hello gamers! if you missed it, i finally released my short visual novel Gutsy Flux: Episode 1! you can download it for free here!


perhaps you noticed an important piece of information: this is Episode 1. as in This Will Be A Series With More Episodes. yup! this is my first personal project since… 2020? my last project was a Pokemon fancomic (Acceptance: A Diamond Nuzlocke), so this is my first Completely Original Project in a VERY long time

this was also my very first time ever making a game! i'd fantasized about making a visual novel for years, so I finally sat down and Did The Thing. there were tons of new skills i had to learn: basic coding, GUI design, music production, editing sound effects, and streamlining art assets. and partway thru making this VN, i figured out something very important: i hate making games!!!

i am a humble person who enjoys drawing Silly Pictures and writing Silly Stories and making a game is a whole lot of Not That. the bulk of the work was tedious and boring… seeing it all come together as a functional VN was admittedly pretty cool, but for me it wasn't worth all the time coding sprite changes, animations, the GUI, etc (plus scrounging for sound effects and learning basic music production). i definitely could've cut down on the work i put in but ❤️ im a being made of hubris and i wanted to experience making one (1) whole game by myself

i'd also told myself for Years that i should learn how to make music, but my motivation for that was always "well, if i ever end up making a game, it would be nice to have completely free music for that." so the moment i realized i didn't like making games, my motivation for making music completely vaporized LMAO apologies to anyone who might've been excited at the prospect of More Lynslayer Music. im never making music again <:3

this might all feel very negative, but i promise it's not! this was all useful information for me to learn. as i said before, i wanted to try making a game for a long time, and now i know that it's simply not for me. moving forward, i can put more energy towards the types of projects i actually enjoy making!

so where does that leave Gutsy Flux? i still plan on making more episodes. they'll just be in a different format: illustrated short stories!

y'see, another thing that i learned while working on Episode 1 was that i missed doing Full Prose Writing! over the past decade, any writing i had done was mostly for comics, but i hadn't done any full blown Prose Writing since like... high school?? when i sat down to write the script for the VN i felt obscenely rusty, but a wave of excitement washed over me bc i'd forgotten how much i actually enjoy writing! over the years i've been focusing a ton on improving my art, but in the process forgot that writing is also fun

so Gutsy Flux is my laid back little project to help me scrape off the rust and get back into the swing of Making Stories! from the beginning, i've intended this series to be a quaint sandbox for me to experimentally play around in, so im just writing this thing episode by episode and seeing what happens. and if you enjoy whatever i whip up in the process, that's cool 👍

i don't have any sort of release schedule for this series; the episodes will emerge from the ether whenever they're ready. and for the time being, i want to focus on making illustrations and other art, so i'll be chipping away at Episode 2 on the side. let's see where my little writing hobby takes us…!!

(oh also, a quick update for anyone still keeping track: my PC Purgatory is finally over!
i haven't experienced any PC issues in months!! yippee!!!)