Trivia / Hiveswap

• Ascended Meme: A fanartist on Tumblr who draws a lot of art of Daraya with their plush Lapras seems to have gotten enough attention for Daraya's ''Friendsim'' announcement to have a Lapras hidden in the background.
• Content Leak: Ended up happening on the second feature. The designs of the trolls in Daraya's section ended up getting leaked, which also revealed that the trolls had codenames (e.g. Amisia had the codename of "Art Enthusiast"). This leak may have ended up affecting the showcase order, as the leaked trolls were released at a rather slow rate. Either that or the release order was already planned, and they made no changes to it.
• Contest Winner Cameo: There was a comic contest on Tumblr in which the ultimate grand prize at the end was the victor's fantroll appearing in the game. The winner was fefsprites with Idarat Catlaz, who appeared at the train station in Act 2.
• Crowdfunder Cameo: Mierfa Durgas and Nektan Whelan, the fantrolls of the $10,000 donors to the Kickstarter, are back from their Death by Cameo in Homestuck canon. Whether they will survive longer this time around is yet to be seen.
• Defictionalization: We have an official quiz, "The Extended Zodiac", by the creator himself.
• Early Draft Tie-In: Zebede and Charun, two characters who appeared on the Troll Call and each had a route in Friendsim, ended up being scrapped from Act 2 fairly late in development. Charun even appeared in the teaser trailer.
• Missing Trailer Scene: A teaser trailer shows Joey and Xefros interacting with Charun in their cave. However, Charun (along with Zebede) is cut from the final game.
• Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: Homestuck is no stranger to Rule 34 works, and thus, neither is Hiveswap. Notably, even the developers got in on it, as the designer of the Bee-Keeper Troll NPC^note the original, cut one, and not Zebede even drew NSFW art of her own character after it was unveiled. The drawing showed the fans what her symbol was as her debut sprite had it obscured.
• Schedule Slip: The estimated release date on the original Kickstarter was January 2014. There was no release, and no news other than the leaked and unconfirmed Troubled Production, until 2016, when the game was re-announced for a release in January 2017. News on the game was quiet, but on April 13, 2017, Word of God said they wouldn't be putting out anymore release dates until they were sure the first Act was done. It finally released on September 14th, 2017.
  • Act 2 was announced to be released in Spring 2018. However, due to the changes in staff caused by the transition to Viz Media, it was pushed back to an unknown date, with no news or previews except for the Troll Call. The Friendsim was made as a way to tide over fans and give them a chance to learn more about the new trolls while work on Act 2 was halted. It was eventually announced in May 2019 that Act 2 was back in production, though this time a release date wasn't confirmed, likely to avoid the same complaints about promised release dates as before. It would eventually release in November of 2020.
  • Friendsim volumes are usually released every 2 weeks on a Friday. However, because of unforseen changes to Steam's release rules, Volume 11 was released on the Android version but had to be delayed on Steam until the following Monday.
  • Similar to the above, the Friendsim's 17th volume was held back a week because the staff were taking time off for Thanksgiving. This also meant that the 18th volume would be later than anticipated, as they continued the two-week schedule after that.
• Trolling Creator: Many fans were miffed at the lack of Violet trolls in the Troll Call, to the point where it became a rather touchy subject. Polypa's route in the Friendsim reveals that she has a high bounty on her head due to killing a high-blooded troll. What was said troll's blood color? Violet.
  • People are unsure of the genders of the Soleil Twins (They appear feminine but other trolls such as Marsti and Lanque have been misgendered before based on their appearances). The staff have refused to reveal them, with one member saying that "Everything about them is a mystery," and another saying that they're "Both clowns." Friendsim revealed them to be a girl (Barzum) and a boy (Baizli)... in the last volume.
• Troubled Production: Hiveswap was originally planned to have been completed sometime in 2014, but it was pushed back and production shifted from The Odd Gentlemen to Hussie's own new studio What Pumpkin. Details are still largely unclear, but allegations from a What Pumpkin associate claimed that TOG had used a chunk of the money on a buggy demo, whereas other sources claim that TOG was essentially without any sort of direction for months as the design documents weren't even finished until 2015, and TOG went on to work on King's Quest for Activision. Between this and a number of claims from said WP associate, fans were led to believe that TOG stole money for King's Quest and did nothing, even though it would later come out that Hussie had them work on other Homestuck content such as assets used for the eventual finale of the webcomic.
  • The game continued to suffer from troubled production with WP NYC, who were developing Act 1 being suddenly shuttered, and a good portion of their work tossed out, where after the game was reworked to be 2D instead. Even as of this writing, the final portion of the game hasn't been completed even though What Pumpkin has released other HS projects in the interim.
• What Could Have Been: An asset reel released during the game's 3D development phase featured several troll designs not officially shown anywhere else. Given that the beekeeper troll was confirmed to have been scrapped by the creators, it’s highly likely that the other trolls featured (sans Xefros, obviously) either met the same fate as her or were redesigned, such as the digger troll that would later become Fozzer. The design for the Beekeeper's hive was later used for Zebede's hive, and the troll known as "Gatherer" later became Charun.
  • One of the artists posted some of their early designs of some of the trolls:
    • Boldir's sign was originally going to be Lecen. It's unknown exactly why this was changed, but it might have been to do with the fact that her final sign looks like a question mark.
    • Additionally, Polypa's sign was originally going to be Leicorn, and she wore two spikes on each hand, which became part of Konyyl's design instead. Her horns were also a different shape, and one of them had a bandage instead of a notch.
    • Chixie was originally a Rustblood with the sign of Arga.
    • Tagora's early design shows him wearing only black and grey, with no visible sign or blood colour. His horns were also a different shape. It's possible that this might have been an early design before his blood colour and sign were decided. Another early design for him gave him smaller horns that pointed inwards.
    • Similar to the above, Marsti originally wore all black except for her goggles, and also had a ponytail and shorter horns that were flat at the top. Another design gave her slightly similar horns to her final design, and the same post also shows that Fozzer had a different horn design as well.
    • Vikare's sign was Taurrius, while Tirona's sign was Libicorn, and she wore a shirt and trousers instead of her more schoolgirl-like outfit.
    • Folykl went through many different designs, was originally going to ride around on a bug-like lusus, and at one point had Gemicorn as her sign. The lusus appears in Act 2 when she is first seen at the train station.
  • Apparently, a lot of the trolls were designed to have plainer outfits similar to the beta trolls of Homestuck, but were eventually given more unique outfits to make them less visually boring since there were so many of them and they didn't want them all to look the same.
  • Charun and Zebede were originally going to appear in the beginning of Act 2 when Joey and Xefros visisted their homes, with the former having a minigame or two. They were even each given a Friendsim route, and Charun appeared in the teaser trailer. However, both trolls ended up being cut from the final game, likely because they didn't want too many minigames before the protagonists got on the train.

---