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KICKSTARTER UPDATE 27/03 (2/2)

So yeah, here's part 2 of my reactions to all those sweet new things that were revealed yesterday. What Pumpkin's got itself a new website!!!! It looks so fucking awesome. I love the style. AND THAT HIVESWAP PICTURE. That is so cool. First I thought that the mirror picture on hiveswap.com would be the art for the cover of the game, but perhaps it will be this instead! Hey, it's Xefros! Another indication that he will be a pretty important character. And oooh, a bunch of Imperial Drones! What piques my interest the most is that they're FLYING, like the Condesce's Crockerbots in B2! I didn't think the original versions of them would have been capable of flight as well. I also wonder who they're actually after. Did they hear the news about Joey, or are they coming after Deertroll or Xefros for some reason? I like how the left part of the picture shows the Green and Pink moons too. And on the other side we've got Jude on Earth. With some of those freaky monsters, too. I'm so in love with this picture. Interestingly, Joey's symbol is not shown here! That's weird. Another thing I still wanted to talk about is the interview with Jess Haskins about Hiveswap! "In order to find a way home, Joey must join forces with a band of scrappy troll rebels and race to stop a terrible doomsday weapon that threatens to destroy both worlds." Huh, BOTH worlds! I really wonder what kind of thing it could possibly be. And who will even have created such a thing! Poor kids, if they only knew that in a couple of years both of their worlds will be destroyed anyway... "Joey’s wide-ranging journey will take her to far-flung corners of Alternia, which is populated entirely by young trolls and their monstrous creature companions, guardian beasts called lusus" Hmm, so Joey won't be sticking in the same city/country/region, apparently! Everyone, brace yourselves for Troll Japan. "It’s a kind of wild romp through the different levels of troll society, from the lowliest scrubbier all the way up to to the Heiress to the Alternian interstellar empire." Oh fuck yes, this is going to be cool. Wait, does this mean that Joey is actually going to meet the Heiress? Under the sea? Looks like we'll get a quest to get a diving suit. :P "Day one in the new office we had a skeleton team of me, our senior producer, our lead artist, and one animator. We were still waiting for our lead programmer to serve out his two weeks’ notice at his last position so he could come in! The team grew very fast from that point, though, up to a current total of 12 full time here in the office." 12, huh. I can't wait for them to cosplay all of the 12 Troll blood colours and start a Sgrub session. "We didn’t want to be slaves to the look of source material, which was very informed by its methods of production – heavy photomanipulation and stark colorization on the backgrounds, copy-paste static sprites, wacky 2-frame Flash animations. We couldn’t just copy that and have it look right. So we have things like 3D modeled characters with animated 2D textures for their facial expressions, and a toon shader that gives a light 2D outline effect to the characters, walking around in a slightly cartoony, stylized 3D world. But we always go back to the comic for reference, and find ways we can bring elements of its visuals into this game." This entire paragraph just makes me so HAPPY inside. "On another level, many Homestuck readers and fans actually go on to work for us professionally, contributing to projects like the Paradox Space series of spin-off comics, or lending their skills as artists, musicians, and writers to the game. Like Mallory Dyer, an insanely talented artist who makes these incredibly detailed plush dolls of Homestuck characters – fabric sculptures, really – and now works for us doing a bunch of our concept and 2D art. Or Phil Gibson, who’s worked on the Paradox Space comics and does double duty as both dialog writer and artist concepting our NPC designs." Oh hell yes, it's so cool to know that these two amazing persons are part of the team! "The game is very story- and character-driven, with some narrative choice mechanics that let you build relationships with and influence the lives of various NPCs in interesting ways. We have an in-game social media network called “Prongle” where you can read posts by and interact with every NPC in the game, basically keeping in touch with them and seeing where they go even after you’ve moved on from your initial meeting. Consequences of your decisions and relationships will return and really pay off in later Acts of the game." Oh man, this is so awesome. I wonder how that will even work, so that your "own" personal version of the story can go on in a next Act of the game. I think this might mean it's impossible to revisit some of the areas after you've visited them once, but that you can still stay in contact with those characters through Prongle. I wonder in what way we'll influence their lives. Perhaps we might give the rebels a victory or a loss, or maybe even change the Heiress for the better? "If Homestuck is a webcomic about games, then Hiveswap is a game about games." Ahahaha, I want to remember this quote forever. "But we’re drawing a lot from the comic, which was heavily influenced by games like Earthbound and the Sims, and we point to stuff like Final Fantasy in our pseudo-RPG combat mechanics, which are modeled after very stylized “Strife” scenes in the comic." COMBATS?! >:O I hadn't even DARED to dream we were going to get any combat scenes, and now we get to hear it's gonna be like the early Strifes!!!! Is there any way this game can get even better??? "While fans of the comic will find a lot here that they recognize and have plenty of stuff to find references to and speculate over, the game requires and assumes no familiarity with the comic, and we’re adamant that no one who comes in new to the world should ever feel like stuff is flying over their head. We really want to make something that is approachable and welcoming to anyone who can pick up a mouse and point and click at stuff, and who thinks jokes are funny. That’s it!" I think they handled this perfectly by making Joey completely unfamiliar with Alternia. That means people who don't know shit about Alternia can discover about it along with her! "Pretty banal, really. Make a modern adventure gaming classic, win legions of fans, take over the world." Such a banal goal. 0_0

#Homestuck #Hiveswap #Joey #Deertroll #Xefros #The Heiress #theories