We don't have a concrete date at this time, but something would have to go really wrong for Act 3 to not come out this winter. We cannot categorically rule out something going really wrong, so no firstborns are going to be staked on this promise, but we have fair confidence that we will be able to release it in that window.

We can't answer this because it'd be like giving you a list of who survives. Guess you'll find out when Act 3 comes out.

ADMIN: Justin says it's Chixie.

Many of the details have changed, but the big picture plot, nope!

This varies quite a bit. The major points were all pretty nailed down by the concept phase of Act 2. We knew which core characters were going to live or die, and where their arcs would ultimately lead by that stage, and it really hasn't changed much since then. But stuff does emerge from the process of actually writing the script.

Trizza's DVAS, for example, were a pretty late-stage addition to the plot that we made once we started seriously thinking about how Act 4 would be structured. Most of the scene you saw in the Act 3 demo was written in 2020, but the DVAS didn't exist at all until about a year ago.

But yes. [ENDGAME SHIP 1], [ENDGAME SHIP 2] , and [ENDGAME SHIP 3] were all planned from the very moment those characters were created. We've been holding in a Told You So about [REDACTED] that's gonna explode all your brains. And when [REDACTED] gets [REDACTED], baby, you know we were planning on doing that frame 1. [REDACTED]? Born to die. Let's do this.

We'd definitely like to do Hauntswitch! We put together an outline for it at the end of our Act 4 writers room last year. Whether or not it happens will depend on if we have the resources to do it, but the team is 100% on board to keep going if we get a green light.

With our current plan, we should be able to get Hauntswitch out in a single game release. This might sound like it'll leave the game with a lot less content than Hiveswap, but remember how much of Act 1 and 2 are dedicated to leisurely exploring and providing worldbuilding exposition for players who are new to Homestuck! Hauntswitch's plot needs much less setup, and its main character is moving through life like he's driving the bus in Speed. It'll probably be around the size of Hiveswap Act 3 (which, for the record, is about 160k words at current count) and cover as much real Plot Material as all 4 acts of Hiveswap combined. 

The same team that's making Hiveswap is going to make Hauntswitch, so we have to get Act 3 and 4 done before we can start production on Hauntswitch.

Hauntswitch will be a point and click adventure game just like Hiveswap.

Dreadeye.

Hiveswap is kind of the last "canon" Homestuck project (or at least we endeavor not to contradict anything in Homestuck canon). Friendsim and Pesterquest were more "post-canon" style projects that have their own self-contained continuity and freely iterate upon/transform the source material.

And as a post-canon work, the point of Friendsim/Pesterquest was to let the writers and artists involved lean into their own unique voices. There wasn't a strict art style guide, and the writers were given the same freedom. There are a lot of details in Friendsim that were handled with a looser touch than Hiveswap canon, for example: while the characters in Act 2 were mostly just strangers on a train headed to the same place, it was more fun to build up webs of interconnection between the characters in Friendsim, so everybody had the rope to do whatever made for the most interesting stories regardless. Pesterquest was also made with that same transformative mindset.

You can probably just think of these games like an "AU". Each game is a collection of individual artists' interpretations, and it strives to be true to the spirit of that character (as the artists involved see it). But you shouldn't take the literal events that occur in these games to be "canonical", and they weren't mean to stand as the final word on each character.

I hope this explanation also answers all 5000 of your questions about grub scars and why Marvus has nipples and Mallek doesn't.

Hauntswitch is a town in upstate New York, not far from Rainbow Falls (Rose's house).

A real thing we had to do at one point was spend several hours going through court records of people suing Burger King to check franchise numbers and confirm whether or not the specific Burger King near Rose’s house referenced in Homestuck existed in 1994. We are elated to announce that we now have strong confidence that it did, and that we are going to go to Burger King in Hauntswitch so many times.

Like Kalian says: ur clout level could lead to dire consequences for the next 95 hours of ur life. And what an #OddlySpecific amount of time that is!

We'd like to! Hopefully closer to Act 3 launch we'll have some plans to get merch out again.

We're not really sure what this question means but we can confirm that Dirk Strider is real. We want to put him in Hauntswitch so bad.

They're all bards.

We do have more ideas for stuff to do after Act 3/4 (and, god willing, Hauntswitch) are finished, but those have to come first.

Without any spoilers? No.

We've all been dying inside forever waiting for everyone to get to see [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] is so good. 

No!

No. Marvus is already married.

10/29.

No.

No, Mackle Holdem will not be coming out in Act 3. Everybody already knows he's gay, so there's no need to say it. 

Diemen's hot dog.

Dammek is physically capable of eating basically anything.

Not at all! Act 4 is going to be where most of the big choices and world states established in Act 2/3 pay off, but we think about the consequences of variables when we plan them. We've known basically what is going to happen in the story from pretty early on. If planning a variable would write us into a corner where we can't deliver on it within scope, we just kind of know not to write that plot point as a variable. 

We'd love to be able to do a pass over the whole Hiveswap series to smooth out the janky bits after we're done with Act 4. We've learned so much about making games in the course of working on this project, and with 20/20 hindsight we know better than anyone that there's ample room for improvement. If there's an opportunity, we'd love to do a repackaged single version of Acts 1-4 with everything better polished and tightened up in various spots, but obviously that will have to come after we get everything else finished.

We don't currently have any plans to do new Friendsims in the imminent future. We're focused on getting Act 3 done!