"Whatever you do, you gotta be your most authentic self": How Blobun's game development became an act of self-discovery

Oriane Tury, 1 June 2026

As part of Pride Month, Thinky Games is joining in the celebrations by publishing a series of Q&A interviews with LGBTQ+ video game developers and artists. Today’s featured developer is Ashe, the game director of Blobun. Ashe is one of the alters of Jessica Luminaire, who developed and published the game as studio CyanSorcery. If you'd like to learn more about Jess’ plurality and her work, you can read more information on her website.

Q: Hello, Ashe! Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Can you introduce yourself and describe Blobun for us?

Ashe: I'm Ashe, the alter assigned as game director and resident skunk. Blobun is a puzzle game where you play as a slime rabbit who has to touch every tile to win, but more and more obstacles get in the way of your goal as the game goes on.

Q: How did the project begin? What made you decide it would be a puzzle game?

Ashe: The project started when Mika was bored one day, thinking about Link's Awakening, and she was like, "You know those puzzles where you have to push a block to fill in a space in a line? What if you were the block?" Our prototype object was just a cube putting checkmarks on the stage. Someone said that the cube looked like a kind of flan, at the same time we were thinking about what the checkmarks should be. This became the slime trail where you can't overlap your own trail.

Q: Which parts of producing Blobun did you most enjoy?

Ashe: We discovered our plurality shortly before starting Blobun, so much of the process while working on it was rediscovering who we were, what we could all do, and how we could work collaboratively on a project. Blobun will forever stand as a testament of "yea, DID [Dissociative identity disorder - ed.] means our mind is fragmented, but it doesn't mean we can't work towards a common goal."

Q: I was impressed by the all-round qualities of the game. Not only does it contain plenty of puzzles, but it also features inviting art, smooth menus, and a clean progression curve. How did you coordinate so much work?

Ashe: Blobun ended up with a similar progression to many platforming games. Each world introduces 2-3 puzzle elements, spends time building them up individually, and then mixes them together with other puzzle elements. Because of this structure we found, it became pretty easy to figure out how many puzzles we needed in each world, and what each puzzle should be about. The final world then became about using all puzzle elements to their full potential, with "Victory Road" serving as the "True Final Boss" of sorts.

Q: You went on to release Blobun Mini, a companion game that features its own puzzles. What motivated you to create this “demake” and publish it for free?

Ashe: Blobun ended up having a lot of graphics, but the rules are simple and straightforward and we knew it could work with simpler graphics. We did it in PICO-8 because it's a good balance between "retro" and "you don't need a ton of lookup tables just to do trigonometry." A large part of the reason it was free was to give people a low-stakes way to try out the gameplay and direct them to the full game, but also the compression library we used, px9, can't be used for commercial games anyways.

Q: I noticed you’ve built an online community through Patreon and other platforms. How does that play into developing and self-publishing your games?

Ashe: We've been incredibly lucky for the people who have supported us through Patreon and Kofi, but the income between that and game sales is not very reliable (or sustainable currently.) We're doing the best with what we have though, and we're glad that people are helping us out. It's tough right now though for everyone.

Q: What are your next projects, game-related or otherwise?

Ashe: We're currently working on a nonogram/picross game which aims to be approachable like Blobun. We've chatted a lot with our friends Luka and Alex, who made Squeakross: Home Squeak Home about considerations they've made, and Alex helped a lot with understanding a lot of the (quite technical) code involved. Our game won't have cute rats that you dress up, though. We're also working on a top-down adventure game with a fox, but that one's gonna take a while.

Q: Any game recommendations you'd like to share? We’d love to hear about games you enjoyed recently, whether thinky or not.

Ashe: Recently our friend DoricDream released Dungeon Gals and we've been taking our time to play through it and enjoy it fully. I think the best way I can describe it is "La-Mulana lite", and it also features a polyamorous throuple as the protagonists. It's made in the style of Gameboy Advance games, and it has some excellent music. You gotta bring your brain though because there are puzzles and you will have to take notes.

Q: Finally, do you have any advice for LGBTQ+ game developers out there?

Ashe: Whatever you do, you gotta be your most authentic self when you do it, and you can't hold anything back. Some people may get upset, but if you're being true to yourself, it won't matter. You'll find other like-minded people who relate to you on an honest level, and these are the people who matter.

Blobun is available on itch.io and on Steam for Windows and Linux. You can also support Jess on Patreon and on Kofi.