About

Hiveswap is an episodic adventure video game based in the same fictional universe as the webcomic Homestuck by Andrew Hussie. The story revolves around the protagonist Joey Claire, a human girl from Earth who switches places with the troll boy Dammek from the planet Alternia.

History

Kickstarter

On September 4th, 2012, Hussie launched a Kickstarter for a "Homestuck adventure game" (shown below). Within 32 hours, the campaign reached its goal of $700,000. Eventually, the campaign accumulated more than $2.4 million, becoming the fifth Kickstarter game to gather over a million in funds.

Development

On October 30th, 2014, Hussie's company What Pumpkin announced that the game would be titled Hiveswap and would be released as an episodic story. On April 10th, 2015, What Pumpkin Studios uploaded a teaser trailer for the game with 3D graphics (shown below, left). On October 6th, 2016, a teaser trailer was released showing gameplay from Act 1 of the game with updated 2D graphics (shown below, right).

Release

On August 29th, 2017, a launch trailer for the game was released, which gathered upwards of 220,000 views and 3,100 comments over the next month (shown below). On September 14th, the game was released for Act 1 of the game was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux systems.

Reception

On September 16th, 2017, YouTuber jacksepticeye uploaded a Let's Play video featuring the first episode of the game (shown below). Within 48 hours, the video received upwards of 878,000 views and 4,500 comments. Within four days of release, the game received a score of 94% on Steam.^[7]

Fandom

On October 30th, 2014, the /r/Hiveswap^[2] subreddit was launched for discussions about the upcoming game. On May 27th, 2015, a page for the game was created on TV Tropes.^[6] Several fan-created blogs dedicated to the game have been launched on Tumblr, including Incorrect Hiveswap Quotes,^[3] Hiveswap Fanatic^[4] and Hiveswap Countdown.^[5]

Search Interest

External References