Homestuck Adventure Game is a spinoff of Homestuck which is an illustrated, semi-animated story on the internet that is an extensive parody of video games, most notably classic adventure games.
Homestuck Adventure Game structure is very open, which suits a highly exploratory piece of freeform media with a huge cast and many silly tangents. This game would be a more formal exercise in interactive storytelling and feature a very cool soundtrack !

Till today this project somehow managed to gather more than $1.1MILLIONS out of the already huge goal of $700k with 22 days left !
As a follower of the gaming kickstarter projects, I have NO IDEA how this game managed to reach  more than  $1.1Millions unless there is some voodoo magic involved 😉
Maybe the fact that the interactive story begun more than 3 years ago and managed to get a fair amount of followers helped a bit.

After passing the $900,00 USD stretch goal the GNU/Linux client was confirmed.

About the project

Homestuck is an illustrated, semi-animated story on the internet.  It is not a comic that just happens to be hosted on the internet – it was specifically designed to exist there, to explore the potential of the medium, and evolve through reader participation. I began working on it about three years ago. The end of the story is now on the horizon. When it’s complete, I’ll work with an independent game developer to create a game involving a new story based within the Homestuck universe–assuming this project is funded, of course. The readers, through their participation, have helped make Homestuck what it has become. They may continue to participate in Homestuck’s evolution by helping to fund this project!

If you are unfamiliar with Homestuck (or the site it lives on, MS Paint Adventures), it will help to know a little about the nature of the story and how it was made. Read below to find out more, or if you’re already familiar with it, feel free to skip to the next section where I talk about the project.

Please tell me about Homestuck.

Click here to let me tell you about Homestuck.

These two guys will wait patiently while I tell you about Homestuck.
These two guys will wait patiently while I tell you about Homestuck.

I have been told about Homestuck. Please tell me about this game.

Homestuck, like all other stories on MS Paint Adventures, was built on extensive parody of video games, most notably classic adventure games. The “mock adventure game” format has driven the creation of every page in the story, often with readers supplying commands for what the characters should do next. So for the project after Homestuck, I think it would not only be fitting, but quite exciting to present the story in the form of an actual adventure game.

I’ve worked with others to make small playable games as single pages of Homestuck before, creating them very quickly on small-to-nonexistent budgets. (Like this, or this, with RPG-like gameplay.) And some games I worked on alone. (Like this, and this, with Myst-like gameplay.) These were pretty casual projects, each made in a week or two, and slotted into a much larger, regularly updated story. But a more serious independent game project, with higher production values, many puzzles and challenges, and a fully developed, self-contained story, that is something that requires BIG BUCKS! The $700,000 goal will be enough to fund this project, but is really just about the bare minimum needed to make the game I have in mind. Games are expensive!

They also take a lot of time. The plan is this. I’ll finish Homestuck some time in 2013. In the meantime, there will be a high-level planning phase for the game project. The decisions reached will largely depend on the budget we have to work with: how much money is raised here. When Homestuck is done, that’s when our full attention will be on actual development. The game will be scheduled for release in 2014. I’m often asked what I will work on once Homestuck is done. If the project is funded, then this is it! As for what will happen with MSPA after that, I haven’t really decided yet. I might continue making some sort of content for it, but I’ll have to see what sort of time investment the game will require first.

We’ve talked to some independent game developers about this project already, companies that have already released great games. One in particular we have spoken with quite extensively about this project, and likely will be a good fit. Until things are finalized, that’s all the information we’ll release! Announcements like this will most likely follow after the Kickstarter is over.

 

So, what will the game be like?

It’ll be based on Homestuck, of course. But this doesn’t mean it’ll be anything close to a direct adaptation. That would be impossible! Homestuck is a pretty huge story.

It’ll be a little more like a spinoff than an adaptation. Something that draws from the elements already established in the vast Homestuck universe, applied more selectively to a shorter, self-contained story. Homestuck’s structure is very open, which suits a highly exploratory piece of freeform media with a huge cast and many silly tangents. This game would be a more formal exercise in interactive storytelling. I’ll use elements from Homestuck that I think will be interesting to expand upon in something new, likely with minimal relevance to Homestuck comic canon. Beyond that, things are pretty up in the air as far as plot and characters go. I have some ideas, but the concept will be a work in progress for a good while.

And when I say it will be a “formal exercise,” I don’t mean I won’t try to do anything creative or novel with the medium. I’ll definitely be looking for ways to have some fun with the adventure game format, maybe do a few things that haven’t been done before with the genre. But I mainly mean that my primary goal will be to make a well-produced and highly-accessible game by any standard, something that everyone can enjoy even if they’ve never heard of Homestuck before.

 

So as this project it pretty much a go and will have a GNU/Linux client, you are free to pledge .

Did I mention the soundtrack is cool ?