- Costumes: Homestar as The Hero, the Poopsmith as Cobb, Marzipan as Trixie, the Giraffe-Necked Girl from Scranton, Coach Z as Malcolm, Strong Sad as Mike Dawson, Homsar as the Gnome, King of Town as the Antwerp, Strong Mad as Glottis, Pom Pom as The Manhole, The Cheat as Willy Beamish, Bubs as Hoagie, Strong Bad as Sludge Vohaul, the Goblin as Creeper
Halloween Hide & Seek
is a short Adventure Game by the Brothers Chaps, made for Halloween 2021 in lieu of their usual Halloween Episode for Homestar Runner. The game received an update on November 2nd to add quality-of-life features and a secret. On October 2022, Version 2.0 was released, adding voices to all the characters and even adding an additional puzzle. This version is only available for those who pay at least $2 US on the itch.io page.
Homestar finds that all of his friends have gone into hiding on Halloween night. He must wander Free Country USA using anything he can get his nonexistent hands on to find everybody and round them up at Silhouette Hill so he can misidentify their costumes in a hilarious fashion.
Tropes:
- Bag of Holding: Homestar is able to fit several large objects on his person, despite having no apparent means of storing them. It gets lampshaded during one particularly obvious instance:"I will tuck this entire trampoline in my boot."
- Bigger on the Inside: Homestar and Strong Sad both lampshade that the top of the old tree where the latter is hiding is a lot more spacious on the inside.Homestar: It is WAY more spacious up here than I thought! I love King's Quest spatial physics!
- Continuity Nod: As with all latter-day Homestar media, the game is loaded with references to previous toons on the website.
- Homestar can find a Strong Mad Oyster Smoothie Breath Caked Armpit Latte in the Gremlin.
- Homestar keeps bugging people about buying and/or selling Witch's Brew, a running gag that began in "Pumpkin Carve-nival".
- The gameplay music is a remix of the theme from "3 Times Halloween Funjob". Just like in that cartoon, Homestar knocks on Marzipan's door by banging his head against it.
- When interacting with the ladder, Homestar asks the player if he should Syd Getman or Syd Useman it, calling back to his "Syd Hoffman or Syd Frenchman" game in the Strong Bad Email "date". Interacting with the King of Town's trampoline produces a similar gag.
- You can ask the Poopsmith where Homsar is, with Homestar mentioning how previous Halloween toons always triggered the character's Easter Eggs by clicking on or near the Poopsmith.
- After opening the Gremlin's door, Homestar calls it an "auto", the word he uses to refer to his car in Where My Hat Is At?.
- When asking the King of Town why he's bouncing on a trampoline, Homestar wonders if he's trying to "twees it out", a term Homestar used in "lady fan" to refer to working one's "buttweesimo".
- After noticing a note on the back door of Bubs' Concession Stand that he can't read, Homestar remarks that Original Bubs (from "original") could've seen it "from here".
- Homestar can find the Horrible Painting, which first appeared in "bottom 10", and attempt to give several other characters "the jibblies" with it. If you use it on the King of Town, he complains that "the giblets were a lie", a nod to him confusing "jibblies" for "giblets" in "Jibblies 2".
- The joke about the King of Town being a "no-armed space Grimace" alludes to Strong Bad mentioning "four-armed Grimace" in "best thing".
- Homestar assumes Coach Z's costume is Queen Latifah again, referencing the time he actually dressed up as her in "Happy Hallow-day".
- Copy Protection: Clicking on Pom Pom in the ending prompts a good deal of Conversational Troping about old adventure games' copy protection. Homestar waxes nostalgic about the code wheels some games used to protect their contents from pirates... except he was never able to get past them and believes it was the entire experience."The spinny-disc IS the game Strong Bad. [...] Just like those other super fun games that would ask you the 9th word of the 3rd paragraph of page 33 of the manual."
- Easter Egg:
- If you click on an otherwise unremarkable foreground object inside the "Spooky, Leafy Tree", Homsar appears.
- An update added "the Path of the Rocoulm". If you get the Horrible Painting early on and use it on every character and every place possible before using it on Strong Mad, to scare him away from Bubs' back door, you can unlock an encounter with the Goblin, who will do his usual dance, and even appear in-costume during the ending screen.
- Clicking on the Moon outside Marzipan's house has Homestar sing a Non Sequitur song about dinosaur pie.
- Excuse Plot: The story is simply Homestar attempting to find the rest of the cast, serving mostly as a vehicle for gags.
- Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: The game repeatedly points out that most of the cast is dressed up as old adventure game characters that few people will remember.
- Mythology Gag: When Homestar asks The Cheat if he was hiding somewhere ninja-style, he corrects him that he was hiding "commando-style".
- No-Sell:
- If you try to use the Horrible Painting on him, Strong Bad brags that the chair for his Sludge Vohaul costume makes him immune to the jibblies.
- The King of Town also doesn't react to it because, quote, "The giblets were a LIE!".
- Strong Sad proclaims that the jibblies don't work on him anymore because he has watched the Ancients implant an embryo in his brain, in a reference to the character he's dressed up as.
- Bubs isn't bothered because after dealing with a bunch of rats the jibbles don't bother him anymore.
- Homestar, Marizpan and Pom Pom are also immune to it this time around, though no explanation is given.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Invoked; the King of Town tries bouncing on a trampoline in the hopes that Homestar wouldn't recognize him if he was doing physical activity.
- Overly Long Gag: In the ending, clicking on the King of Town prompts Homestar to say "The King of Town is no-armed space Grimace!". Every other character says the same thing, one after the other, which the King of Town lampshades.King of Town: Are you all done? Cause I'ma get back to bouncin.
- Recognition Failure: Lampshaded, Homestar says that failing to recognize his friends' Halloween costumes is "like half my whole deal". He does a whole string of these in the ending:
- Homestar calls the King of Town "no-armed Space Grimace", and everyone else follows suit.
- Homestar calls Marzipan "that neon sign from Las Vegas", possibly a reference to "Vegas Vickie", who spent years outside the Glitter Gulch strip club on Fremont Street before being taken down in 2017.
- Homestar calls Strong Bad "Grandmaw Strong Bane".
- Homestar compares Pom Pom's costume to a copy protection code wheel.
- Homestar calls Homsar a "droopy Pikmin".
- Homestar calls Strong Mad a "Goron dressed up as Speed Racer", and Strong Mad misidentifies his own costume as being from Full Throttle, Interstate 76, and Death Track before settling on being racing commentator Paul Page.
- Homestar assumes Coach Z is dressed as "Queen Latifah, again".
- Homestar calls Strong Sad "Jeff Foxworthy", while Strong Bad misidentifies him as "most guys from Saskatoon" and Marzipan says he looks like the personification of a Library Science major from 1991.
- If you finish the Path of the Rocoulm, the Goblin shows up dressed as Creeper from The Black Cauldron (based on the 1986 video game adaptation of the Disney movie), and Homestar calls them "Toadwart from the Gummi Bears", Coach Z assumes they're one of the guys from the video for "Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats, and Strong Mad mistakes them for an enemy from Golden Axe.
- Retraux:
- The game is done in the style of an old-school point-and-click adventure, with simple pixelated graphics.
- Pom Pom is Deliberately Monochrome, specifically like an old Macintosh game, as a nod to the original platform of his costume's source material.
- Rules Lawyer: In the paid, updated release, the King of Town won't simply be "found" that easily, stating that he can't be found so long as he's still bouncing. The solution to the puzzle involves going on the top of Bubs' Concession Stand and changing the lettering around until it makes something that forbids bouncing.
- Shout-Out:
- The Poopsmith's "Ask Me About Peasant's Quest 2" button is a nod to the "Ask Me About Loom" gag from The Secret of Monkey Island.
- As is tradition for Homestar Runner's Halloween Episodes, Strong Bad's silhouette on the title screen is entirely different than his actual costume - in this case, Chaos from Loom.
- When Homestar first climbs up the spooky tree, he describes its unusual dimensions as "King's Quest spatial physics".
- Strong Bad's description of the Cheat is near-verbatim lifted from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:"The Cheat's got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan. He speaks a dozen languages. Knows every local custom. He'll blend in. disappear! You'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the grail already.
- Homestar's befuddled response ("Um... I'm selling these fine leather jackets?") refers to a line from the film's video game adaptation, which would become a recurring gag in subsequent LucasArts games.
- If you try to use the Horrible Painting on the King of Town, he'll complain that he's not falling for that again because the giblets were a lie.
- The ending has several references:
- Most of the cast refers to the King of Town's costume as "no-armed space Grimace" (a McDonaldland character).
- Homestar assumes Homsar is dressed up as a "droopy Pikmin". In response, Homsar name-drops Botanicula, another game by Amanita Design (who made Samorost, the source of his costume).
- Homestar interprets Strong Mad's costume as a Goron dressed up as Speed Racer. Strong Mad's subsequent dialogue gets the actual source of his costume mixed up with another LucasArts game ("FULL THROTTLE!!"), then attempts to correct himself by naming fellow vehicle-based games Interstate 76 and Death Track, and finally states that he's motorsports commentator Paul Page (in a way that could be a nod to the intro of the 1993 racing sim Indy Car Racing).
- Homestar believes that Strong Sad is dressed as Jeff Foxworthy. When Strong Sad tries (and fails) to explain the plot of the game his costume comes from (Dark Seed), he gets frustrated and poses in the same fashion Mike Dawson does in the intro to Dark Seed II.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Coach Z first appears, he claims he was definitely not living inside of the car trunk he emerged from.
- [Trope Name]: Downplayed in the introduction, as Homestar outlines a Running Gag in the most basic way possible:"How will I tell them how much I really like their [INSERT INCORRECT INTERPRETATION] costume?!"
- Updated Re-release: A paid version was made available on Halloween of 2022, adding voice acting, a new puzzle needed in order to "find" the King of Town, and minor graphical updates.
- Violation of Common Sense: The only way to make a browned pumpkin for Marzipan is to rub it against the Poopsmith's whatsit pile, or on the filthy "cursed earth" that remains after you move it with the Poopsmith's shovel. It gets lampshaded repeatedly, as Homestar notes he has no logical reason to perform this action beforehand and admits that the pumpkin subsequently rotting is something he should've expected to happen.
