#I felt so sad that I had to momentarily uninstall the game from PC because my CPU couldn't take it

[nemo-in-wonderland]

I have a doodle of Mephisto and Aranea that is side-eyeing me SO INTENSELY, it makes me feel like I owe them money or something.

GAH, I NEED MY FREAKING TABLET.

I NEED TO DRAW THOSE TWO FREAKS TOGETHER BEING ALL GOMEZ AND MORTICIA TOGETHER, ONLY MUCH EVILIER AND MORE EDGELORDY.

Honestly, each time I think about their relationship I live.

I LIVE.

They are both so fucked up, but good Gods, they have found their match in one another and they know it, and they absolutely LOVE IT.

Like, I need

I need to babble more about them.

I NEED MOAR OF THEM. MOAR.

[wakraya]

Hiveswap Review & Thoughts

I am going to try to keep this as Spoiler-Free as possible, but you can’t quite write a review without saying a few things, can you? Make sure you’ve finished Hiveswap if you do not want to get lightly spoilered!

1- Game Length: It took me 4 hours to finish, and even then I was kind of rushing the ending because I had to go to sleep soon and didn’t want to wait until the next day to actually finish the game! I also finished reading up to the end of Act 6 Act 3 in Homestuck in a week, so I’m a fairly speedy reader. I would say someone struggling a bit more with the Puzzles and taking their time to explore more of the world as they go, and specially someone talking while livestreaming this and such would spend a fair bit more going around. It was short-ish, but it was the first Act of 3 more to come, and served as more of an introduction. It’s good when a game leaves you wanting for more, it means it’s done its job and you feel it’s good. No complaints here, just as advertised, and, I am definitely going to go through it more times to catch little things I didn’t get and get alt-dialog.

2- Gameplay: Simple Point-And-Click, but with a few interesting things and a few wonky things. I may talk like Hiveswap is flawless, but while I loved it, there’s some things that could be improved upon. One of these is the scrolling, if you’re at the edge of the screen you’ll have to kind of click a few times to get the screen to move, since Joey will chase the edge and not let the camera properly settle. Still, it’s nothing major., but just a nitpick. Trying to interact with everything is fun and also functional! Sometimes a wrong solution to a puzzle will give you a hint to what you ACTUALLY need to be doing, which means trying everything with everything can be actually beneficial if you’re stuck! The Combat is simple but I like it, you and the monsters take turns to fight each other, doing actions that make it more akin to a puzzle of ‘how to get through here’ than a combat system. I didn’t die at any point, but judging by the previews, it’d seem choosing the wrong moves too many times will result in Joey getting defeated, which is nice to know it’s not all just rigged to let you win. On that vein, though, some of the Puzzles were quite simple, but I’ll let it slide because it’s just the beginning, and there were some more difficult headscratchers. Also, you can hoard quite a few things in the game, I wonder how will items you pick up earlier on come into play in other Acts?

3- Writing: Spot on, very Homestuck-y. The humor is great and there was a bunch of dialog and description text that made me laugh out loud or left me feeling very, very sorry for some character in particular. Lore-wise, we got a little bit of exposition on Troll Culture that I found quite fascinating, as well as some lore from Earth. But most importantly, it made me care about Joey, Jude and Xefros, and it definitely made me want more of the game, so that’s good! For newcomers to Homestuck itself, there’s a lot of references that may go over their head, but they would not be any more confused about it than Homestuck readers getting to Act 5 and being introduced to all that Troll Exposition. Talking about Moirailship, and the weird words Trolls use for some things might take a bit to get used to, but if you like intricate words for stupid things, it’s very much enjoyable.

4- Graphics: The style is absolutely gorgeous, the game’s movement and Joey’s animations are lovely and expressive, the cutscenes made out of stills are lovely as well, and the ones that are actually animated are badass and I love them all. It’s as Cohen said. “We didn’t think the 3D felt like Homestuck. The Concept Art, the Sketches. Those felt like Homestuck.” And so they did. They took the concept art and refined it into beautiful backgrounds to go with the characters. Everything looked great, and every animation was great. The least animated thing I feel was Xefros’ Lusus- Which, given it’s a Sloth and suuuuuper slow? Made me actually crack up. Like. “Oh my god, it’s so slow even his animation has less frames.”

5- Music: Gorgeous, it was very ambiental and set the mood, whether it was exploring a house, whimsical Troll Weirdness, accompanying a Cutscene or a more tense moment, it fit the game. Leimotifs are already strong in this one and I even heard a few references to Homestuck music! So I am very happy with the work James and Toby put on this, and I’m gonna listen the SHIT out of the Soundtrack.

6- Bugs: Here’s where it gets a little bit complicated. The first bug I had was at the Intro Screen, when I realised the resolution was fucked. There was some issue with clicking and getting dialog again instead of the dialog option shutting entirely- But this problem was fixed entirely by reinstalling. I don’t know if it was an issue of the game or the download, but reinstalling fixed that and didn’t bother me at all for the rest of the game. Other than that? The very first transition from one side to the other of Joey’s room freezes the game momentarily for some reason, and takes a little bit longer to load the background when you look outside of Joey’s window. It obviously has to do something with fetching the resources in time, but I have no idea why it’d happen. Other than that, I went through the game with absolutely no issues, until a minor cutscene didn’t want to play. Thankfully it wasn’t anything important, but it still bummed me out a little bit. This, however, seems to be extremely subjective to your PC and Operative System! A friend played through without a single hiccup. Another said their copy was a bit of a mess, and I recommended they uninstall it. A discussion on the page said some got a little white screen on the basement, where I had no issues, others said the intro cutscene froze much like the one that didn’t play for me. Given the disparity, I feel it has something to do with PC specs or something weird with the download, but still I am hoping they will address these very soon when they have enough information about what causes the errors. Ah, the first few days after a release before they patch things up. :^)

Overall, my experience was very positive! I like Hussies’ writing, and Cohen definitely captured his brand of humor. There was sad exposition, there was fun exposition, there was a little bit of character development as well and it’s only Act 1! Also Cohen mentioned he wanted to do a lot of character interactions in Act 2- And given they said your choices affect the game, I am expecting it to be significantly bigger than Act 1, merely based on the fact you’ll spend a loooot of time chatting with other Trolls! If Hiveswap goes the Homestuck route, maybe each Act gets exponentially larger. Wouldn’t that be a thing?

If you’re having biiiig issues with the game, please try re-installing the game! And if that isn’t working, either hope they patch things up quickly, or if you’re able to, try installing it on a different computer with a different OS!

I personally think the 5-year wait was worth it. There were some little misshaps here and there, but it was well polished, looked gorgeous, and was fun to play. At no point did I feel it dragged on, and it left me wanting more out of the game without feeling short or rushed. For people picking it up not knowing about Homestuck or the 5-year wait, they can experience something great without having any expectations, and if they really like the writing, Homestuck is out there to read in its entirety, so I feel it’s a very good entry-level thing for the Fandom as a whole!

Overall, I would give it a 8.5 out of 10. I would’ve given it a 9 if there hadn’t been a few bugs that bothered some of my friends, but everything else was solid, well put together and a lot of fun. I have a lot more thoughts and theories I’ll share on a different post, and I’m not even close to done with this thing, I’ve gotta replay it a few more times and there’s 3 entire Acts AND a sibling game coming at one point so.

Who knows, maybe that 8.5 can get even higher by the time everything is released.

Also I’m putting my money on Act 2 being released somewhere in January, to perpetuate the ‘Hiveswap January’ meme.