Art of Fauna

Pigeon Post #7: Highlights of 2025, what's next, and a survey!

Ooooh well. This pigeon went on a big detour.

The newsletter was supposed to be sent out two weeks ago. But when I was about to click send, it hit over 1,000 subscribers! Which is incredible - Thank you from the bottom of my heart for it 🫶

Buuuut my newsletter provider had a hard paywall when hitting this limit, forcing me to either pay ~1,000€ each year to continue with it, or change provider. I chose the latter. 🫣

Setting it up took longer, the holidays came around, I had a tad bit too much food and had to lie down for a while, but now I'm back for an end-of-year newsletter! So lets start right into it!

In the last pigeon post, I already revealed that Apple has nominated Art of Fauna for the App Store Awards in the Cultural Impact category.

What I couldn't share back then is that this nomination also came with an invite to an Apple event in Los Angeles. So on November 28th, I hopped on a plane to the City of Angels and spent the weekend exploring before the Apple event.

I had a lovely time, walking for hours around Santa Monica and Venice Beach, going to a game of the LA Lakers, and hiking to the Griffith Observatory and Hollywood Sign.

The big highlight was the Los Angeles Public Library, which was one of the most fascinating buildings I've ever visited. My fiancé can confirm that I won't stop rambling about it.

The week after, the Apple event(s) happened. During the first one, it was revealed to me that I'm actually not a finalist anymore, but that Art of Fauna WON the App Store Award. Moments later, I was holding this almost 3kg-heavy trophy in my hand.

Writing this still feels surreal. Apple is only giving out two kinds of awards every year to app creators: the Apple Design Award and the App Store Award. Art of Fauna, my little puzzle game, which was developed in my freaking bedroom, has won both of them in the first year of its release. Insane.

Besides some press meetings, there was also an event with content creators, where all winners could show off their apps and games. If you want to get a glimpse into that, you can watch the video below.

The best part of this trip was that I could hang out with so many lovely people.

I spent a lot of time with Michael, a fellow Austrian and developer of Porta Nubi and winner of the Apple Vision Pro Game of the Year.

I also chatted a lot with the developers of one of the best games I've played recently - DREDGE.

Developers of Essayist, CapWords, Tiimo, Chants of Senaar, Detail, and Focus Friends are just a few more I need to give a shout-out to.

Last but not least, I want to mention James and Explore POV - the Apple Vision Pro App of the Year. This was the most impressive experience I've had in a while, developed by a very lovely lad, his girlfriend, and their dog, Kipper. He said that one of them is mainly sleeping through the development, without specifying who he meant 😉

I can really encourage you to take a look at all the winners (and finalists!). So many good apps there.

I'm gonna keep it short, but What. A. Year.

I started development of Art of Fauna over three and a half years ago. But I took a long break after not getting funding for its development and focused on my day job at Nuki and maintaining other projects.

In 2024 though, I took the leap, left my day job, and tried to finally get it into releasable shape. I really hoped that Art of Fauna could somehow work out and support me financially throughout the year. But I could never have dreamed how well Art of Fauna would be received.

It started with an incredible launch, where so many people helped me to spread the word. It then got some great news coverage and reviews, including a 9/10 rating from Pocket Gamer.

Apple also played a huge part, featuring the app on the App Store multiple times and then awarded me with these aforementioned awards.

And most importantly, I got soooooo many lovely emails and reviews from you. 🫶

What does it mean in numbers?

You can put an Over in front of all of the following numbers

• 300,000 downloads
• 2.5 million puzzles solved
• 13,500 ratings on the App Store, still with 4.9 out of 5 stars ⭐
• $16,000 in donations collected 🫶

And what about content?

Art of Fauna launched with 110 puzzles, but has now 168 puzzles. This is an increase of more than 50% from the launch! It’s an odd number though, so let's break it down:

• 4 bonus packs were released for free to everyone who bought the bundle, adding a total of 40 new puzzles.
• Friends of Fauna was launched, bringing this community together and spawning 7 more puzzles.
• The collaboration with the WCS Archives about the Hudson Canyon brought 6 puzzles.
• During Easter, I hid 5 eggs in the app, unlocking a puzzle for each one found.

What is next? Well, this brings us to our next section.

Last time, I already spoke about Art of Flora. This is the botanical sibling app that will launch in March 2026. If you haven't pre-ordered it yet, you can do so now for free!

But what about Art of Fauna? There are two updates planned for January and February respectively:

Language update for Japanese and Korean 🇯🇵 🇰🇷

I started with the localisation into Japanese and Korean, and parts of it are already released. But I'm only starting advertising it as soon as everything is in place and they have been proofread. Expect this update in late January.

Adding languages is always a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it makes it accessible to more people. But on the other, it slows down releasing puzzles for everyone else, as the new puzzles have to be translated for all languages first. I know people also want to see a better French and Spanish localisation, plus Portuguese and Italian, and all of that will happen eventually 🥹

First anniversary 🎂

On February 3rd, Art of Fauna is turning one! 🥳

To celebrate, I want to add another puzzle pack with 10 B-Sides puzzles. These puzzles have been created during the development, but had had to be cut out for various reasons. Like the American White Pelican, which was planned for Big Sur. I then found out that Brown Pelicans are far more common in the region, so I replaced that puzzle.

Expect this update on February 3rd 2026.

Beyond 🔮

You probably know that 20% of all proceeds are donated. If you look up the amount of donations collected this year, which I mentioned above, you can do the maths of how much money Art of Fauna made so far.

It's an incredible amount of money for me. Especially knowing that it's made by doing what I love. 🫶 But honestly, it won't sustain me for a long time. If I want to continue to put work into Art of Fauna and add more content to it, I need a way to support that work financially.

Subscriptions are the obvious solution for this, but I explicitly decided against doing them because I'm also not a huge fan of them. And subscriptions are off the table for now.

So the most sensible solution in my eyes is to do a second season of puzzles next year, as an optional paid extension. Let me elaborate.

Season 2 would be similar to the first one. So it would consist of five puzzle packs with 20 puzzles each on launch and cost around $8.99, with 20% again being donated. More, smaller puzzle packs would be added for free in the course of a year.

Which puzzle packs, you ask? The most requested one is one about dinosaurs.

While all packages in Art of Fauna require me to research both pictures and the animals depicted on them, for the Dinosaur package, I would need to actually hire someone to create the drawings. Our scientific knowledge about those creatures has evolved extremely over the last couple of years, so historical drawings of them are not accurate enough to use. So for this package to happen, I really need to do a paid extension.

Side node: I'm currently in discussion with one, but if you happen to be a Paleoartist, or know one, please reach out to me.

Another package I really want to make is Madagascar.

I recently stumbled upon the book series L'Histoire physique, naturelle et politique de Madagascar and it is incredible. Here is one drawing out of it:

Asia wasn't granted a puzzle pack yet, so one will definitely focus on this continent. There are many interesting regions/countries, but Borneo is a very strong contender there.

I would also love to explore the possibility of doing a Japanese or Chinese package with historical images from artists of those regions. I haven't found many yet, though, besides the art of Ohara Koson. If you have any pointers, please let me know!

Nothing is set in stone yet. And I would like your honest opinion on this matter. So below is a link for a survey, asking you mainly two questions:

• What puzzle packages would you like to see in a second season?
• Would you pay for an extra season / extra content?

If the outcome of the latter question is an overwhelming no, then I have to consider if there are other ways to financially support Art of Faunas’ further development. If not, content will still arrive, but it will happen at a much slower pace as I need to shift more time to other projects.

But let's see! I will present the results of this in the next newsletter! 💌

For now, I say thank you so much for reading the newsletter and your continuing support. Have an amazing start to the new year and see you in 2026! ♥️

Klemens

PS: As always, if you love The Art of Fauna, then please take a minute and leave a review on the App Store. This helps a lot with getting found by other people.

Thanks! 💚