The short version
Fothergill is a small independent studio run by Santo Fothergill. It makes browser games you can play in seconds, practical tools that do one job well, and Santo Photos — a working photography platform. Everything is designed, coded, and maintained independently, and nearly everything runs directly in your browser with no download and no account. This site is the central directory that ties it all together and explains how each project works.
Why the studio exists
The web keeps getting heavier. A simple card game asks you to install an app, create an account, accept a wall of trackers, and wait through a loading spinner before you can play a single hand. Somewhere along the way, "software" started meaning "friction." Fothergill is a deliberate push in the other direction.
The guiding question behind every project is the same: what is the smallest, fastest thing that still feels genuinely good to use? That constraint is freeing. It rules out bloated frameworks and dark-pattern growth tactics early, which tends to make the whole project simpler, more reliable, and more pleasant. A game that loads in under a second and doesn't want your email is not a compromise — it's the goal.
Independent and self-funded
There's no outside investment steering the roadmap toward endless growth, and no engagement metric dictating design decisions. That independence is the whole point. It means a project can be considered "done" — built well, kept online, and left to work — instead of being perpetually re-monetized. It means ads stay light and honest rather than aggressive. And it means the studio can build things that are simply good, rather than things that are optimized to extract.
Three kinds of work
Fothergill's projects fall into three buckets, all built on the same foundation:
Browser games
Quick-to-learn, easy-to-love games for playing with friends: the bluffing tension of Liar's Dice, the knowledge-and-nerve hybrid of Trivia Poker, the routing puzzles of Tiny Town Traffic, and the relationship game Do You Know Me? Each aims to be learnable in a single round.
Practical tools
Small utilities that solve a real problem without ceremony — like NFL Budget Draft, a salary-cap drafting game that's as much a strategy tool as it is entertainment.
Santo Photos
Santo Photos is a photography platform — a portfolio, print shop, preset store, and session booking system in one. It's the same lightweight philosophy applied to a working creative business.
The principles behind the work
- Fast first, always. If it can't be interactive in about a second on a mid-range phone, it's not done.
- No account walls. Sign-ups are added only where they genuinely earn their place, never as a gate in front of the fun.
- Design for the phone. Layouts are built mobile-first, because that's where most people arrive.
- Rules you can read in a minute. A good game explains itself; depth should reveal itself through play.
- Ad-light and honest. Where ads appear, they keep the lights on without hijacking the page — and the privacy policy explains exactly what that means.
- Built to stay online. Simplicity is also a promise that a finished project will still be there, and still fast, years from now.
Where this is going
The studio grows the way it builds: one project at a time, finished properly before the next begins. New games and tools get added here as they're ready, and existing projects get real updates rather than churn — you can follow those on the updates section of the home page. The plan isn't to build the biggest thing. It's to keep building small things that are worth coming back to.