The studio
An outsider building a game studio from scratch
Holm Studio is a french-moroccan indie game studio focused on cross-platform party games.
The origin story
Hi, I'm Rim 🙂
Back in October 2022, my cousin and I wanted to play a game that made us laugh, tease each other, heck even fight, like the good old days on Mario Kart or Wii Party.
So, I got the idea behind Fig and Totems thinking: “this is either the dumbest idea ever… or it could be a really fun game!”, and worked on it ever since.
I stumbled on a passion that goes from ideation through development and publishing.
I hope Fig and Totems brings you as much joy and laughter it brings my friends and I, if not more ❤️
Milestones
It started with a small seed
October 2022
“The dumbest idea ever”
My cousin and I wanted a game that would make us laugh and fight like Mario Kart or Wii Party. Fig & Totems was born on that thought.
2022 — 2026
Learning game dev on the side
Three and a half years of nights and weekends learning Unity, Photon and C# while working full-time in Enterprise Sales. Java in 2016, Python in 2019, C# in 2021.
2024 — 2026
Hundreds of hours of playtests
Around 50 people put through hundreds of hours of playtesting before anything went public.
30 April 2026
Demo out on Steam
The free demo of Fig & Totems launches on Steam for PC and Mac, then on the Google Play Store.
24 May 2026
Morocco Gaming Expo
One hour on stage, 100% total strangers playing the demo. Players of all ages ran tournaments against each other, got competitive and laughed.
Now
Towards the full release
The demo is out on Steam, Google Play and the App Store. Now: polishing the game, growing the totem catalog, and heading for 1.0.
How it's made
Was it you, or AI?
People frequently ask me whether the game was made by AI. Here is the honest answer.
The code
I learned to code years ago — Java in 2016, Python in 2019, C# in 2021. AI helped me speed up learning, especially network principles, and sift through Unity, Photon and C# documentation. I review 100% of the code it generates, because I don't trust it to make quality code (as of today). In games you can very quickly introduce bugs, latency and lag.
The art
100% of the art is human-made. I drew the main character in detail, then paid a freelancer to turn it 3D in Blender. I bought 3D assets from the Unity asset store and modified them when relevant. I made the UI fully myself, except for a few purchased icons. The Steam capsule was made by Stephan Royer, a talented artist I highly recommend.
The sound
100% of the sounds are human-made. I made most of the SFX with three of my friends during a really fun workshop at home. For the music, I purchased licenses from artists, and my sister made me sounds from scratch.
Want to follow along?
I post the behind the scenes of building a game and an indie studio from scratch.