Small wins of an indie developer 🥹

For some, it’s just another purchase. For me, it’s a reminder that all those late nights coding are worth it.

Sometimes it’s the little things that keep you going. ❤️

The App Store is changing.

AI has made app development easier, but we’re also seeing more generic apps, unfinished products, and aggressive paywalls.

AI speeds up development, but it doesn’t replace responsibility for quality.

Will stricter reviews improve the situation?

Mostly keeping the character consistent across all 8 frames. Preserving the original proportions and details during movement was the hardest part. Pixel cleanup was necessary too, of course.

Here's a look at the animation frames in the editor.

Sporehold is now listed in Awesome Flame-the official collection of Flutter+Flame Engine projects.

I added my game because it showcases Flame’s potential for turn-based strategy games.

The repository features many great games and apps, and I’m happy to see Sporehold among them

I’ve always built mobile apps, while game dev felt way too complex — sprites, animations, art… it seemed impossible without a team.

AI lowered that barrier, and Flame let me stay with Flutter.

3 months of solo dev later, my childhood dream is now in App Store review 🙂

Working on Sporehold, and the game is slowly growing its own world and lore.

As an experiment, I turned a piece of the Purple Plague story into a comic 😅

Probably won’t be in the final game, but I like it as extra art for the world 👀

Sporehold is slowly becoming more than just a battle system 🍄

Added a character library with stats, abilities, and a bit of lore for each hero.

The world is finally starting to come together.

The UI is slowly becoming more than just a list 😅

Put together the map selection screen for Sporehold. For now, I’m only working on the first chapter — the rest are placeholders to preview the future structure.

But visually, it already feels so much better.

Expectation: “I build apps. How hard can making a game be?”

Reality: The programming language is basically the only familiar part. Everything else is a whole different world.

Deadlines: completely destroyed 😅
Flame + Flutter for game dev: absolutely loving it.

App review went through suspiciously fast.

Saturday evening. Reviewer was probably rushing to a party 😅

Younger devs barely touch Stack Overflow anymore. Dev is turning into dry code generation ☠️

We used to argue for hours: tabs vs spaces, Vim vs IDE, and the eternal "duplicate of a 2011 question."

Miss those debates, or does AI cover it now?

+$215 from last month.

Progress. A bit more and I'll be able to pay for both Claude and Codex 😅

Back from vacation. Deliberately left the laptop at home and didn't open RevenueCat or App Store Connect once.

Turns out when you stop looking at your apps every day, you come back seeing them differently. You notice things that used to feel normal.

One year since SensePad launched.

Started as a small utility to check PS5 controller buttons. Now — vibration tests, stick drift detection, trigger and LED checks, and two mini-games.

31.2K downloads in a year. No ads, all organic.

App review: 10 minutes. Reviewer clearly decided I'd suffered enough with past rejections 😅

Feels like most mobile app ideas have already been done in some form.

Thinking about games instead. But curious if it's the same there big studios dominating, hard to come up with something new?

Anyone tried solo game dev?What did you build with, and did it actually make money?

Another Apple payout landed: $388.

Last month was $397, so technically I’m down $9.
Sounds sad until you remember that last month was up $218 from the month before.
So my official position: not declining, just consolidating.

Anyone used In-App Events in the App Store?

Curious whether they actually move the needle for small indie apps, or if it's mostly a big game/service thing.

Used Firebase for analytics for a long time. Are there good free alternatives for iOS apps?

What are you using?

Looked into how iOS review prompts work.

3 times per year max. iOS controls whether it shows.

Trigger it at launch - one chance gone.

Using Handy for voice-to-text on Mac - runs locally, no cloud. What are you using? Looking for free local alternatives - privacy matters.

Noticed that existing users weren't picking up new features after updates.

Nobody reads "What's New" in the App Store. So I built a separate screen inside the app.

Shipped an update for Water Eject without checking the IAP status. "Remove Ads" was rejected, users tried to buy and couldn't.

+1 self-inflicted bug.

Interesting UX choice "Go Pro, 3 days free" as just a regular item in the main screen list.

A quiet reminder that a trial exists 🙂

Taking notes.

Claude for design is genuinely impressive.Too bad the limits run out faster than the ideas come 😅

How do you get users to leave App Store reviews or ratings?

In-app prompt, push, something else.

Share your secrets 😅

Updated Eye Exercises removed the subscription entirely.

Realized that for this type of app, people prefer a one-time purchase. Pay once and done.

Removed the subscription, lowered the price.

First purchase after the update same day 😅

Let's see what happens next.

Localizing an app to multiple languages.

Order: App Store page → screenshots → keywords.

Keywords last, they need ASO research per language to actually work.

Ideally ship it all with a new release.

Remember "I Am Rich"? $999 app that did nothing except show a glowing gem.

Apple actually approved it.

So, how do you actually decide on pricing for your app? Research competitors, gut feeling, something else?

+$218 from last month. New record. 🙂

Added a lifetime offer to SensePad - 33% off.

I show it once when a user hits the paywall twice and closes it without buying.

Curious about your experience - what discount worked for you? And how did you decide when to show the offer?

I tested one of my DualSense controllers in SensePad and found something interesting.

Compared to an older test, one sector of the right stick is noticeably weaker.

The weird part: I don't feel any issue in games yet.

Normal wear or time for maintenance? 👀

#PlayStation

Updated the SensePad icon.

It's the first thing people see before they even open the app.

Been wanting to do this for a while 🙂

May - $585 in sales. +36% from April. Personal record.Been adding new features all month, seems like it made a difference.

May 2026 - 4.94K downloads. +9.4% from the previous month.

Slow and steady.

Tried Google's Stitch AI UI design generator.

Generating from scratch: pretty solid.

Redesigning existing screens: not great. Though that might be a prompting problem on my end.

One thing I noticed when generating multiple states, it sometimes adds elements that don't belong.

There's a moment when your app stops being a hobby and becomes a product.

For me it was an email from a user asking for help connecting a Chinese gamepad to test it with SensePad.

When was that moment for you? First payment, first review, something else?

Astro is my main ASO tool. But RespectASO caught my attention. Most tools show keyword popularity as a number. RespectASO estimates it from the competitive landscape who's ranking, how strong they are. Makes sense. Apple doesn't publish search volumes.

Apple Developer membership renewed.
Year one in the books.
$1.64K in proceeds. Slowly, but up.
Onto year two.

Me and bro working the warehouse night shift in 2030 😆
youtube.com/watch?v=luU57h…

Thought my aim was getting worse for months 😭Turns out my left stick looked like this.

Built a calm iOS app for short eye-break sessions during screen-heavy days.
Eye Exercises: Focus Routine has guided sessions, reminders, custom routines, and simple progress tracking.
Wanted it to feel like a quiet daily utility, not another loud productivity app.

What I see vs what I feel!

Cleaning a controller is the best time to remember SensePad exists.
Took it apart, dug out the dust (and a bit of shame).
Put it back together → ran the tests → all good.
Confirmed I didn’t break anything.

Apple just confirmed my Small Business Program enrollment.
Commission is now 15% instead of 30%.
Sharing because I only got the confirmation today.
If you’re under $1M/year, you can apply too.

Release isn’t the end of the work it’s the moment the work becomes real.
Before release you’re guessing. After release you can actually see: where people get stuck, what’s unnecessary, what breaks, what was needed “yesterday”.

Anyone using Apphud?
What’s better/worse compared to RevenueCat?
I’m on RevenueCat just curious if there are any noticeable advantages.

App Store paid out.
Now I’m officially an indie who actually makes some money.
It’s funny and kinda nice.

Feels like another level of abstraction.

We used to write assembly.
Then higher-level languages.
Then frameworks.

This might just be the next step.

Notifications that make my heart beat faster.