mucus

oh my god

wtf

omfg are you even trying to anatomy? 

HOLY NIPPLE SHIT

I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN FINDING ALL OF THESE FOR YOU!

THIS ONE WAS THE WORST

I AM LAUGHING SO HARD!

While I'm work on the script for episode 4 of The Left Eye, our CG artist sanorganes is still reworking some of the episode 1 CG's, and initial sketches for this one are sending me to the HOSPITAL! I am DEAD, I am DECEASED, I have PERISHED, just look at that god damn face!!!!

You get a Sockeye Salmon

It's been a slightly insane first week since dropping our demo for The Left Eye! We've passed a hundred wish lists, had about 700 people add the demo to their steam libraries, and got to celebrate the launch with a lovely live-stream by vtuber Crimelda!

And now that there's a demo out in the world for people to play if they want to avoid every single scrap of spoiler-y material, I'm officially lifting the lid on YELLING ABOUT OUR CHARACTERS, STARTING WITH THE PROTAG.

SO LIKE.

HERE ARE SOME FACTS ABOUT EMILE :

FACT 1: HE'S BIG RICH

He's the son of a French Aristocrat, living large in New York City on a monthly allowance from Daddy, and frantically dodging marriage proposals because he's having too much fun painting the town red on New York's flaming hot queer scene!

Which brings us to fact number two:

FACT 2: HE'S BIG GAY

Even in the 1920's, Emile is a character who knows he's gay. There was a real boom in the visibility of queer nightlife and performance in the 20's, and Emile has been revelling in that culture. When he's out in high society, he might play it a bit more subtle - allow people to assume he's just European and eccentric - but when he's on home turf, among other queers?

Emile is flapping his wings, flouncing about on stage, not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck yes.

FACT 3: HE'S BIG STUPID :(

I mean not really stupid.

It's just that Emile has Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad, Taste In Men.

THE FIRST DATE BE LIKE:

THEN THE SECOND DATE BE LIKE:

He's just one of those people who could get a boner from sticking his hand in the fire (this is not the official position of Haunted Trumpet just for the record - I was told that I could use 'my authentic voice' for these posts lol, so I'm sorry but here it is.) and unfortunately the presence of shitty dudes burn all around him like an eternal flame.

So what could go wrong when he meets closeted mob-brat son of a ruthless crime lord? Nothing, right? Yeah, probably nothing.

Okay, okay obviously everything is going to go wrong, otherwise we wouldn't have a visual novel! BUT I promised I wouldn't make these posts a million words long, so I'm going to wrap on yelling about Emile for now!

If he sounds like your kinda character, or this sounds like your kind of story, please go check out our free demo chapter on Steam over here, or follow us on Bluesky for more regular updates!

And just for the hell of it, let's have one last fact for the road...

FACT 4: Emile de la Roche does not exist.

Never speak to me or my accomplice ever again…

(Just some cute as hell art from our concept artist of Jackie and Emile from The Left Eye being Normal together)

yes i will meme my own vn characters, no one knows what's wrong with them better than I do!!!

he's just a lil guy though!!! just a lil guy with a terrifying bff who will fuck you up if you touch him!

yes I AM going to keep yelling about our demo for The Left Eye currently being free to download on Steam or on Itch (where you can also play it in your browser!)

Annnnnd a special bonus meme inspired on our favorite VN lawyer (because hoo boy could Emile use some legal advice...)

Alex is the romantic lead (sort of) the main villain (kinda) and definitely the intended victim of our Visual Novel, The Left Eye!

He's my shitty lad!  My rotten boy!  His mob boss uncle is going to make him nephew of the month!   Rumours that he’s the worst have been greatly exaggerated (By him. For clout.)

Alex is at once an amoral criminal, willing to rob and use everyone around him to his advantage, and the victim of a calculated con intended to exploit his insecurities and use his sexuality against him. 

In short - the guy’s a little complicated!   Let’s dig into him via some F A C T S ! 

FACT 1. BEING THE WORST ACTUALLY RUNS IN HIS FAMILY

I’m gonna be real, for all his big claims of what a villain he is, Alex is the bad guy equivalent of a nepo-baby.  He’s the nephew of Henry Warren, a mob boss who runs a host of speakeasies in New York, and the youngest son of Eddie Warren, who runs his own criminal operations in Seattle.    

He and his two older brothers were raised to be part of the family business, while their younger sister lived out most of her life under strict house arrest.  

None of them were given a choice about who they were supposed to be.  So right now, Al is experimenting with being the worst. 

FACT 2. DON’T TELL ANYONE, BUT HE’S ACTUALLY KIND OF NEW AT THIS???

We meet Alex on his first night in New York City.  After a life spent under the thumb of his dominating father, he’s now out on his own, and to be honest all of this is kind of new to him! 

Al might be acting like a tough guy, but the truth is, he is way out of his depth in New York. Half of his swagger is him trying to live up to the reputation that he knows comes with the Warren family name, and the other half comes from the fact that he’s been taken under the wing of his uncle Henry. 

It’s not all bad though.  Sure, Al is out of his depth and friendless in an unfamiliar city, but on the other hand, he’s basically just been cut loose on his own in New York City in the middle of the Jazz Age!  His hard-ass dad is back in Seattle, and his fun uncle doesn’t seem to care if he wants to spend the night getting drunk and bi-curious with a couple of cabaret singers in a speakeasy!

basically he's this:

FACT 3.  HE MIGHT NOT HAVE LEFT SEATTLE ON THE BEST POSSIBLE TERMS WITH EVERYONE BACK HOME

Ha ha, what?  No, nobody’s looking for him, why do you ask?  Just maybe don’t mention that you saw him here, okay?  It’s no big deal or anything, he’s just kind of a private person, you know what I mean?  Not everyone needs to know everything about him, right?

…If you try to call his dad he’s gonna cut the phone line.

So the stakes for Alex are a little higher than he’s willing to let on, but he’s pretty sure that he’s got everything under control.  After all, he’s the infamous, murderous, Alexander Warren, a person would need to have some kind of death wish to try and mess with someone so dangerous…

So that’s Alex!  If you’ve been following the previous character lore posts, you might have noticed that so far all of our characters are kinda on the messy, stupid and criminal end of the spectrum… and that’s not a trend that will cease. 

It’s a Visual Novel where almost every character is a messy gay criminal.  SO IF YOU LIKE YOUR LIQUOR STRONG, AND YOUR QUEERS DISASTROUS, you can download chapter one of The Left Eye for free on Steam or play the (admittedly slow loading) browser build on Itch! 

And with the obligatory links plugged, let’s drop one last fact from Alex to end the post: 

FACT 4. YOU CAN’T CON A CON. 

CG artist vs. Sprite artist roasting our boy Emile from two different angles.

We're working on new assets and angles for episode two, while we gear up to go into early access (including Emile and Alex having a post traumatic debrief sitting on the floor, and Emile and Jackie having a conversation while sitting back to back and pretending not to know each other!)

Our concept artist @sanorganes dropping some gorgeous new art for the Emile x Alex shippers.

The Left Eye VN Enters Early Access! 🥂

After almost two years of writing, editing, sketching, rendering, researching and wrestling with Unity, we're ready to launch the first two episodes of our 1920's con story / queer romance on Steam!

Featuring:

👁️ An LGBTQ+ Crime Caper set in the roaring 20's

👁️ 20 Beautifully illustrated CG's and hand drawn sprites

👁️ An in-game codex full of rich historical detail and character lore.

👁️ 26,000 words of narrative, written by award winning stage and screenwriter Conway McDermott

👁️ Original jazz songs by Kymberley Cochrane, and three commissioned arrangements of period-accurate jazz standards.

👁️ Tastelessly petty theft.

👁️ Boys behaving badly on beloved landmarks.

👁️ Beautiful gentlemen in emergency situations!

And at only $4.49 with our launch discount... it's a steal 🌝

After a good few months of pulling words like teeth, I just handed over the episode 3 script of The Left Eye to our developer, so we can start getting the scenes into nani-novel!

There'll probably be more cuts and edits as our creative team plays through the text in-game, but as we move deeper into the story, chapter three is longer, more complicated, and has more branching than either of the previous episodes. This is probably why the working draft is at 22k words of dialogue and action, almost the same word-count as the previous two eps put together!

PLEASE JOIN ME IN CELEBRATING WITH A HUMBLE BATCH OF TEXT POST MEMES.