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sometipsygnostalgic · 7 years

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Hiveswap Review (Spoiler)

We’ve been waiting an awfully long time for the Homestuck Adventure Game. First kickstarted in 2012, it’s gone through a troubled development cycle between 3 studios and.... yeah, you get the drift. Even in its final form, Hiveswap has gone through numerous unexplained delays (most infamously the last minute January Launch Month delay), and the development team for it had been very tight-hush until the end of August when a final release date of September 14th was announced.

Now that Hiveswap is out, we’re able to see for ourselves what the development team has been working on. Does it hold up to expectations? Does it make up for the hard delays and extremely concerning lack of communication?

Those are answers you can only decide for yourselves. What I will say, however, is this: Hiveswap is a charming and visually stunning introduction to the Homestuck world, that combines only the best of Homestuck’s humor with a new calmer, more curious and coherent setting.

It’s a shame, then, that the content of Act 1 isn’t a little bit longer. However, the gimmick of combining any item with each other and getting a new description will draw out the length for any lore completionists.

Before I start gushing about my feelings on Hiveswap, I’d like to point out something that REALLY soured the game for me: The cutscenes have a processing power so high that most laptops - including my own - aren’t able to handle them. I don’t understand this, because a 2.20ghz processor can handle the game like a breeze. I’ve had no trouble running Hiveswap. But as soon as a cutscene plays, it ends up taking a processing power that would burn a computer which can play Overwatch. What’s going on here? Why are cutscenes like this? Is it something to do with the Unity engine? Surely another user has figured out how to compress scenes without losing their quality!

So, I had to watch the game be played in its entirety by @neproxrezi, only returning to my own game to test out as many combinations as possible.

To make this easier for myself, I’m going to split off Hiveswap into a few categories:

Story and Characters - Hiveswap Act 1 is extreeeemely short, like 27 minutes long if you do an ameteur speedrun. On the surface, not a lot happens, but it serves as a compelling introduction to the Hiveswap world. You start off as Joey Claire, a young dancer of multiple schools with a hatred for pogs, Bubsy, and her entire life circumstances. Joey works with her brother to hide from a bunch of monsters that have invaded their home. Shenanigans ensue, mostly pigeon-related, and using Jude’s cryptic advice Joey figures out how to retrieve the attic key. Once in the attic she uses a precious heirloom key, which looks suspiciously Cherub-like, to open a SNAKE PORTAL..... Joey is transported to the world of Alternia where she meets a self-loathing rustblood of the bottom rung of society called Xefros, and explores the house of his controlling and paranoid Revolutionary moirail Dammek. Then Joey gives Xefros some words of encouragement and saves him with the help of Dammek’s lusus, then they ride into the distance while dodgy heiress Trizza Tethis takes a selfie over the burning neighbourhood. It’s all pretty basic, but a natural stopping point and setup for act 2 that makes me devastated I can’t go and play it immediately.

When you dive deeper into the game, usually by clicking on everything you see and combining as many items as possible, you can learn a lot more about these 4 characters. Joey in particular gives the audience plenty to think about once you start messing around with her; combining the green Cherub key with items will often leave her reminiscing about her absent mother, and clicking on Jake’s items strewn all over the place will show how she resents his constant absence fom her and Jude’s lives. There’s plenty of information about Rose’s mom, too, who’s their drunken babysitter and.... even now, not the best stand-in for proper parenting. I’ll talk about these two more later but it makes me curious about their circumstances in Homestuck. Meanwhile Joey and her brother Jude aren’t as close as they could be. Joey’s alarmed by how cryptic and secretive Jude is, wrapped up in his conspiracy capers, and she has great difficulty undertstanding him or having a normal conversation. This is highlighted when she assumes he wouldn’t have any care for his mother’s heirlooms if they didn’t have anything to do with aliens, and when she unlocks the Cherub portal despite his warnings because he never told her of its dangers. Joey does think about this distance between her and Jude, especially when locked on the new world.

Xefros, meanwhile... everything you click while in Alternia - whether as Joey or as Xefros - will usually have information about Dammek. Xefros is clearly used to being messed with by Dammek’s "tests” and revolutionary spiel , which seem to be a more extreme and warped version of Jude’s conspiracy capers. Inspection of his house will paint a picture of Dammek as having a very cluttered mind, hyperfocused on his goal without seeing any of the world around him or understanding the needs of his puppydog moirail Xefros. Now, Xefros himself is extremely passive and will do whatever other people tell him, which is kinda Tavros-like but more extreme. He doesn’t have any care for what happens to himself so long as he’s impressed those around him, and it’s not until Joey tells him how cruddy this is that he gets slightly relaxed and more optimistic. It’s ironic to see how Dammek and the Alternian revolutionaries end up falling into the same heirarchy that they strongly oppose. It shows the Revolution might be a joke, one of many others the Highbloods have quashed before.

As for Jude..... I wonder what’s going through that boy’s head? We barely saw him and yet he made a strong impression of his personality.

Gameplay - Hiveswap doesn’t have any “gameplay” in the traditional sense, unless you count the snake game. Instead it has a series of puzzles. They aren’t very difficult, but it’s more the funny dialogue you can read while playing. I’m gonna talk more about the humor in a few seconds, but the way you can combine any item with any other item must have taken soooooo much time from the writers, especially Cohen Edenfield. I wonder if this was always going to be the case in the original game too?

There’s not really any failstates for hiveswap. You can get eaten by monsters if you dick around on your way to the attic after the big fight, but you’ll just respawn where you were before. It’s not a game I’d choose to “play”, exactly. It’s more of a visual novel.

Humor - Oh boy. This is where Hiveswap wanted to nail it so, so bad. And its effort was valient to say the least. Joey’s dancing was some visual feel-good humor, all the 90s gimmicks in her room (especially the not-so-subtle videogame posters) had me clicking on them with every item i could find in the house, xefros in his entirety was a well of dark humor that pushed the game’s atmosphere back to its homestuck roots, and Byers - so true, so brave - he is the best item in the game. The funniest scenes for me were the Pigeon sequence with Jude, and Joey’s acrobatic pirouhettes away from Dammek’s terrifying lusus :P

I do have some criticisms for the humor. While combining everything with everything is a lot of fun, it’s not necessarily... funny. Like I didn’t get a lot of laugh-out-loud moments with the combinations. Often I found jokes were either too long-winded beyond their expiration or the punchline was just very awkward. This is a small criticism considering no other games bother to do this, but considering hiveswap act 1 is just an hour long if you DON’T do this, the game’s padding could have been more entertaining to say the least. counting on this gimmick when the humor isnt the best in the world, it’s a veeery risky move.

Graphics - okay, let’s put this out there: hiveswap without a doubt is one of the most visually stunning indie games out there. It recruited the help of many artists from the fandom itself, like adrienne garcia, angela sham, dammek the tumblr user, rah-bop, shelby cragg... For the most part the game looks great. The drawings on the short panel-based animations look wonky sometimes especially when compared to the beautiful opening animation, but it’s a small criticism.

This has convinced me that the move from 3d to 2d has seriously benefitted Hiveswap. I mean, look at this:

then look at this:

it’s a whole WORLD of difference. I seriously do not think Hiveswap would have made a good impression if it had released in the crappy-looking state the 3D studio had produced it in. The game would have not looked like homestuck, and not been able to pull off any of the animated feats in the final product. Why were they going with that art style in the first place??? It was a waste of time money and effort. I guess that the 2D team was slowly constructed over years of producing homestuck flashes and paradox space content? Many people key to the current team were in high school in 2012.

Music - Led by James Roach, he worked closely with Toby Fox to really nail Hiveswap’s soundtrack. It’s short and loops an awful lot but I never found it boring or annoying to hear. It’s quieter and more subtle than Homestuck’s loud, rambunctious music, but each character has their own theme and leitmotif. The music changes to create a good atmosphere for each room. It’s not the best work from either artist, but it’s very good as a videogame soundtrack.

Dedication to the source material - While Hiveswap has adapted away from Homestuck’s crude humor, I feel it keeps the best and throws away the worst. Hiveswap being E10 rated made some people suspicious because of how sweary and dark Homestuck is, but Hiveswap has already shown its guts and some very effective dark humor. I wonder if Act 2 will have the same rating?

While the atmosphere in Half-Harley Mansion isn’t the most Homestuck in the world, Joey’s introduction is a nice homage to how all homestuck characters are introduced. And.... you can’t ignore the insight it gives into Jake and Roxy. More specifically, Grandpa and Mom.

So, it’s revealed in Hiveswap that Jade’s Grandpa had a wife and two kids before encountering her. What does this say for Jude and Joey’s situation post-hiveswap? Did he lose his two kids, and decide to build a new life in the pacific with Jade? Did he see her as his second chance? It sort of puts a damper on John’s comment that Jade’s ‘pa seemed happy living alone, and Dave’s comment that Jade’s ‘pa was a clearly loving father. As it turned out, ‘pa severely neglected his own kids after the death of his wife, probably because they reminded him of her. But maybe Jake lost his two children and decided not to make the same mistakes with Jade? That’s why he took her to the island with him instead of siccing her on Roxy again, although Roxy had her own hands full. Yeah, talking of B1 Roxy, it’s quite interesting to see how she had changed between Hiveswap and Homestuck. Joey saw Roxy in a very different light to Rose; she saw Roxy as very kid-like and sincere, but extremely negligible due to her drinking. Most notable difference is how Roxy here obviously hates cleaning, but by the time she mothers Rose, she takes perfect care of their house. I wonder if this is another effect of Jude and Joey’s theoretical departure from the mansion? If, like Jake, she saw Rose as a sort of second chance? It’s a shame how that turned out. Yknow, im gonna laugh and cry if it turned out Jude or Joey killed Ana Claire with guns as a baby, like Jade and Jake before them

As for Alternia it was chocablocked with references to Homestuck, from the hierarchy to the Condesce to Doc Scratch to FLARP. Yeah, this is when Hiveswap went from an adventure game to a Homestuck game. I haven’t got much else to say here other than that I’m excited to see how Alternia differs from our impressions of it, and how the infrastructure of the peter pan society works.

and, of course, it had the best possible refrance:

CONCLUSION: Hiveswap has shown its guts to the world, and made a positive impression. I’m disappointed by how short it is, but that’s only because I want more.

Idk what’s going on with all the bugs such as the resolution glitch or the cutscene processing, especially cos Hiveswap went through an extra 9 months of “bug testing”.... wouldnt most people have gotten this bug the first time they launched the game??? wouldnt they have noticed the cutscene fuckery? these glitches have resulted in many people getting refunds. the only reason i didnt do the same is because i want to support this game, and i want to play it again in the future when the bugs are fixed or i have better hardware.

hopefully hiveswap act 2 won’t be followed around by the same issues, same lack of communication, same lengthy development that act 1 has suffered. if it comes swiftly, and if hiveswap act 2 makes as good an impression as act 1, then I feel we’ll have something truly special on our hands.

Story and characters: 4 hats outta 5 - short but sweet

Gameplay: 2.5 hats outta 5 - glitchy and contentless with no fail state, but this isnt necessarily a bad thing Humor : 4 hats outta 5 - sometimes missed the mark but a great chuckle for any player, fan or noob Graphics: 5 hats outta 5 - e c s t a s y Music: 4 hats outta 5 - does the job, does it well Dedication to source material: 4 hats outta 5 - best of the old, best of the new.

FINAL SCORE: 8/10. All it needs is to finish, then it’s already better than Homestuck...

#hiveswap #homestuck #gaming #adventure games #steam

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