The story

In the evening, when the house is asleep

By day, I work at a start-up. I spend my days solving problems: the customers’, the product’s, other people’s. It’s a great job. But for years, one urge went unanswered: building something of my own.

The urge to build, without the time to do it

Between work and two kids, there isn’t much left. In the evening, once the night-light is on and the door is ajar, the house goes quiet. It’s the most precious moment of the day, and the one we give away most easily: we pick up the phone “just to check”, the feed scrolls by, and when we look up, it’s midnight.

One evening, I put my phone face down on the desk and opened a code editor instead.

The endless feed never ends. A game does.

First, the household

I didn’t start with a game. I started with the problems right in front of me, at home. A to-do list for the household, turned into a game so everyone would want to pitch in. Then small tools for the family, like a screenless phone for the kids: a way to call mum and dad, with no endless feed attached.

Gamifying the chores taught me one thing: what makes you come back isn’t the notification, it’s a world you want to return to.

Ulduar, and the urge to build one

I’m a huge World of Warcraft fan. And if I could keep only one memory, it would be Ulduar: the city of the Titans, its immense halls, its bosses who each had their own personality, and those hard modes we triggered on purpose, just to see if we could. A place you didn’t want to leave.

That’s what I want to make: virtual worlds that make you want to dive in. A little, for one game. A lot, for a whole evening. Passionately, when you’re still thinking about it the next day.

One evening, one piece of a world

An evening isn’t much. Two hours, sometimes one, sometimes twenty minutes before falling asleep. So I break things down. One evening, a boss. One evening, a button that finally works. One evening, a piece of music. The next day, I pick up where I left off.

Put end to end, those short evenings made 6 games: a group dungeon action RPG, a roguelite set in the 90s, a strategy game in 1900 Paris, card duels in ink, a tower defense you draw in ballpoint pen, and a satire where you play the human resources AI.

The villain is called the Scroll

In Rembobine, a mom travels back through her childhood with a water gun to face the Scroll, the screen that never stops. That’s no accident. It’s the same fight as my evenings, only cuter and with more water balloons.

The other games are about other things, but they come from the same place: from what we loved as kids, from what we’d like to find on our phones instead of the endless feed. Games that end. Games you launch because you want to, not because a notification called you back.

Why a “studio”?

There’s no office, no investors, no team. There’s a start-up employee who comes home in the evening, a lamp, a computer and kids asleep in the next room. But a studio isn’t an address: it’s a way of working. Finishing what you start, caring about the details, and shipping the games.

Shipping them is actually the hardest part. Not because of the code: because of Apple.I explain here why several of these games are still waiting for their place on the App Store.

What you can do tonight

Play. Most of the games launch in your browser, with nothing to install. The others install on iPhone through TestFlight. And if you like a game, say so: a message, a share, a word to a friend. For a one-person studio, that’s what matters most.