That was one of the reasons for breaking it up, because each Act will take a good chunk of time to play and spacing them out will make them a little more digestible. Jess: The episodes themselves (which we call Acts there will be four Acts in total) will be pretty hefty – a fair bit longer than, say, a typical Telltale episode. How big, both in time and scope, will the episodes be? And what made the team decide on an episodic format? Jay: We know the game will be episodic in nature. Hiveswap stars siblings Joey and Jude Claire, and an alien named Xefros. It’s wonderful to have the budget to be able to think a little bigger and make the game feel grand and epic as well, and we’re touched and grateful for the outpouring of support the project received to make that happen. There’s a certain kind of epicness that’s part of the feel of Homestuck, not just in the cosmic sweep of the story but in the sheer amount of content and attention to detail. What we would have been able to achieve with the original funding goal would have still been neat and fun and interesting, but much more modest in scope. Did the projects crowdfunding success expand the scope of what you could do with the game? Jay: Hiveswap got its start as a Kickstarter campaign, which saw monumental success. (We did update the parser to point-and-click, and bump up the graphical quality to modern full 3D, though!) The best way for us to create that kind of experience was with a classic adventure game. There’s also an emphasis on well-developed characters, deep dialog, and a strong story arc. But the overall framework of the comic is really playing on text and early graphical adventures, with simple visuals, a pseudo-parser interface (“Quickly retrieve arms from drawer”), and a lot of text carrying the action and narrative flavor. Jess Haskins (Creative director, What Pumpkin Studios): There are certainly influences from a bunch of different genres in Homestuck, from sims to puzzle games to JRPGs, and a lot of that finds its way into the game, too.
But did the group always have a clear idea of what type of game it would be? What made a point-and-click adventure title the best option? Jay Petrequin: As the Homestuck is clearly inspired by a lot of games, the idea of creating a game isn’t exactly hard to swallow. Jess Haskins, creative director at What Pumpkin Studios, was kind enough to talk to us about everything to do with Hiveswap, and it’s Homestuck-ian origins. The game is being shown at events and talked about in much more than hushed whispers enough so, in fact, that we managed to talk with the studio in charge. Hiveswap is the upcoming adventure game spinoff of Homestuck, a popular webcomic with an enormous cult following.
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