Hiveswap is a point-and-click adventure game, paying homage specifically to those from the nineties. All in all, the game interface can be a bit finicky at times, but not enough so to take away from the fantastic work the design team clearly put in. After a few reconfirmations that it is in fact still Xefros behind me, however, I got the hang of keeping him out of the way. It can also be a bit fiddly to investigate backgrounds and other characters as I found the companion character sometimes gets in the way. There’s a few minor glitches where sometimes you can’t flick through your inventory, but it doesn’t appear to affect the gameplay. The toolbar doesn’t look intuitive at a glance, but after a few minutes of playing it’s simple enough to figure out where things are. Cut scenes images are typically drawn in a style that’s more similar to the preceding webcomic and provide a similar amount of humour no matter if your character is dying or not, which they often are.
The trial sequence of the game has separate talksprites which emulate the distinctive style of Ace Attorney very well, including a host of typical exaggerated reaction sequences. The character designs are cute and appealing, with some endearing animation carried over from the previous instalment. There’s some fantastically detailed background work done, especially in some of the elaborate train carriages later in the game. On a design level, the game is quite frankly beautiful. The backgrounds have a 3D element to them where the player can interact with the foreground and the background and move in and out of an otherwise flat plain. Whichever character you don’t choose will then follow you around the screen as a companion. There’s updated sprites and a few additional animations, along with the ability to switch from Joey to Xefros as your playable character at will. The graphics of Hiveswap Act 2 are much the same as its predecessor. ** Warning, the following review does contain mild to moderate spoilers. But how does Hiveswap Act 2 shape up as a much awaited continuation of the story? However Alternia is a very different society, which Act 2 demonstrates all too well. She swaps places with Dammek, a revolutionary from the planet Alternia, and must team up with his partner Xefros to get back to Earth. The first game in the series, Hiveswap Act 1, follows the story of Joey Claire, a 14 year old girl whose already odd life is turned upside down when she’s dragged through a portal into an alien dimension.
The game series is a spin-off of the wildly popular (and oftentimes infamous) web-comic, Homestuck, the development of which has followed a similar sporadic update (or upd8) schedule. Its release has been met with excitement and frenzy from fans, many of whom have been following the game since it was funded via Kickstarter in 2012.
Feel free to send me screencaps and whatnot of whatever part of the text you feel point to a Thief of Hope reading.After a long three year wait since the first installment in the series, Hiveswap Act 2 made its debut on Steam on the 25th of November. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there, necessarily, since ofc I missed the Rage references before the extended zodiac pointed in that direction.
I do think there’s an argument for Dammek as a Thief (Xefros explicitly refers to Dammek as ‘taking his stuff’), but none for Xefros just yet.
I don’t think I’ve seen any references to outlaws or pirates or whatnot linked to Xefros, either. Similarly, I’d say the Butler motif links Xefros (and Dammek) to roleplaying a Knight. In act 1, related to Xefros, I’ve seen a ton of references to Time (largely centered around Xefros’ exploitation by Alternia and his toxic relationship with Dammek), and a good number of references to Rage. If you have a particular reading based on lines in Hiveswap’s text, I mean…no? I don’t really buy inversion theory, and even if I did I wouldn’t agree that a Page would invert into a Thief, since I read Pages as active.