Joey Claire is stranded on a planet of alien teenagers, armed with her best dancin' shoes and a sylladex full of pogs. It’s up to her to survive on the dangerous planet of Alternia and get home with the help of her new friend Xefros, a novice at telekinesis and a fairly decent rapper.
Very Positive
1,161 Steam reviews
| LANGUAGE | AUDIO | SUBTITLES | INTERFACE |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Y | Y | Y |
it keeps crashing for no reason (literally no reason at all), if you dont like games that constantly crash dont get this :(
A bit jarring, but really starts picking up after a bit. I would consider act 2 to overall be better than the first one despite the drawbacks.
Just what I was hoping from from the next chapter, seeing Joey have such a condensed view of life on Alternia is a delight all the way to the end of the line :3
ABSOLOOTLY AMAZING GAME 10/5 STARS YAY ONE BILLION PERCENT WORTH EVERY PENNY
zebede
:D
Gostei bastante mas achei o primeiro jogo melhor, esse é bem mais linear e meio chato em algumas partes. De qualquer jeito tô ansioso para o ato 3 :)
gay trolls
я не была готова к тому , что мне придется стать ЮРИСТОМ МАТЬ ЕГО >:(
а так игра безумно кайфовая , жду 3 акт дабы разориться
1 hate h0mestuck and that's pretty much a//// that can be sa1d ab0ut 1t.
The pogs are very important
It got my partner into Homestuck.
Did more things right than act 1 but more things wrong as well, still a good step forward narrative-ways
I really liked the [spoiler]trial part[/spoiler]
I love This Gaem I hope That They Dont ALl DIE in act 3 !
один из хороших поинт&клик которые я проходил, в целом рекомендую, оценивая на 7/10. момент с детективным расследованием показался очень душным, хотелось скипнуть эту тонну диалогов. в отличие от первого акта, тут был упор на историю. если не читали хоумстак - можете влиться в вселенную с этой серии. также на подходе третий акт, на который недавно дропнули демку.
homosuck
My hiveslop... no... hiveGEM... #hivegem
if you dont release the damn third act...
The bones of the story are good. Far from home, our heroes must choose between bravery and safety in order to survive against an oppressive regime.
But the meat, the supplemental writing, just isn't there. Act 1 is full of interesting interactions between the kids and their homes, and even if not everything was productive, there were neat toys and important details about the major characters and their relationships. In Act 2, I didn't feel like I was failing forward because the wrong answers didn't have much to say, so I had to use the hints more and more as I got through the later parts. Xefros finding his own voice might be a big theme, but so many interesting things happen that it's a shame he doesn't have many lines outside of cutscenes.
That being said, I am still looking forward to Act 3 - the stuff that they've demoed is richly written and Jeevik misses no opportunity to yap.
first a hiveswap act 1 diss : hiveswap act 2 was in my opinion insanely better than act 1 . with the amount of content in a2 with so many characters and actual progression , a1 felt like it couldve maybe pushed its original content out to getting to the train station and act2 couldve been fine without that part . the balance just feels off .
second , the characters were awesome . even if u dont take the time to play friendsim and get to know the new trolls in depth before OR after ( would reco after imo ) then u still get to know a decent amount about them . it doesnt feel like how some homestuck charas were treated , where outside of the main plot there was no flavor to them . ( im so sorry nepeta. ) all the intractable trolls had their own vibe and personality to them and while times with some cars ( gold / olive being the one that really disappointed me ) were really short , i felt like i got a good glimpse into them and their lives a lot better than some in homestuck . it felt personal and charming that all the trolls really were just , people doin ♥♥♥♥ and not actively fighting for their lives .. in most cases .
thirdly comes with my only major downside . my boyfriend sat through and watched me play the whole game , –which as someone who didnt read homestuck he said he enjoyed– but he had to have a guide up for me at all times . maybe im slow , but this ♥♥♥♥ isnt possible without a guide ESPECIALLY . the jade / teal car . it would be exhausting to go through the game without the guide . so while i love the content , and character interactions , the puzzling is a tad TOO hard as someone who rlly enjoys puzzle games . and if u dont like walking back and fourth , dont play the game cuz u wont like it . i didnt mind it but it still got a lil tiring towards the end
also , if u want to get all the achievements without playing through atleast like 5 times then u need the guide . they r so easily missable but with so much game content and different paths to take its so hard to go back and get them all , im putting off as we speak .
the games good though , playing with a friend is even better . probably the best installment of the homestuck franchise and honestly makes me only want hauntswitch even more because what the ♥♥♥♥ could dammek possibly be up to right now while we r getting nuked on a train
This game is so cool I wish lesbians were real
I kind of enjoyed act 1, so I decided to buy the second act, hoping it would be the same experience.
I have a memory of the first one being entertaining : minigames, changes in gameplay, in scenery, and in situations. I had a good time.
I was a little disapointed in the second act, mostly because of the Trial minigame. Here is a more detailed opinion :
Pros :
- It's still Hiveswap / Homestuck, same good art, same vibe.
- Universe is still the Homestuck satyrical semi-nonsense you know. It might get tiring to hear everybody talking like a 4chan troll talking in l33tsp34k, but if you're a Homestuck fan you probably won't mind.
- I had a few laughs on this 6h playtime
- It has replay value as some situations can be solved in several ways
- Music is not memorable but it's agreable to the ear.
- There are tons of dialogue and hidden texts for any combinations, if you like that.
- You can have some continuity from the first game.
- The characters are all very different and colorful, with a high fidelity to the original MSPA material.
- There are animated bits here and there.
Cons :
- The trial minigame at the middle of the game. This is the main problem with this game, and the point at which I really started to get tired of the game.
It's a cool idea, and I love what they tried to do here. But if I wanted to play Ace Attorney (which I love), I wouldn't have installed Hiveswap. This bit is ambitious (with 10+ characters involved and clues to find and several ways to end the game with lots of options to defend the accused), but it's overall missing several key points that make ace attorney not feel like work. This bit alone likely took 50% of the gametime to solve, crushing the pacing of the game, and therefore felt like forever. With a poor interface, a confusing situation and suddenly too many characters, this bit was a failure of writing and game design for me.
- You HAVE to try any combination of objects with pretty much everything to advance the plot.
- You HAVE to talk to everybody several time to advance the plot. Sometimes the game wants you to talk to characters in a specific order to be able to complete an action, which makes you again go mad. Also, sometimes a dialogue end even if the character has more to say, which is not a good way of doing a point and click.
- The game is set in a heavily segregated train, you have to reach the locomotive and you start at the rear. It is told that you can't cross it as you are a member of the lowest class. However you manage to cross most without too much trouble. The only obstacles are mostly artificial (somebody is in the way and just doesn't want to move for no good reason), except for the last two cars. Some of the later challenges require you to make several trips across the train with no way to shorten the trips, which feels like a waste of time as a player as I revisit the exact same spots.
- I hope you love reading dialogues because that's 95% of the game, which wasn't so much the case for the first act. For my part, I felt most dialogues were uninteresting, and tiring as almost everybody is a pedantic edgy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ (they are trolls, so that makes sense, but still).
- The puzzles make no sense whatsoever. You will need either the clues from the game or look up one of the guides in steam community. In some situations, there is nothing to do, you just have to try everything until something pops up to tell you are wasting your time, which was probably funny for the people creating the game but as a player, not so much.
- There are several spots where the game is counter-intuitive, and you have to look up the solution. For example, I had to try the same action several times to accomplish something. Several well-established mechanics of the genre are not respected, and it gives a feeling that the game was either rushed or short on budget.
- No voice acting (the first one wasn't dubbed either, so no surprise here).
- Making the whole game being set in a train is an interesting take, but I feel like this would have been better if it was not the whole game. The decor gets dull, even if all the cars are different, it's still just a train.
- There aren't many objects to interact with, it's people you interact with mostly.
- The game has bugs (the rustblood lady's lusus you cannot help as it is way too easy to softlock yourself) and was stripped of some content (the bee minigame).
- There is overall very little plot advancement on the whole game, which feels like a total waste of money and time.
So, overall, if you liked the first act, I would recommend to just watch the playthrough or a game movie on the web, and skip the annoying parts. If you really really want the game anyway, buy it on sale.
For my part, I lost interest in the series.
i love this game!! it has fantastic art and an awesome soundtrack! but i probably prefer act 1 overall, the backtracking you had to do in the later cars was a just a tad annoying
also marvus is hot
:the last known sighting of chixie roixmr...
:she will be missed dearly...
sympa
theres yuri and i like yuri
INSANE CLIFF HANGHER PLEASE RELEASE HIVESWAP ACT 3 PLSPLSPLS
pretty fun !!!..!!! characters are pretty charming its nice to see them all again. art is still really nice and stuff. im liking the story so far. pretty good game idk what to say. big ace attorney fan and there was a whole segment referencing it soooo. uhhhh i think the whole purple car part was pretty cool.. i dont know how to write good reviews anymor.. it was a little rough at some parts but overall its a nice game and if u like homestuck pleaaaaaaaase play these. both acts that are out so far were fun. i havent played that demo for a3 but i def wanna buy the full version when it releases. would reccomend
I played this game when it first came out, but ragequit at the court scene because of what a slog it was. I decided, 5 years later, to actually give it a go properly. All I can say it its definitely too late to refund it.
The only things that affect the story happen in the beginning and end 30 minutes. Everything else (in this roughly 6 hour game) is literal filler. From Ace Attorney parodies, to an hour straight of menial fetch quests that are there just for padding, I was bored most of the time playing this. I could ONLY see someone enjoying this if they are interested in the characters from Friendsim returning, or some little tidbits of troll culture- But for those people, I'd recommend just reading a wiki because it wastes your time less.
The game likes to point out how repetitive it is in a meta way, but does nothing to combat the terrible gameplay. Meta commentary isn't interesting when you're just pointing out how bad your game is. Hopefully act 3 is better, the itch.io demo had more story than the entirety of act 2.
This game has great attention to detail and is very fun and replayable, but the jadeblood part is a bit tedious, even though I liked the concept of it
Fun, flexible and with gorgeous artistic direction. Act 2 is filled to the brim with things to do, characters to learn about and a pretty inventive way to approach worldbuilding exposure. I never felt bored during my gameplay, if not for the rare moments of frustration when an answer for a puzzle I thought would come up due to previous exposure didn't work or was contradicted, such asm [spoiler]Wanshi's knife not being brought up as a possible way to get the bathroom tape[/spoiler] or [spoiler]Xefros' flavor text saying his psiionics cant break the lock for the locker when he previously established he could do so.[/spoiler] Those are minor nitpicks, thought, and do not diminish my experience with the game.
good game
The first half was more of what you would expect after finishing Act 1 and was enjoyable, however this game suffers from pacing issues in the middle section, and poor game design in the last section with needless backtracking and poor indicators of what the solutions are to proceed.
I HATE THESE ♥♥♥♥ ASS TROLLS
Pretty story rich
i liked when ardata killed me multiple times. would be killed by ardata again
yay
very very good, some parts dragged on for a bit longer then needed, but it was good
I liked this as a fan of homestuck, if you haven't read homestuck and aren't looking for more of it though, its not gonna be for you
its pretty swag what can i say
like act 1 but way better, i loved almost all the trolls theyre really funny, cant wait for act 3
пол игры занял душный суд, с жирной отсылкой к адвокатам
big boob clwn
An excellent continuation of the previous Act! This one takes the cake for the vast amount of interactable trolls in tandem with their hemospectrum variety. Even if you haven't read Homestuck, you'll get all-encompassing heap of Alternia's caste system and its power dynamics in play. This one runs on the longer side, mainly due to the prevalence of fetching and lawyering. Despite that, it remains a gripping caper that'll leave you aching for the next Act!
Very fun to play and unique storytelling! I love the way the art is drawn, reminds me of my dreams and gives me a fun creepy yet dazzling feeling. I also really like the alien worldbuilding for Alternia, the writing & characters really gets you a good feel about how their civilization works.
It's very slow but calming and fun, very similar to how a dream would work. I'd definitely recommend if you're interested in alien worldbuilding stories, point & click games, or an enjoyer of the Homestuck universe, etc.
- Art 10/10
- Story 10/10
- Puzzles 7/10 (I'm bad at puzzle games)
- Music 8/10 (gets repetitive sometimes)
Other note: the whole trial thing in the jadeblood car was so annoying!
great game
muy genial
la parte de Ace Attorney deberia poder ser skipeable segun mi opinion
Same as my last review on the first act i LOVE this game!! i love everything about it but the second act is 100% my favourite out of it! i love how it's longer and it has you see how every blood colour looks and acts in this! I love the character designs more then anything!!
Cute and funny game we love Joey, I want Marvus to step on me
Good ♥♥♥♥
peak
ABSOLUTE HIVESWAP, satisifices the "what if homestuck was actually a game" craving and has one of my favorite OSTs, while its a bit buggy at times, I still love the game, hyped for ACT 3!
peak game, has marvus in it
this is so ♥♥♥♥ dude. ♥♥♥♥ the trial (insult) and ♥♥♥♥ marvus xoloto (sexual)
absolutely an amazing game if you're a homestuck nerd. much better than act 1, especially in showcase of the caste system and how it works, as well as, the plethora of characters to get yourself lost in. 100% will be playing again.
act 3 when bru.
ABSOLUTE CINEMA
honk
Took me 5 hours to beat this game with a guide and another person for moral support. The music in the train cars is obnoxious and I had to turn it off several times ( sorry toby ). The art quality is a SEVERE decline from the first game, what was charming in act one feels super rushed in act 2. The biggest gripe I have with the art is the white outline around Joey that makes her stick out like a sore thumb. She stands out and takes the attention away from the few decent background in the game. Actively disliked playing this game, I love homestuck and the world it creates this is one of the more frustrating ways to interact with it. Love yourself, don't play this.
good if you're looking for more homes tuck
act 3 news seems on the horizon
I think if I didn't have Act 1 to compare it to, I might have enjoyed this game, but it's lacking all the charm of the first game. There are way less interactions with items, almost everything is just a generic "this doesn't work" which just sucks. The UI also just feels worse T-T I wanted to enjoy it so bad but it's just so much worse than Act 1.
there was no yuri but great game
ive played games made by 2 person dev teams that are leagues more functional than whatever this steaming pile of bad UI and unedited writing is
Side Quest Simulation. Not even a fun one, very unfocused act.
oh my god
homestuck^2 should've been a hiveswap comic
I NEED ACT 3 BRO
Lovely characters and fun story! Only wish I could play the last two acts,
Very peak, I'll wait for act 3 until it kills me
i NEED xefros sorry
ACT 3 WILL NEVER COME OUT
i like xefros
tagora..... nnnnghhh.....🤤🤤🤤🤤
that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ace attorney segment
joey and xefros are adorable characters end of review
When ACT 3?
ITS SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ AMAZING, THERES THE BIG CLOWN TITTY MAN AND THE HOT LESBIANS. PLAY IT.
It's good and overall enjoyable, but there are several elements to the writing and pacing that bring it down slightly. The first areas of the game feel largely empty and do not provide much in terms of gameplay. The train segment is brought down by a lengthy Ace-Attorney style trial in the middle, while providing some amusing insights into troll culture, is lacking in a logical connection between evidence and statements, so navigating it is frustrating and there is no way of telling how close you are to getting a bad ending to the trail. Fortunately it picks up again after the trial and I am looking forward to further games (if act 3 is indeed happening).
I just want to see the act 3 being released before GTA6
Absolutely wonderful, ahh!! I got act 1 and 2 as a gift, and I was a little worried it wouldn't be as good as Homestuck, but it was amazing! Buying both acts was definitely worth it and I'm absolutely gonna buy the third when it comes out. You really get a view of Alternia and its people and its culture, way more than you did in Homestuck. Getting a clearer view of the caste system and everything like that was crazy in the best way. Obviously you got to see that in Homestuck, too, I just felt like this fleshed out their world and their society a lot more! Also, the story was literally just amazing. I loved it. The characters are all wonderful, the story captured me, and I can't wait to see it finished. I'm obsessed.
so like the go off the rails on a crzy train or smth, also homestuck rereleased today and it sucks why are they doing it in waves just give us all the content already
[h1] 2/10 [/h1]
This game ruined all of the good momentum the first act set up and ruined my faith in this franchise
Just read Homestuck
when the hive is swapped.. but clowns
need.f..............................act3....................................NGHGFHJNDGOIFNVCX LEGIERIFSSFDJN D!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111
tuff
andrew hussie cadê o ato 3
While Act 1 on its own is a competent and polished point n click adventure game, Act 2 is more like a visual novel with walking around. Pretty much the entire team that developed Act 1 has left after its release, leaving a 3 year gap between the two acts that was filled by the Friendsim and Pesterquest visual novels. It seems that new team was tasked with developing Act 2. 5 years after Act 2's release with only hints of Act 3, I have little faith that Hiveswap will ever actually be finished, let alone Hauntswitch.
The game itself is far less polished than Act 1 was, and I would go as far as to say that it was rushed and incomplete. Two characters whose homes you visit were straight-up cut from the game.
Furthermore, Andrew Hussie, the creator of Homestuck is a manipulative, abusive liar who does not deserve your money and support. If you want to know more, look up the takedown of the Unofficial Homestuck Collection and the pretense that is the Homestuck Independent Creative Union, to say nothing of things regarding the development of Hiveswap itself.
save UHC and apologize
loved act 1 and act 2 was alright until the ace attorney segment. poorly-written, bad logic connections between evidence and dialogue choices, no hints as to what ending you've unwittingly locked yourself out of, dialogue can be clicked through but not skipped so if you get the game over (there are multiple scenarios where if you get one thing wrong you get insta G.O.'d) it's super tedious because you have to listen to all of the dialogue every time because it's tied to the "press" mechanic they added. the game insults joey and thus the player when they get something "wrong" despite not being very helpful if you aren't trying to cheese the entire thing. this one segment (and this particular act's obsession with making you talk to people instead of putting you in scenarios where you want to) made me not want to finish the game.
[h1]I'll bite.[/h1]
[b]To preface this[/b] - I am not a die-hard Homestuck fan. Pretty far from it, really. I am primarily writing this as a fan of point and click adventure games and this review is mostly for people who are fans of point and click adventure games. I read it, sure, but it's not my typical cup of tea. On a very surface level I enjoyed acts 1-5 and I kind of tapped out at act 6 due to a variety of smaller issues that began to compound into a singularly hair-pulling reading experience, only finishing it out of some nebulous sense of obligation due to the amount of time sunk into reading it. I enjoyed it, didn't love it, but I very much appreciate its existence and I think its better qualities far outweigh its negatives. Nevertheless, this is not a review of Homestuck.
Hiveswap, in a meta sense, is an inherently fraught topic that - without getting into the layers-upon-layers of internal drama, semi-failed promises, and general mishandling of the overall IP after its acquisition - I'll just say is complicated from essentially any standpoint that is not the structural content of the actual game. Said content, however, is pretty simple.
Hiveswap (as a whole) is a very classic point and click adventure game in the same vein as something like Pajama Sam or Day of the Tentacle. It is also a very *good* point and click adventure game. The presentation is clean and vibrant. Flavortext is abundant and high quality, with essentially every item in your inventory having some form of interaction with whatever new thing or person you haplessly try throw it at to see if you missed anything important. While there aren't necessarily different routes, there are branching paths that have some subtle yet tangible effects on dialogue and the options available to you for puzzles, which - again, while mostly an underscore - is a welcome addition that makes replays to see all the writing an appealing option for after the credits roll. I especially appreciate the fact that almost every "puzzle" in the game has more than one solution available, and the game doesn't necessarily railroad (pun maybe intended? subconciously?) you into whichever you stumble upon first. I cannot overstate how well this game and its predecessor/first chapter function as point and click games - I'd list them as must-plays for anyone who appreciates the genre.
When discussing the pacing of the game it's important to understand the basic conceit when it comes to its structure. The game is segmented and split into train cars, which function as self-contained vignettes containing their own subplot and puzzle before moving onto the next one. In total, if you count the brief time spent before getting on the train, there are 6 of these. While an even split of time between all of them shouldn't necessarily be expected as some sort of design requirement, when each of these mini-chapters are based primarily around their respective "gimmicks" when it comes to the characters and overall themes + aesthetics being explored therein, it stands to reason that given the character-driven (both the literal characters as well as the more chimerical character of the area) nature of the game, that it would be generally somewhat [i]*bad*[/i] to not evenly pace the amount of time spent in each. Unfortunately, this somewhat bad thing is exactly what the game does. I am not going to say exactly which are which, but there is one train car that gets skipped over almost immediately, one that takes up a solid 1/3 to 1/2 of the runtime of the game, and one that barely has you interact with the car at all, mostly asking you to go back and talk to people you've already thoroughly talked to. It's not game ruining, sure, but what really gets my goat about this whole thing is that I never once got the impression that any of these cars had more or less to say than the others. They all are pretty much matched in potential, which leads to a lopsided experience where you can tell some parts have aspects left untapped while others would have served much better as more succinct experiences.
Are these issues game ruining? Nah. But they are frustrating in a very strange and kind of ephemeral way to the point where I couldn't put my finger on it until I was thinking in retrospect. Anyways.
I won't comment much on the more Homestuck-y and "cringe" aspects of the writing, as well as its departures from previous things within the franchise. For a few reasons. Mostly: I don't really care. Secondarily: A lot of what I'd say has been said verbatim previously by people with far more stake in this whole thing than me. Yeah, its a little tryhard at times when it comes to the general vulgarity of it all. There's some scant use of modern internet terminology that doesn't fit the overall vibe. The troll blood castes and their populations are victim to a pretty severe case of Flanderization and are frankly just a little [i]*off*.[/i] None of these things should really concern you if you aren't invested in the sanctity of the Homestuck name though, for most normal people any of the above gipes will probably amount to a vaguely miffed eye-roll, a fleeting yet disapproving squint, or - more likely - nothing at all.
Outside of these frankly small personal issues, the writing is very good - especially for flavortext and interactions between our two main characters. It's not Shakespearean, but it is strikingly natural at times and the sense of humor in the flavortext can catch you off guard with some very honest laughs pretty consistently. The narrative manages to make the story feel prescient at most points during the game despite the overall structure essentially being a series of very, very tangential diversions. The player is ostensibly expected to try and find all the text and dialogue possible, taking them farther and farther away from the primary goal in the process, so it is an impressive feat to be able to still keep someone invested in and not forgetful of said goal throughout the whole runtime.
I'm not terribly qualified to speak on the visuals, art has never been my thing, and getting into them will invariably drag me into speaking on the more meta aspects of this game's development and all that jazz, so I'll keep it brief. It doesn't look as good as act 1 which can be theorized to be because it had overall less people working on it and a somehow more rocky development cycle than the first chapter. Irregardless of this, the game looks great - the first act is a very, very high bar to clear. Environments universally are great and the stark contrast between them is very well executed and obviously thematically relevant. The visuals paired with the soundtrack and audio design impart such a pointed sense of individuality in every section that the player is almost immediately able to ascertain a whole suite of traits regarding each group of characters and each train car. It's done so well that it can sometimes come off as hammy, or too in-your-face about the points it wants to make. However: the alien world the game takes place on is simply very in-your-face by nature, and I personally believe that a more subtle approach would be ill-suited to the setting.
If you like point and click games, play it. If you like Homestuck, play it and also maybe don't be so stuck up about it?
That's really all I have to say. On the matter.
tal vez hiveswap 3 son los amigos que hicimos en el camino
Great continuation. Still waiting for more Acts!
yesv
что-то такое было и у меня когда я гостил у маминых родственников в казахстане
... The story continues, with an imported save from Act One. Interesting! :)
WHERE??? IS??? ACT 3???
Hiveswap act 3 never, but both act 1 and act 2 are amazing point and click games with a lot of charm.
(edit in december of 2025: I stand corrected)
stelsa and tyzias sloppy makeout session in act 3 please
hiveswap act 3 when
