Blobun is an indie puzzle game currently making waves on social media thanks to a joke setting that eliminates its lesbian content. The problem? Blobun protagonist Stephanie is gay, so flipping the so-called “lesbian toggle” in the options menu removes her from the game and renders it totally unplayable.
“It all started a while back with our friend’s game Buck Up and Drive, which features billboards with various fake advertisements,” Blobun developer Jess told Polygon via email.
[Ed. note: Pronoun usage may vary throughout this story as Jess is a plural collective consisting of multiple system members.]
Jess encouraged Buck Up and Drive creator Fábio Fontes to add trans pride flags to the game’s possible advertisements. Fontes not only took Jess up on their suggestion, but also included a “pride toggle” in his game’s options. Rather than remove the LGBTQ+ content, however, the setting turned every billboard into a pride flag.
“Some people were angry about it, but on the whole everyone loved it and thought it was really funny,” Jess said.
When it came time to make Blobun, Jess took the toggle a step further by adding a “lesbian toggle” that removed the game’s gay main character, Stephanie, from the playing field, making even the simple early levels impossible to complete. The toggle was so popular in Blobun’s Steam Next Fest demo that its effects were expanded to skip cutscenes, make it so that players can’t view the credits, and remove Stephanie’s silhouette from the logo in the full game.
“It’s been really funny so far seeing people’s reactions, whether it be confusion because they didn’t realize what the toggle was doing, laughing because they figured out exactly what the toggle was doing, or (in rare instances so far) being upset about it,” Jess said. “It was really important to us though, especially in the current political climate, to put this in the game — both to represent ourselves, our friends, and many people out there as well as to filter out the kind of people we don’t want playing our games anyways.”
Some players have even asked Jess to have the toggle make Stephanie invisible rather than removing her altogether to make Blobun more difficult.
“It sounds like a fun challenge, and we may implement it some time in the future,” Jess said.
