Hiveswap, the Homestuck adventure game, is coming this spring

The Homestuck webcomic debuted in 2009 and has put up something in the neighborhood of 7500 pages of various types of content since. In 2012, creator Andrew Hussie went to Kickstarter to ask for $700,000 to make the Homestuck Adventure Game, now known as Hiveswap, and came away with nearly $2.5 million. Soon it will be time to see what all that money buys.

The good news, for those of you who don't feel like plowing through 7500 pages of webcomic to get up to speed, is that familiarity with Homestuck isn't a prerequisite for Hiveswap. It's "based on and loosely related to Homestuck canon," but functions as a completely self-contained story about a young girl named Joey who gets sucked through a portal to the planet Alternia, where she joins a band of rebels out to save the world.

"Homestuck itself has always been sort of a mock adventure game, one the reader 'plays' by navigating the story, but what started relatively simply has developed into a huge world with its own lore and backstory," Hussie said. "Bringing all this to an actual adventure game is a natural next step for the license—one we hope existing fans will love, but that should also appeal to anyone who enjoys the point-and-click style games I grew up playing, even if you've never heard of Homestuck."

Be that as it may, Hussie made it clear in a Kickstarter update posted today that fans of the comic will enjoy a certain advantage over players who come into it cold. "Its relation to Homestuck canon is something readers can piece together from clues in the game, as it ties into the backstory of Skaianet's roots, mysteries related to the guardians and their curious involvement with all that stuff," he wrote. "Learning all that isn't 'the point' of the game, but it should be some fun stuff for people who've read the story to notice."

The first of four planned Hiveswap episodes is scheduled to come out sometime this spring. In the meantime, there's a website at hiveswap.com, and a handful of screens below.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.