Homestuck

mspaintadventures

The popular Homestuck webcomic is a series of comics that belong to a collection called MS Paint Adventures, all created by artist and author Andrew Hussie. What makes Hussie’s comics unique is that they are “mock games,” modeled after text-based adventure games of the 1980s and early 1990s, where readers move through a story’s pages by following commands that link to the next action. Before his fan-base boomed, the commands were originally submitted by readers and later selected and illustrated by Hussie. Homestuck is the fourth and most popular MS Paint Adventure so far.

Hussie began Homestuck in April 2009 and, by April 2016, concluded it at a length of over 8000 pages. The storyline involves a group of teenagers who download the beta copy of a computer game, an act which accidentally causes the end of the world. In the years after its creation, the storyline of Homestuck grew increasingly complex, as did the format. In addition to simple drawings, Homestuck also includes Flash animations, instant message logs, and music.

The comic grew enormously popular, and in 2012, Andrew Hussie started a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to develop an adventure game based on the comic. This led to a flood of donations from the comic’s many fans, and in less than two days, the Kickstarter had exceeded its budget ($700,000), earning mentions on major sites such as Wired and CNN. The game, tilted Hiveswap, has been in development ever since, with a planned release of its first chapter in 2017.