Update One Hundred and Two: 26 December 2017

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Friends, romans, countrymen: lend me your ears. Let me tell you about Homestuck.

Homestuck was a multimedia narrative experience that started out as a mock-interactive comic like tales one might find on /tg/ (see: RubyQuest for an incredible example of this played straight) and eventually incorporated flash animations, half a dozen games (some as long as an hour worth of content) and culminated in a half-hour long animation as bona-fide as any anime episode. It spanned seven years, it crashed Newgrounds, it changed the face of cosplay at anime and game conventions, and it launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund a point-and-click adventure game and raised more than two million dollars.

This is that game.

Or, rather, part of that game.

After a long arduous road with many setbacks that I won’t super get into (see official version above and this unverified summary here), I finally got the game my girlfriend and I pooled an embarrassing amount of money together to help fund. (Or, rather, part of that game)

And… it was lovely.

While I can’t make judgments on the story yet - this is the first act, it’s all set up - the actual playing of the game was fun. This is the most gorgeous point-and-click I’ve played with dozens of lovingly rendered backgrounds that are FULL of shit to click on. The entire game is 2D animated and it is fluid as fuck. The actual gameplay, as it stands, is definitely on the easy side of point and clicks - no moon logic puzzles here, just a lot of shit to explore. The good ol’ Homestuck charm is in full-force, though I definitely get the sense that Hussie did not write the majority of this game, though maybe that’s just me.

You don’t need to have read Homestuck to play this game, though I would encourage anybody to give it a try. It’s a daunting undertaking, especially as it got more and more crushed under its own weight at the end. Hell, I never even finished the thing - I think I still have about 100 pages and the big flash animation to go, but I just couldn’t care anymore. My favorite parts of Homestuck were Acts 1 to 4 and what’s wonderful is this game brought me right back to that joy and anticipation - plucky kids fucking around in their bizarre homes with a lot of slick jabs and a lot of ‘oh, what’s next?’ Homestuck is worth a read just for that. Give Hiveswap a try, and if you like that, there’s so so so much more where that came from.

Hiveswap: Act 2 is set to launch in spring 2018, and I’m eager to play it when it does.

Next up: SOMEBODY thinks I overthink about which game to play next. To solve the problem, she said I should play -

See you soon!