Let’s get into it!

Post release of my first commercial game.

This year was a big year for me because it was the first time I had to handle a game after its release. Fallacy Quiz released at the really end of 2024. I spent most of the beginning of the year trying to market the game and share it around with my limited abilities, I’m new to the trade.

Since the release version of the game was made for steam I also spent quite some time on making steam related features available for non steam versions of the game, especially achievements.

The sales were slowing down and my marketing efforts were not really paying off (I was sending keys to all main publications, but most of them might have ended up as junk mail since I’m just a solodev…) The game sold okay, but it was not a clear success. When suddenly, everything changed, Northerlion picked up the game out of nowhere and streamed some gameplay of it, and then released multiple videos of that gameplay.

It was a turning point for the game because it gave it a lot of exposure. A lot of fellow gamedevs reached out to congratulate me, (even if the game was already out and I did not do anything more to get Northernlion to play it lol). Northernlion’s gameplay was funny and he was critical of the game but also showed really well how the game can challenge you and your thinking processes. I’m really thankful that he linked the steam page of the game in the description because a lot of people don’t and it’s really a night and day difference when it happens. People actually go and check the steam pages!

I’m so glad that my work paid off. The fact that Northernlion picked up my game is luck for the most part, but the fact that the game was appreciated and people picked it up after seeing him play is thanks to all my efforts.

Following Northernlion’s videos I decided it was a good idea to react to his gameplay not only to answer some of his comments, but also to give people a chance to know that the game was just made by me, a French solo dev and maybe follow me for my future creations if they liked this one.

It was a big endeavor for me because I’m not used to editing videos, and this one was a 2 hours long react that I needed to compress down a lot. I even did two reacts in the end and it was a great success, the videos got tens of thousands of views and the feedback was great. People were pleased to see the dev reacting to their favorite creator.

It’s a great segue to talk about video making!

Relaunch of my youtube channel

It was important for me to get back to making videos on my youtube channel, I unlisted most of my existing videos to start fresh and my goal was to make videos frequently. The first video was a video to celebrate the 8 years of the nintendo switch, I did not know at the time the hostile to consumer strategies nintendo was planning for the switch 2, so I regret a bit the enthusiastic tone of this video. But it was a great way to try and create some content for this channel.

Then, as I said before, I reacted to Northernlion’s gameplay of my game, two 40 minutes videos that got a lot views. It was a success but it also burnt me a bit since I’m not really enjoying the long editing process that comes with this.

I did not publish other videos this year even if the plan was really to make it a frequent thing, and I think that the monthly updates here are at fault a bit. I had a way to share things and did not feel the need to express myself on video. That’s one of the reason why I decided that for 2026, I will only have a post here every quarter with links to my content, hopefully to videos.

My plan is still to make videos frequently. I worked a lot to make that happen, I upgraded my whole setup to make that possible.

The year of the never ending hardware upgrades

Thanks to the well needed funds I got from the sales of my first game, I did what I always do, invest back into myself.

I finally got a new CPU after like 8 years, and that meant getting a new mother-board and such. 2 months later, I decided to buy more RAM since it was preventing me from working on large video projects, I’m really glad I bought RAM at that point since the price more than quadrupled since.

Later on I bought new storage and at the end of December I bought a 5060 ti 16GO, I heard that the price would explode so I preferred to get it now. I was right, since now it’s 200 bucks more expansive. I wanted a new CPU at the beginning of the year and now, all the PC parts are new.

Exactly like in the ship of Theseus tale, I was able to build back my old computer piece by piece, and I have now a spare computer in case there is anything wrong on my current computer.

But it doesn’t stop here, I got a lot of little things, some key pads and keyboards to add macros to my workflow, new displays etc.

The best item I acquired is a samsung tablet, to level up my drawing game. I first got a cheap one, only to do some training on it, but I was loving it so much that I upgraded to a flagship one from 2 years ago, and it’s really good.

Getting back into drawing seriously

I’m using krita on android and I was able to quickly improve my drawing skills through the second part of the year.

I opened an account to be able to share my work without caring to much about it, you can check it out here: https://bsky.app/profile/tk-art.bsky.social

I’m planning to include my own drawings in my future game so I need to be good at it.

The next game.

And that’s the cherry on top of this update. Yes, even if I’ve been actively supporting Fallacy Quiz through the year, with a massive update last September, I’ve also been working on my next project. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share it yet, but if you are this far into the post, I think I can share it with you, the game will be called “Quick! Save the world.” and will be a mini game collection like game.

It’s not polished yet but I already have more than ten minigames and I’m going to share more about the game soon. I want to create a page and officially announce it in the following weeks to be able to work on it in the open, getting back into live streaming the development and sharing some behind the scene videos.

And here’s the last thing I wanted to share, my best work from December, the logo itself, that will be on the titlescreen, in 3D and animated.

I hope you are hyped for this new project as much as I am.

Thanks to all the work accomplished in 2025, I feel like I have everything I need to work on my next game and future creations. Let’s get back to it, thanks for reading this update and see you next quarter!

The logo

For the time being, I’m not sure I want to share too much, so I added the logo and a 3-minute timelapse of the making of the logo that took 21 hours to make (yes I recorded 21 hours of inkscape footage) as an exclusive post for the patreon members.

Watch the 3 minute timelapse

Don’t worry, it’ll be announced pretty soon, but I want to reveal everything at the same time.

Wait… But since it’s what took me most of my time this month… I don’t have a lot to show for this monthly update, right?

Except, I also worked a lot on my drawings again!

Drawing improvements

As I said previously, I’m practicing a lot to improve my drawing abilities in the hopes that I’ll be able to use my own drawings in my next game.

At some point this month I thought I found a good style for the game:

But turns out, nope, I still need to improve and search for other styles.

I did make my best drawings from reference up to this day, and that gave me a lot of confidence:

I’ll continue working on my drawings, I think there’s a long way to go still, but I can see that I clearly improved over the past 6 months, so it’s encouraging.

You can follow my progress on my dedicated accounts:

Fediverse/mastodon (pixelfed) https://pixelfed.fr/tk-art
Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/tk-art.bsky.social

New minigame

Oh and I did add a new minigame to my game, we finally have 10 minigames. This time it’s a bit of subversion of expectations, you just have to watch the sunset, that’s it!

I also worked on the game’s minigame selection screen. Again, I’ll share more once the game is actually announced.

Some other stuff I want to share

I worked on Fallacy Quiz a bit to make it easier to work on the text content, I hope I’ll be able to explain why soon :).

I got a walking pad to make the long days in front of the screen a little healthier, I’ll tell you what I think about it next month. For now, I like it a lot.

I got multiple games I wanted to get for a long time to have fun, but also to get inspired. Caravan Sandwitch, the plucky squire and also the latest super monkey ball game.

I played a good chunk of Caravan Sandwitch so far and it’s a really interesting experience. I like the vibe a lot.

It was a short month for my game dev work because I had a lot of other things to do. I give Maths lessons and had a busy month on that front, with a new student, and I also worked on other stuff, that would be boring to talk about here.

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December already started and with the end of the year celebrations it might be a short month too. I hope future me will be able to have a lot to tell you about next month’s achievements. Thanks for reading, Happy Holidays, see you at the end of the month!

(I’m writing this in a hurry because I want to get it out at least at Dec. 10th, those updates are supposed to be each month lol)

Inktober is a yearly challenger where you are supposed to make one drawing each day for a month.

I lasted for the first nine days and stopped after that point, but it was a really good exercise. Here are the best drawings I made in my opinion.

And finally, this one is the first one I’m really really proud of, but it took me like 4 hours.

All of this is possible because of the new tablet I bought to draw. I tried using it more, for instance I tried doing some paintings on it, for instance this one:

I still have a hard time keeping the same look to a character from drawing to drawing, but I’m working on that to be able to use my drawings in my next game in visual novel parts of the game.

This was it for inktober. I might join again next year, it was challenging but I’m sure I could be able to do the whole month if I’m a bit more prepared.

Work on the next game

I’m working actively on the next game now, I added two new minigames to the mix.

The first minigame is the one I started a couple of month ago, I shared that I made a trashbin model. Now the minigame is complete, it’s a waste sorting minigame!

Making the game functional was quick, but I took some time making it look good. It looked like this initially.

I reused some illustrations from Fallacy Quiz, modified some of them and had to add others.

Since I want the game to run on really low end machines, here’s how I made the reflections work using a good ol’ trick:

The second minigame I made this month is about bad thoughts. You have to literally get rid of bad thoughts using your mouse as if they were pesky bugs!

I also started implementing transitions between minigames. Right now is just a circle that opens and closes. But the basics are now there for future transitions that I might want to add.

That’s pretty much it for this month! Nothing too spooky for this year’s Halloween unfortunately, I’ll try to do better next year.

See you next month!

Each time I postpone the monthly update to include one more thing in it, I think it will take a couple of days and it ends up taking more like a couple of weeks.

But not this time, I finally released Fallacy Quiz 1.2 update on Monday on Steam (announcement) and today on Itchio (announcement)!

But before we talk about that, let’s talk about the viral post I made!

I saw a post showing the 3 blue 1 brown videos about machine learning sped up, praising the channel. And it sure is a great channel. But, it gave me an idea. So I took some time and make this video:

https://bsky.app/profile/timkrief.com/post/3lyxkhf3zns2a

It had 10k likes, it’s my biggest post there yet and I’m really glad because it’s telling me that I’m not the only one having an issue about where “tech” is going right now. I even got noticed by Freya Holmér! Go check out her video about AI!

It was also big on mastodon:

https://framapiaf.org/@timkrief/115214486014564633

And it even got shared by Jeff Atwood? co-founder stackoverflow.com, discourse.org, blogger, strange lol

Fallacy Quiz update

Let’s talk about that big free update. It’s been truly inspiring to see studios like Hello Games making big updates for their game No Man’s Sky roughly a decade after the game came out. I want to maintain and improve my games long term too. I want to live up to that standard. Of course I hope the projects success will be enough to let that happen.

This update is not just small fixes, it’s a lot of new features. I hope it will push existing players to rate the game positively and talk about the game and push other people to get the game. But let’s be honest, most of those free updates are mostly motivated by love for the craft and don’t always make sense, at least in the short term.

Anyways, you can read the official announcement with all the details on Steam and on Itchio.

With this update I tried something new, I pushed the update to a beta branch on steam and people were able to try the update before the official release. And I’m so glad the game as a bit of a following since a couple of people actually tried it using this beta and reported issues that I’ve been able to fix.

It’s getting easier

Each time, releasing is easier. My tools are getting better. My organization is improving. I know what to do. It’s honestly encouraging. I’m solo, but I’m getting better so the tasks ahead are less and less intimidating each time.

It’s funny because when you start you don’t care about what obstacle are waiting for you, you think you’ll be able to tackle them no matter what. Then you start to really discover what it is all about, what the scale of what you have to do and learn to do really is and it can get paralyzing.

So you are really productive at the start and then you are getting less and less optimistic and hesitate about going further. This can make you way less productive. If you think you have what it takes you really have to stay strong and go pass that phase where you learn about all the obstacles ahead.

After making Fallacy Quiz, and actually going through all the steps of the release, including post launch and maintaining it, I think I’m finally done learning about new obstacles. I’m now ready to tackle the next project with clarity and confidence.

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Hope you liked that little update! I might join inktober so hopefully I’ll have nice sketches to share next month. Bye!

What happened in August? It’s a small month since I took some days off in the first weeks. But then I made a new mini game. You have to highlight a quote from some lorem ipsum. You only have few seconds to find the quote in the book and highlight it. It was easy to make, but a pain to get to work with a controller.

I also started working on another mini game that will be around sorting trash.

I had to stop to focus on Fallacy Quiz. I wanted to get the update out for “Back to School”, but it turns out it’s the first time I’m make such a big update and it’s the first time I have to test the build through Steam after the release, so it makes it a bit tricky for me. I missed my target date but I hope I can release before October.

I’m also drawing a lot, I really want to have an okay level at drawing to be able to make the drawings for my next game, here’s my best work so far.

Finally I’m working on my next youtube video. Remember at the start of the year when I wanted to have one video each month at least? Yeah, we’re not there yet. I released only three videos. But I still want to reach that goal, I still want to make videos on a regular basis.

We’re finally out of the summer, so let’s get back to work. See you next month!

In my next game, there will be some story elements and I wanted to be able to have dialogs.

I decided that I would use the dialogic plugging. The thing is, I had to make sure it had all the features I needed. One of them was missing. I wanted to be able to translate the dialog text directly in godot without having to use a CSV file. I spent some days working on a fork of dialogic that would make that possible. It seems like it’s working so I made a pull request and who knows, maybe it’ll be included in dialogic, I hope it will.

Once I confirmed that dialogic would be the thing I would use for the dialog sequences in my game, I made multiple test dialogs to try and make sure thing were working correctly, and that it would fit well in my game.

I also bought a bunch of fonts from VEXED and I intend to use a different font for each character to give them different feels / vibes that would match them.

Here’s a basic test I made using that and it looks great.

I started working on the characters and on the storyline, but I don’t want to share too much about those aspects.

Usually at this stage of production, I have fancy things to show, but this time I’m not prioritizing things looking good first, I’m making the game properly. I don’t want to waste time making things look good too early, to have to make them all over again later.

I made people try the game and they loved it! So, I think gameplay is working. I’m proceeding with that game project, I have a great feeling about it!

That’s it for July updates! A lot of tests, a lot of prototyping and a lot of setting things up. It doesn’t make for a colorful and fancy month update, but it’s needed to make sure the game will be solid. Have a nice month of august and see you around!

June felt so short, here’s what happened for me:

Northern Lion React Part 2

I finally finished editing this second part of the react to Northernlion’s let’s play of my game. I think I’ll think twice next time before starting video projects that are longer than 10 minutes. It’s taking so much time to make.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTEHF39Cvjw

Two new mini games

I’m not yet working full time on the next project, but I managed to add two new mini games to it.

The first one is a mini game where you have to break pesky drones with your flying disk.

I made the illustrations in Krita and the animation in Godot.

The second one is a mini game where you have to turn off all the lights in your house.

It’s all the dev work I’ve made in June. Yeah, it was a light month!

ART – learning to draw for my next game

As I said in may’s update, I got myself a table to improve my drawing skill. Here are some results from the month.

That’s it for this month. It was a short one. Honestly, I’m really looking forward to being able to fully focus on my next project, project updates will be more interesting then. See you next month!

We made a game, go try it!

First off, the reason why this update is a bit late is that I wanted to wait for the game jam I joined in may to end. We teamed up with Tibo and Pierre to join the thatgamecompany × COREBLAZER GAME JAM 2025. The theme was “Generosity” and we decided to go for a bird simulation where you have to take care of yourself and your peers before the migration.

What’s cool is that you can try the game right now here! https://gtibo.itch.io/bird-society

It was the first time I participated to a game jam in a team and it was really interesting and informative. It’s a bit tiring to be a solo game dev because you rarely talk about your work with anyone, and few people talk to you about your field. This game jam was great to learn how other people work, to share ideas, etc.

I had a great time but 3 weeks was a bit too long for my liking, it’s a bit hard to dedicate as much time to a project that’ll just be released for free, when it’s so tricky to even make a living as an indie game dev. That’s one of the reason why I don’t do a lot of game jams anymore, the other one being that it feels like it reproduces the crunch culture.

Anyways, I was glad to meet Pierre and be able to work alongside him and Tibo, I think we made a nice little game that we can be proud of.

Updates to my setup:

1) A cheap macro pad

I bought a little NumPad and made a python script to do whatever I want with the buttons. I started using it to have access to usual keyboard shortcuts I need in when using my graphics tablet without breaking my shoulder.

But things escalated quickly because I started creating different modes, for instance, a mode for editing videos in Kdenlive.

Then, I found a way to also use it as a normal numpad easily. It was quite easy to make one of those modes be “just be a numpad”. What’s cool is that I was now able to use a smaller keyboard since I didn’t need the numpad part anymore! You can see how much space it frees for my mouse!

I love this little thing and it was only 13€. The only downside is that it’s too customizable so I have to stop myself from tweaking it all the time!

2) A tablet?

Yes, I bought myself a tablet, a Tab S6 Lite. I never thought I would buy a tablet, but I want to draw more digitally and drawing at my desk is not fun. I found this one second hand at 130€, and it comes with a stylus. I spent a lot of time setting it up without any of the google or samsung online services. I mainly use it with krita and it’s a really great experience.

I think I’m going to create a dedicated account on mastodon and on bluesky to share my art progress, I’ll let you know

The NorthernLion react was a success

Last month I published my react to Northernlion’s let’s play of my game and it was a success, it got 60k views, 3k likes and some people subscribed to my channel. A lot of people in the comment asked for me to also react to Northernlion’s second video so I did it, but I still have to edit the video, I did not have much time to do it with the gamejam. You can expect to see that video pretty soon on my channel.

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That’s it for my work for this month! I also started, and finished the game Outer Wilds. At the time of its release, I heard about how good it was and I was a bit suspicious, but no, now that I tried it, it’s true, it’s a masterpiece.

June already started but I’ll try to make the most out of the remaining days, see you for the next update!

Fallacy Quiz is a success?

On April first, I wake up to unexpected numbers on Fallacy Quiz’s stats page. So unexpected that I thought it was a bug at first. But it wasn’t a bug, it was a 800K followers twitch streamer playing my game out of absolutely nowhere, Northernlion. He later on released two or three videos of the stream on his 1.2M subscribers youtube channel. One of them was viewed more than 200K times. It brought a lot of attention to the game!

I made a react video if you are interested about that:

It’s a bit weird since I was supposed to release an update pretty soon, I postponed the update because this new crowd came with some good criticism and I need to spend some time to take that into account for the next release.

Fallacy Quiz sold more than 1000 copies now and has 50 positive reviews on Steam. From my point of view, it’s now starting to reach my expectations, event if doesn’t reach what it would need to make it viable yet since the game took a full year to make. However, I’m now convinced that by supporting it in the long run, it will reach that viability point. In other words, I made a game and it works. It’s an amazing thought, and it motivates me to work on the next one.

The react video

I wanted to post this post after my react video, but things got in the way and editing the video took more time than expected, so that’s why I’m posting this post only now. But at least, I have a video to share for this post and I think it’s a fun one! It already has 2k likes!

New mini-game for my next game

This month I worked on a new mini-game where you have to vote! You just have to put a ballot into an envelope it’s as simple as that! At least it was, because after making and rigging a hand in 3D and a way to control it in-game, I started working on an ambitious system to be able to fold the ballot in 3D. Now you have to perfectly fold the ballot in half to be able to put it into the enveloppe. I have an entire thread about the making of this that you can check here (mastodon) or here (bluesky)

Here’s the final result:

Fallacy Quiz OST is out?

It’s funny to think about it, but people actually asked for the OST of Fallacy Quiz to be released and Earl20 was kind enough to release it on YouTube. You can check it out here.

New monitor!

As I told you last month, one of my new monitors died, and in the end I wasn’t able to save it, so I got a new monitor. It’s a 1440p screen. I hope this one will last more than the previous one. The good side of this is that this one is brighter, making it easier to work without having to close the window if it’s sunny outside.

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I think that’s pretty much all I can share with you for now, even if I can’t wait to reveal more about the next project. I might do a patron only post to get the supporters in the know

I’ll try to publish the post for this month on time. Hope you’re all doing well, have a nice month!