Shipped with Helm: Art of Fauna

Oct 20, 2026 In the third Shipped with Helm interview, we talk to Klemens Strasser, the solo developer behind Art of Fauna and Art of Flora. He shares how he plans content updates around the calendar, nominates them to App Store Editorial months ahead, and keeps his release stack simple.

Third up is Klemens Strasser, a solo indie developer from Graz, Austria, and the maker of Art of Fauna, a cosy puzzle game about the wonders of the animal world that won an Apple Design Award for Inclusivity and an App Store Award for Cultural Impact, and its botanical sister app Art of Flora.

Can you tell us about your app and the team behind it?

I’m Klemens, I’m a solo indie developer from Graz in Austria and released a couple of apps over the last 11 years, most notably Art of Fauna. Art of Fauna is a cosy puzzle game about the wonders of the animal world. Similar to a jigsaw puzzle, you get a jumbled image of an animal and have to piece it back together.

Every image is paired with a description about the animal, which is printed on the back side of the image. So at any point, you can switch between the two sides and decide: reassemble the image and relax, or piece together the description and learn more about the animal. All images are from real historical books from the 18th and 19th century, so they are gorgeous and give the whole app a book-like feeling. And part of the proceeds are donated to wildlife conservation, which already helped put both a part of the rainforest in Costa Rica under protection, as well as a piece of land in the Austrian Alps.

Finally, there is a huge focus on accessibility in my work in general, but in Art of Fauna in particular. The mechanic I described before for switching between text and image side makes the game fully playable for blind people. But there are also other things, like phobia settings that allow you to turn off certain animals that you don’t want to see. These accessibility efforts are one of the reasons why Art of Fauna won the Apple Design Award in Inclusivity and the App Store Award in Cultural Impact, both in 2025!

Art of Fauna was recently released on Apple Arcade (as Art of Fauna: Cozy Puzzles+) and also got a botanical sister app this year, called Art of Flora. Same concept, just focused around plants instead of animals.

Klemens Strasser, the solo indie developer behind Art of Fauna and Art of Flora

What’s your workstation setup, and what’s in your dock?

Pretty boring to be honest. I have a MacBook Air from a couple of years ago that I love, especially because I travel a lot. And at home I have a Studio Display XDR on my chaotic desk.

As for my dock: Helm and Xcode, of course. Fork for Git. Affinity for cropping and adjusting the illustrations for Art of Fauna. Sketch for some UI work. Numbers as a dump for new content for Fauna. Ulysses for writing newsletters and talks. And Notes for all quick ideas that I need to jot down somewhere.

What’s not in the dock but in the toolbar is Yoink, an app that acts as a little tray for files when dragging them around. Can’t use a Mac without it anymore.

How do you plan your updates?

The main kind of updates for Fauna are content updates, so ones where new puzzles are delivered. I usually plan them around events like Earth Day, Halloween, Easter, Women’s History Month, Art of Fauna’s anniversary… which then already gives me an anchor for the content itself. So every few months, I sit down, look at which events are coming up and think about what I could do for them.

The nice thing about this is that I know the dates for them a long time ahead, so I can announce them very, very early as Feature Nominations to App Store Editorial. That’s why I already have content updates lined up and announced until April next year. I don’t know how exactly they will look yet, but as I get closer to the release and know more, I will just update the feature nomination with more info. Works out great for me!

When it comes to non-content updates, it’s a bit less structured. I come up with ideas for the app over the year and note them down. If it’s a bigger thing, I look where there is a good gap in my content release schedule and plan to release it there. If it’s a small one, I usually just implement it whenever I have a bit of time and just release it. The time thing being the issue here in recent months 😅

Art of Fauna app icon beside two iPhones, one showing the written description of a toucan and the other the same illustration as a jigsaw puzzle

What does your launch checklist look like?

Inform Apple about the new release (if it’s a bigger one) as soon as possible.
Start building out the features and content.
Test all new UI with an accessibility audit.
Make TestFlight releases on every major change, to catch potential issues.
Polish, polish, polish.
Do the localisations. First run with an AI, but then ask native speakers that I have on TestFlight to proofread it.
Create social media posts and sometimes shoot a short video for TikTok/Instagram about the new update.

How do you decide what’s “ready to ship” and what needs to wait?

As long as it’s not tied to a specific event or a bigger update (which has been announced as a feature nomination), I try to ship it as quickly as possible after I’ve gone through my checklist. Exceptions are major changes to the core puzzle mechanics. I am very cautious about these and usually let them sit on TestFlight for weeks to really make sure that they don’t cause any unexpected behaviour.

If you could go back to your first big release, what advice would you give yourself?

Oh, just release it earlier instead of adding feature after feature. You can always add on to it later on, and every update is another opportunity of getting featured. Plus you obviously learn what people want better when they are actually using it 😬

What’s your stack or toolset for managing releases?

As it’s just me doing the work, I try to keep my stack very simple. I just use a checklist in Reminders or Things with all the stuff I need to do for this particular release. And then use Xcode, Xcode Cloud, and Helm to actually make it happen.

What’s your favourite Helm feature?

It’s hard to pinpoint it to a single feature; it’s the combination of all the nice little features that make releasing updates more pleasant and so much faster. But if I have to pick one, it’s the whole workflow around In-App Events. It’s just so much quicker and more pleasant than in App Store Connect. Plus, it lets me generate a calendar event directly from the event, so that I don’t forget posting about it on socials!

Managing In-App Events in Helm, including adding the event to your calendar

Anything or anyone you want to promote or plug?

I’ve been so fortunate to go to many conferences over the last two years and meet so many incredible people that it’s hard to pick out a few names. Near and dear to my heart is the whole Indie House crew, that Frederik already mentioned. Plus Frank, my partner in crime for another app, PocketShelf. And Bobby (Filtru), Noam (Dee), Joe (Teleprompter Pro), Danijela (Nunch)…

I met all these lovely people at conferences. So probably my biggest “anything” plug would be: go to a conference and meet people. I can’t stress enough how lovely our community is. And if I have to pick one conference, I would say: go to ARCtic. It’s the weirdest of them in all of the best possible ways.

That’s a wrap on our third Shipped with Helm interview. Thanks to Klemens Strasser for sharing how he plans, nominates, and ships updates for Art of Fauna and Art of Flora as a team of one. More conversations with the developers behind the apps you know and love are on the way.