzzle game. The other one is more like a word game. And yeah, um but having those two sides made it possible to um both have the the accessibility support but also um when showing it to people, many people enjoyed it to play on the text site because they learned something about the animal. And yeah, exactly. And you could always uh switch back and forth. So, uh, you could play on the image side for a bit and then to the text side and the back to the image side, whatever is easier for you at that moment. Um, and

49:33yeah, that was just a nice thing that happened out of the the main goal of making it accessible to blind people. And that's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I like I didn't even realize that was in the game. I've only done the the sort of image side which let's talk about that too. So the the kind of gameplay mechanic is you have these beautiful images like we talked about and they're in kind of a card form um but they're they're you know all broken up kind of like a puzzle except unlike a puzzle they're in clear blocks not necessarily squares. A lot of them are rectangles, but they're just out of order like

50:15blocks. And you can pick up any of those blocks and put them in the right order and shift them around. And when you get two blocks that are in the right order, you get a very satisfying like sound effect and they sort of merge together and your brain feels very good. Uh, and now th that block is sort of merged together into one single and you sort of just sort all these pieces around until you get the image kind of completed. So, it's sort of like a almost like a traditional puzzle, but none of the pieces look like puzzle pieces. Uh, and the the interactive element of it

50:48obviously could only be done digitally because of all the sound effects and everything that kind of goes with that. Yeah. Um, where did that mechanic come from? It's very similar, like from a technical perspective, it feels very similar to uh letter rooms, right? Letter rooms is where you have all the letters lined up and you can pick them up and resort them. Um, I think as a when I actually think about it as a player, they are totally different, but I'm thinking of the sort of picking them up and moving them around, it feels similar in that way. Is that how you kind of came to

51:20this idea? Were you taking these ideas from your other apps? Yeah, I think I came to that idea indirectly. So my mind just uh when I thought of how to make a puzzle game out of that, I just thought of um splitting it up similar to how I did it with letter rooms initially. I also um done line by line. So not no um no vertical splits. But first the first idea was only to have horizontal splits so that you have uh Yeah. So it's a bunch of rectangles just stacked on top

51:55of each other but none are side by side. Yeah. And now that's those levels are the the easy ones, the ones in the beginning and then later you get vertical splits to that. But the initial idea was just those horizontal splits and that is very similar to letter rooms. So definitely inspiration coming from there. But also it's to be honest it's the easiest way to split up the the image. So having if I do something like um like actual puzzle pieces things get a bit more complicated especially of how to place them and then I would need probably a stack somewhere to move uh pieces out so that everything fits

52:34together. So um it was both a bit the inspiration from lad rooms but also it's the it was the easiest way at least I thought it was the easiest way so to actually getting the drag and drop mechanic done well because uh as you said um pieces click together if they are sorted correctly but it's um if they are sorted correctly horizontally or vertically they click together so you get very obscure shapes that you have to drag around and to drag those shapes around and to make sure that those shapes are put at the correct position where the player actually thinks they should be put um is a whole different

53:17story. I'm still not 100% satisfied of how my code works there, but people seem to be happy with it and but I had to rewrite that code of the drag and drop mechanic I think three or four times to bring it to and the it feels nicer than trying to move icons around in my

53:37control center still. I heard that. That's what it makes me think of though is that type of challenge, right? like drag and drop where stuff moves out of the way and goes in places where people expect it is it's I'm going to guess cuz I haven't done it but I'm going to guess it's less of a technical challenge and more of a design challenge in the sense

53:56of you're making a thousand decisions. Yeah. Yeah. Uh to try and make the right assumption and how do you make those decisions in a clever enough way that you're not annoying people constantly? Yes. Uh yeah, definitely I just find that fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. The the code itself is not very complicated because it's a bunch of if statements and loops of moving the pieces around and stuff like that and no super complicated algorithms behind that. But it's still a bunch of uh shortcuts or or decisions that need to be made at the right point of time to actually move

54:36something to the correct position. Because also like you could have a shape that's like an O where you um where just in the middle you have you want to oh there's a hole in the middle. There's a hole in the middle and you want to place a piece in there and there's a decision in there that if the the piece is meant to be in the hole then um the thing doesn't move around because the player would probably want to move it into the hole. But if it doesn't fit into the hole, then the thing would shift because the player would probably want to shift it above. So things like that, those are

55:12there are many different tiny decisions in there to make it work as the player would expect and still I it's not working 100% perfectly. So what's the like what's the loop for for building that out? Like obviously you're running it a million times and running into all these. Are you handing your phone to people? Do you have a big group of friends who are like, "Oh boy, here comes Clemens." And you're like handing them their phone and like, "All right, do this. What do you think?" And you are you writing down notes? Like how are you how are you getting all of this to feel

55:49right for as many people as you can? Yeah, usually um in in the years before that with all my games um I did a bunch of uh game conferences. So in game conferences it's um there so next to things like there there are certain conferences like we have in the iOS world where you just sit down and watch a bunch of talks but usually in those conferences there are indie areas where people are just exhibiting their games and Oh interesting and I'm uh I did a couple of those over the years where I just stood there and just showed it to a bunch of people and you usually I set it

56:32up in a way that I didn't explain anything to the people and just watch them interact with it. And I learned so much about how the the first interaction clicks with people or doesn't click with people by just watching how they would approach it. And it's it's a super nice way of doing it that way because the people um who go to those conferences sometimes like there are game conferences where we have talks but there are also other game conferences where it the main focus is really just go there and play games. So um there will be more gamers in there who will never come to those things again or you

57:15will probably not meet them again. So they are very harsh about the feedback they give you and um but it's very good that they are harsh and like honest about that's what you want. Yeah, that's value. Super valuable. So I learned a lot about that over the years of both how people interact with the game and now have a like feeling of how how

57:39people will probably interact with it. But still, for every game, I have a bunch of friends that I give the app to, want to explain as little as possible to them about the the app or the game and see how they interact with it and just uh buy them dinner or something like that to force them to stick around with me and uh or to Oh, yeah. I think I I think uh you've given a talk where you had pictures of you like making pasta for people and then just being like, "All right, come and like play my game and uh let me watch you play my game and

58:12treat you like a guinea pig." Yes. Uh oh, that's interesting. I am very interested. I I didn't I know that people go to gamedev conferences in part because they're like play testing. I had never heard of the like sort of indie showcase concept though. Yeah. Now I'm like putting a call out to any

58:32conference organizers uh listening. I'm very intrigued at that same idea for indie devs at conferences. That would be so interesting. I'm curious what the mechanics look like for how that works. I mean, we won't dive into it here, but you know, people should reach out to you, I guess, or other uh game devs uh because yeah, that's really interesting. the idea of you could bring what I assume was a kind of demo version of your game intentionally built for collecting feedback. Um you could definitely do the same thing at at a conference and I've gotten somewhat similar experience where like we're all handing our phones to each

59:14other but Exactly. or you tell them and they they're like oh and they go download your app and then your whole face turns red cuz you're like oh no they're going to see you know how bad my onboarding is and how how horrible it is. But that feedback is often ridiculously valuable. Exactly. Um and creating an intentional space for that is really cool. Yeah. Uh that's interesting. Yeah. I'll have to poke

59:37some of my conference organizer friends. Yeah, definitely. Um I do know I think literally they just tweeted about it uh like right before we we started recording, but iOS comp in Macedonia Yeah. is doing a a sort of specific uh indie developer focused event. Um I don't know all the details as they've described them because they just tweeted about it. So I don't want to like say anything. I'm helping sponsor it and by I I mean Revikat. Revikat is sponsoring it. Uh so that's how I kind of know a little bit about it. But I don't want to I don't know. I don't want to say

1:00:13something that isn't publicly known already. But they are doing something in this vein which I'm really really curious to see. But I like the idea of pulling inspiration from these sort of gamedev conferences. Uh cuz yeah that's an interesting idea. Yeah. Yeah. I always advise people if they ask how I get the best feedback to just go to meetups or go to conferences and hand them the phone and see reaction and see their onboarding because like you said it's like very painful if somebody just gets stuck in the onboarding but uh it's better to see that yourself and learn from that and then make it better in

1:00:53that moment than to release it out there in the world and then get a bad review for the onboarding or just lose a person during the onboarding. Yeah. The worst is the silent. You just silently lose people and you have no idea why. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. And I guess in a similar vein, how are you getting you said you've focused specifically like a lot on accessibility, but specifically on blind users? Do you have blind friends around that you're doing the same thing with or how are you getting that kind of feedback because that's something you literally can't do yourself? Yeah. Um I mean I Over the

1:01:26years, I learned how to interact with voice over pretty good. So, I have a Yeah, I guess you close your eyes. But it's But it's still kind something something very different. If you interact with a device where you know how it looks, so you have already model in your app how in your head how to interact with the app, then somebody who's blind who will never see the the actual UI. So, um, you can never experience it the same way then like a blind people person would because it's like anything else. Like if you were just developing an iPhone app without having ever used an iPhone. Yeah. You're

1:02:05going to make things based on a lot of assumptions that like the system has taught you certain things, right? Yeah. And you need to build your app knowing that the system has taught everybody like, "Yeah, I would prefer a back button be at the bottom where it

1:02:27apply for uh voice over mode where it's like if you know how to navigate the iOS in voiceover mode, there's a bunch of conventions that might not be intuitive if you only ever used it in your own app." Yeah. Um, and that's hard to like you can spend a lot of time learning how to use voiceover mode, but it's going to be a hard thing to to really do without getting the feedback from people who live in it every day. Yeah. Yeah. And the the main source for that is the Apple forum. There is um Yeah, this forum I'll I'll make sure that's in the show notes. Yeah, definitely do. Um, it

1:03:02was almost closed down last year because I was about to say, didn't that wasn't that like at threat of being shut down cuz the original creator was like they didn't have time for it or something? Uh, the original creator was so totally burned out and didn't have time to to work on that anymore and um like in bunch of threats it got a bit toxic and stuff like that. So moderation was also a problem and um the people from B my eyes I did pick it up and are now funding it to be run um probably I'm not sure how the exact model is now working

1:03:41but the thing is now in in uh safe waters or however you you uh call that and so the community continues to exist and that thing is really the most valuable thing to find people who are blind to test it out. I think I had for subwords like 50 people um I just wrote you can so let me get the step back for subwords I um I just posted on the forums uh post. So hey this is my game. I want to make it accessible for blind people. Um here's the test flight link. If you could join that and give me some feedback that would be highly

1:04:22appreciated. and I had 50 people reach out and just join that and give me super valuable feedback of how to enhance it. and like little places um there are certain gestures that people are probably not aware of if they are not using voice over and I learned about those gestures from the people that it would be like good that if you have uh if you use the escape gesture that one element is deselected again or stuff like that that feedback was super valuable to make it super accessible to uh blind people and um bunch of Those people that I met um in the forums through uh through the

1:05:04development of subwords are then uh continued testing out my apps in the future. And yeah, it's basically them on test flight. I have a new game or a new app and I ask them if they are willing to test it out again and then sending them a build. That's awesome. That's Yeah, that's really really cool. Yeah. And I I can just recommend any other developer who wants to enhance their um accessibility support to just write on the the forums and there are so many very nice people there who are willing to help. Yeah. And I think like anytime uh you know you're doing test flights or

1:05:42anything, but this is especially true when you're reaching out to uh like a specific community like the blank community. It's always got to be, you know, like tone matters. Like you're asking them for help. You're not I don't know. I think sometimes people come in demanding things or like, well, I'm doing this for you. Why don't you do all this free work for me? U and so being engaged when people give you feedback, always responding and and integrating their feedback and thanking them. I I'll say like I I think one of especially in the early days whenever I was first like building dark noise I used to always

1:06:21make sure that in my test flight notes uh anytime I added anything that was from somebody's recommendation I would just put in parenthesis like thanking them. Yeah. And like so many people and some of them are like prominent people in the community would be like oh hey I got mentioned in in the notes and it's

1:06:38like it took so little work from me. Yeah. Um, but just to recognize like thanks for people, that kind of stuff goes a long way. And like in your case, because you're building lots of these apps, it's like you have a community of people that want to do this because it's fun and you've you've encouraged them just like they've encouraged you and it creates kind of a little community. So yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. That's also I do the same thing. Every time somebody points out a bug to me, I put them in the actual release notes thanking them just first name, not to to

1:07:12give. Yeah. Right. There's always a privacy kind of implication the name but they know if I mention that I fix the bug uh because of them they they will going to know that and that's always a nice thing. And I also have in my apps always a credit where I thank the different testers and the people who help me out with the app. And yeah. Oh yeah, that's a good idea. So you've built the Autofana. You we've talked about kind of what the app is and everything. Um but the release of this app felt like you had sort of really gotten a lot of the dials dialed in very

1:07:50well. It seemed like a very good release and not just a I released it and Apple featured it, therefore it got a lot of press. It was like you were hitting lots of different things. So, can you talk about like what your strategy was for that launch? Like what are the different things that you did to try and help make it as big of of a success as it ended up being? Yeah. So, the the first thing that I did was I created a pre-order for the Autoona very early. So, I did um start with the pre-order in the start of December and um Oh, wow. Yeah, that's

1:08:25like months before, right? I think 2 months before the actual release, I did start pre-order and I then um reached out to Apple through those uh feature nomination forms to get featured. And in I'm not sure if there is a section in the in the app section, but in the game section, there is a extra section about uh games that are coming soon. And I got featured in there for Oh, I didn't know that was a thing. So, you can ask. So, we're talking about the nomination thing, which is now like a button in App Store Connect. It's a lot easier to get to. It says nominate your app, and you

1:09:02can fill out a little blurb to explain why Apple might be interested in featuring your app, right? So, you can do that for an app in pre-order. Exactly. To sort of to nominate them promoting the pre-order. Yes. Oh, fascinating. Okay. I didn't know that. And if you go to the games tab, there's definitely some app that is currently u promoted down in the section of games that are coming soon, but also up with the huge banner. So, I also got the feature up there um with the other fauna with uh um where they promoted it that it's going to come out soon and that got me like

1:09:426,500 pre-orders over the two months by the time it launched at the time it launched. And that that's a lot. That's a lot. And that's uh the the good thing here is that um everybody who pre-orders it um the the app is going to be downloaded to their device on the the exact same on the same day. So it's to the algorithm similar to or the same thing as if they would have clicked that download button on that exact date. and I um having the pre-order I could

1:10:19promote it a couple of times on Twitter. Apple picked it up through the featuring and stuff like that. So I had these big chunk of people who are interested in the app but they also got it downloaded at the exact same date. So the uh the algorithm and the charts uh the chart position was pretty good for other founder on the very first day which then also generated more downloads. So that was which all of that helps your ASO and all of those you know businessy things as well

1:10:51and that thing definitely helped a lot. I had also bunch of people who were testing out uh the art of founder over test flight before um the actual release and they were super kind and to post about the art of founder upon release. So I think I get got so many shout outs from the community on the launch date which uh were was like super satisfying and super like mindboggling to me. Um especially like I'm friends with with couple of people like Yordi or Ha um now but a couple of years ago I was just following them on Twitter and was like impressed by their work and they are now

1:11:37actually posting about my app or my my game that I released. So things like that just mind-blowing and just just super nice and that yeah worked out very well on the social media side. And um additionally what I also did is the the app is a free download. So you can play the first 10 puzzles and after the seventh puzle after you solve that you

1:12:03have a pretty good feeling for the game. So if you're stuck um with the game for that time, then you're kind of invested in it, but it's also far enough away from the pay wall that you're not um if you So after the seventh parcel, I asked the person to give a rating and um if the pay wall would come up right after that, then they would probably be annoyed and then change the rating again. But it's uh having it at that position worked out very well. that many people rated the app very early on. And I think I'm now at around 2,200 uh ratings, 40 games after 1 month of

1:12:46the release, which is like more than all of my other apps and games combined, which is insane. But it's Does that Does that correlate directly to number of downloads or is that something unique to the rating request like timing that you have? Do you think I think it's uh definitely with the timing and with really Oh, that's interesting kind of game cuz my thought was almost like I guess it depends but I guess it's better to have it a number of puzzles in than it to be like the number of times you open the app cuz there's probably a decent amount of people that download it, play through the free

1:13:29puzzles, and then never, you know, touch it again. Uh, and so having it like you've gotten a couple free things, you're more likely to give a positive rating, but you still want to, generally speaking, the advice is like it's still better to ask for a rating than to not. Uh, so you don't want to overprovision on just the do only do it at a positive time. It's better to show it to them early, but in your case, it's like, yeah, if you if you've made it through a couple puzzles, you're probably going to be more likely to leave a rating. Ah,

1:13:58that's Yeah, that's really interesting. What were the other like in your other apps? How did you usually do the rating prompt? I also like in in subwords it's in in studies next for example it's um based on like I think either they have um used it for um solving a bunch of lessons in one session or after they entered in the app for the for time or something like that. So, and then

1:14:26completing a learning session correctly. And not sure how it was for the ancient board game collection for letter rooms, it's also after solving a bunch of puzzles, but probably too late. So, I need to adjust that a bit. So, yeah. So, with the art of fauna, you think the big kind of differentiator is basically you you being more likely to ask, whether it's earlier or uh whatever. It's it's at a phase where

1:14:51more people are going to be prompted. Yes. And interesting. Um, and it is at a point where they got a more difficult level for the first time or second time they got a bit more different level uh difficult level. So they just uh made it through something that was a bit more challenging and they feel even bit more rewarded. So they're um kind of more likely to give you a positive rating because they have that nice feeling of having made it through that puzzle. So, I did find the sweet spot for that kind of accidentally, but also I now have like a good feeling about where

1:15:33to to place that thing. And that definitely helped a lot with um like getting um with my ASO and getting the the algorithm to pick up the app uh better. And then also uh every time I hit the milestone with my ratings, I could make a social media post out of that and then throw it on Twitter and Blue Sky and the Instagram channel of Founder and then uh get more people reposting that one and then again people picking that that I think was one of the things that it felt like you did really good this time which is that sort of uh join me in celebrating this this thing's

1:16:16success.

1:16:26uncomfort. But the reality is, and I mean the reality is there are a small number of people that will get annoyed and that's the part that's hard. But the majority of people, I think, at least certainly me, I get excited. I like following other people's success. I find it really inspiring. Yeah. Um, and it's just fun. And each one of those is a reminder. Like, I bet you I missed one of your original announcements of the pre-order going up or whatever. But whenever you said something like, "Oh my gosh, I crossed, you know, 100 pre-orders or whatever," I probably saw that and I was like, "Oh shoot, he has a

1:17:05new app coming out." Like, that's pretty cool. Especially in today's hyperfrured social media world, like you can't assume everybody's going to see everybody. Almost nobody is a Twitter completionist like in the old days. Uh so it really I don't know, maybe a lot of people are going to disagree right in if you do. Uh, but like I really think there's a huge benefit to the community, not even just yourself, but also to yourself if you are publicly celebrating your wins, uh, where things are. And I do think if you're wanting to be genuine, uh, the other side to that is publicly talking about when things don't

1:17:44go well. Um, adding qualifiers, not being disingenuous about the why for things. Yeah. uh because that that can be easy to do as well. But um but yeah, I I love I I've mentioned on the show before, but whenever I kind of first got into this racket uh was right after Jordan Morgan finally released uh his spin stacks app that he had been working on for forever. And I just was super inspired by how like extraordinarily public he was with everything, numbers, everything as it happened. And I've sort of followed that whole mentality and I

1:18:18feel like it served me super well. Yeah. Um, and with the Art of Fauna in particular, I felt like I was really following you in that journey through social media, not just, you know, because like we know each other. Um, and I I think that helps build this kind of momentum and increases chances that anybody's going to potentially pick that

1:18:38up on the press side. Yeah, definitely. And I think that was also um like having the pre-order be so early, having the two months of getting people excited for the actual release that definitely contributed to and yeah, like you said, if I just post about the app one time when it releases or on the next day after the release, it's very easy to miss at these days. So, I um just recently a friend of mine released an app and I didn't see it that it was already out there just because it's I'm I'm on holiday. I'm not looking at um

1:19:18Twitter that often so it's easy to miss. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. And really quick, uh, and then I promise I'll try to wrap this up because I know we're already reaching kind of time, but, um, I've also noticed kind of on the past the launch side of things, um, it looks like you've been posting sort of like Tik Tok style videos, I don't know if it's actually even on TikTok. I don't remember where I've seen them, but vertical videos with what sounds like kind of that standard AI voice. uh that's like popular and not cheesy or I guess it is cheesy but you know what I mean it's that's like the

1:19:54that's the house style or whatever. Um that's sort of showing off fauna. What's what's the story with that and how is has that worked out for you? Um it did work out okayish I would say. I think um it's I posted it on on Instagram and on on Tik Tok and also uh tried to post one or two of those on Reddit and um other social media platforms and um it worked out fine. I got some people who who then learned about certain parts of the app that they didn't know about it. Um, but I think it was definitely valuable for me to do as also to get more into

1:20:36editing and be better at that. And so you built those? Yeah, I did build those. So what did you use for that? So for for the initial for the app preview, I have um Final Cut lying around. Um Okay. And uh used that. But for the the latest two videos, I used uh Reveo. I think Reveo it's spoken out. Let me check. Um, I'll include I'll include a link in the in the show notes as well. I was mostly curious just because like Yeah, it's funny. It's not like it was over hyper polished or something, but it had that like like I said like that house style of these

1:21:14vertical mobile game like promo ad things and so I was curious like what you use for that like even just the voice like that it stood out to me. Yeah. Yeah. the there is on in the so one videos of those I made with the Tik Tok editor and that is the basic Tik Tok voice in there. Okay. But uh Rio has um has also bunch of different voices and one is called David uh and he's an UK old male guy which sounds like David Edinburghough and that is ah that's yeah that's perfect fora yeah for the art of fauna. So, I used that for the latest video and even

1:21:57though it didn't get a lot of uh attention the video, it was just super fun to make and I definitely will you're doing those. That's awesome. All right. Well, uh we are we are approaching the end here. So, uh I will end by asking the question that I always ask to end the show, which is uh which is uh what's a person or people out there that have inspired you that

1:22:20you'd recommend others check out? So, um I prepared for this question and um it's I mean I have a bunch of people lined up there who I'm not going to uh talk more about because there are episodes with them of the launch podcast like uh like Leo Yordi or Ha. Um especially Ha's work I've been following for a while now and I'm always impressed with with the things that he does. So definitely worth checking him out. Um then also um I really enjoy the work of Andy Allen from um the not boring apps because I think he definitely does uh things differently and like just pushes the

1:23:10boundaries of what apps can look like and feel like especially like um much of the sound design and haptic design that I did. Oh yeah, we didn't even get into that. uh we won't talk about it, but yeah, if you haven't already downloaded Artifa, uh well, for one, what are you doing? But do it just to experience the like like the cozy vibes, the sound design of as you're moving things around, the kind of constant ambient sound. It's just chef's guest. It's very, very, very good. Thank you. I had help with that by Josh Moy who also did sound effects for um for Fantastical for

1:23:51example or flighty and many famous apps. So he's really really good at what he does and um made the the sound design there but I definitely was inspired by the work from uh from Andy at the not boring apps. Yeah. And so definitely follow what he's doing because it's very interesting. I need I need to get him I need to get him on the show. Uh Andy, if

1:24:17you're listening, tell me. And the the person I definitely want to talk about is Frederick um from One Tech. Uh who you also should get on the show sooner or later. Um because I I met Frederick also in 2015 at the very first Dubdub. He was a scholar there and he is I think the person who had the most scholarships uh ever. So I think he was there with five or six times um with scholarships and so he was always around there and we became friends over the years. We are also um now always traveling to adopt the DC together and yeah I'm just very impressed what he did

1:25:01with one sec especially and with um es especially his approach about bringing in um a scientist to study the users or study the interaction of one sec and that's a very different approach of how most people build apps and how most people like um analyze their data um doing actual science with it and that all all things that he did does around one sec and also with his other apps but um one sec in particular just fascinates me and super amazing and you should definitely bring it on to a show sooner or later. Yes, he needs also if you're listening Frederick uh call me. Yes, I

1:25:48both of them uh have been as as I always say on my list for a while, but I Yes, I definitely need to make that happen. Yes, you should. Awesome. Well, those are those are uh excellent picks. Uh I appreciate that. And yes, everybody should be following all of those people uh uh and like checking out their apps cuz yeah, especially that group. I feel like it's there's certain people who are good to follow online because they're sharing lots of advice and stuff and then there's other people where yes that's true but also it's just like just download their apps and like tinker and play with them to uh

1:26:31to try and solve a problem like I was I'll just pitch it really quick because you know this is my show and I can abuse it but I just released a Mac app uh called Frameus. You should go download it. Uh, but I had never built a Mac app before and it's slightly embarrassing how much time I spent analyzing Helm uh uh by Ha

1:26:52and Paul uh who also I haven't had on. Maybe I should just have both of them on to talk about Helm because that almost deserves its own episode. But anyway, that Mac app is just a great Mac app and it's in the Mac App Store so I know it's all stuff that you can do. Uh cuz the Mac's always weird because there's like who how many people are hacking things or whatever and just like being able to just play around and see how people solved different problems or what they did uh is super inspiring. And that list like Leo, Yordi, Ha, Andy, and Frederick, it's like all their apps are

1:27:26just very solid thought through all the details type apps uh that they that they all make. And so yeah, that's a good list. Yeah. Cool. Well, um I guess I'll I'll go ahead and land the plane here. So, where can people find you and your work? Um on I'm on basically all the social media sites that are now around. So, um on Blue Sky mostly, so I post most of the stuff there, but I also cross-ost the other founder stuff on Twitter. I have um also Masterone channel that I should use more often and um I have a website uh which is uh straasa.app. You can link

1:28:12on that um which lists up all my apps there and yeah live journal uh handle. Um what live journal was that not a thing? Uh is what what's life journal? It's like pre It's like pre MySpace. Uh no, I'm curious if it's still around. My uh we we had a a similar thing called Shulafet in uh in Germany, Austria thing. Those were my first um social media things, but never heard of I didn't actually have one. I was I was just finding the most obscure one I could ask for. Uh awesome. Uh, and I guess I'll I'll try this again here and just play it out

1:29:03live instead of do a pre-recorded thing. So, uh, this is the end of the episode. If you want to find more Launch, you can go to launchedfm.com. Uh, and I also am on all of the social media uh, that exists out there, including the one that probably just released tomorrow. Uh, so usually it's launched FM or uh, just launched on Macedon, I think, but everywhere else it's launched FM. Blue Sky, I guess, is launched fm.com. But yeah, you can find me and then you can find me uh at charliemchapman just about everywhere except for Twitter, which is

1:29:36still_chucky. [Music]