friendsim2

[friendsim2]

License and Usage Info

As a reminder to anyone making fan content - all of our art assets are licensed under CC 4.0 non-commercial by attribution and all code is licensed under a combination of the MIT and CC 4.0 attribution licenses! tl;dr - this means you can use our assets for fan projects with attribution!

While we are currently included under the omnibus license offered to FRAF projects, this doesn't change the core license for our original content, as all of our code and assets are either original or licensed under permissive licenses or creative commons.

If you want to use any of our assets in a non-commercial project, feel free to do so with proper credit - you don't need to ask permission. If you wish to use our assets in a commercial or licensed project, please get in touch and we will facilitate contact with the appropriate parties.

You can rip the assets directly from the game files using a variety of commonly-available RenPy tools, and we may eventually put out an asset pack, but this isn't a high priority given that the project is in a post-release state and is still a non-commercial project being maintained by a volunteer.

Also as a final note on some of the code - the XDF (eXtended Development Framework) code used for some of the TechniColor Heart bits is licensed under CC 4.0 International Attribution whereas the majority of the game code is licensed under the MIT license. If you're getting far enough into the weeds that this matters to you, please reach out to @jonayariley who wrote the game's code.

[friendsim2]

State of the Friendsim (2)

What's happening?

As you might have seen, we're listed as part of the FRAF (Fruity Rumpus Asshole Factory) collective as a semi-official, licensed work. This technically means we have the right to sell merch or monetize in some way, although we do not plan to. Basically:

We're a completed work that will not be receiving future updates, outside of critical bug fixes. Our team has mostly disbanded and has moved on to other things.

The two remaining Studio June core team members are currently doing other things and are very much backing away from the Homestuck fandom. Sorry if this is a disappointment to anyone, but it was a long time coming.

Our position in the FRAF is basically to showcase what the fandom can do, as we're the product of, including our voice cast, roughly a hundred people's combined work.

Our license does NOT change the terms under which our assets or code are licensed. You are free to use any of the assets and code for your own projects, as long as they're non-commercial. Most of the code can be used commercially as well - it's often very janky but there's some cool stuff in there like a RenPy based adventure game engine, a fully-functional version of Tetris, and a whole game-within-a-game that tbh is technically better than the main game since it was coded last.

Our license does not also somehow imply the game is canon (which is already a meaningless concept for something like this but whatever), so... uh... feel free to disregard it? You could already do that but go off I guess?

Speaking as the game's director and licensee - I will never monetize this game. I have put a lot of my own time and money into making it because I care about this fandom and the people in it. I wanted to make something cool and help support artists in a way I could materially make a difference. The aim was never to make money, gain clout, whatever.

I appreciate all the support for the game, as well as some of the criticism it's received. Some of that criticism has been profoundly stupid/inane, but some of it has been genuinely thought-provoking and has changed how I approach both game development and writing (which, keep in mind this game started production like 5 years ago).

Studio June as an entity has other, extremely unrelated-to-Homestuck plans going forward. None of these are short-term, so we're basically on hiatus right now while we evaluate future plans. This may also involve a rebrand as we move away from Homestuck as a property, although I do like the name and I'm really proud of our logo so idk... we'll see.

Director's Final Thoughts

I've been moving away from the Homestuck fandom for a while now - that's not a secret if you know me at all. And while I'm super proud of what we've done with Friendsim 2, there's also a bunch of stuff that I would've done differently in a post-mortem lookback of the game. Some of these are production-related, some are writing-related, and some are the result of me not being as strong a Python/RenPy developer as I am now (look at the difference between what TechniColor Heart does versus the main game and you'll see what I mean).

Overall, this game is a snapshot in fandom history. Whether you love it or hate it, the game brought over a hundred people together to make something that, IMHO, is technically impressive and generally pretty solid. I've gotten feedback ranging from "I loved this game it means so much to me" to "I hate everything about this and all the characters suck and you suck" so it's been an interesting ride.

But whatever your thoughts/feelings, this game is in my past now. I directed it, I wrote a lot of it, and I saw that it crossed the finish line. I've been doing other stuff for a while now, and will continue to do other stuff in the future because I've never been interested in just coasting on what I've built. I'm happy for everyone whose life this game has touched, and I wish you all well.

Right now, I'm working on a few things - I'm acting in a TTRPG actual play podcast which will be out soon (@momentofbalance if you're at all interested). I'm also working on a literary horror novel.

As an aside - Tbh those critics of this game that felt like the writing sanded the edges off the characters too much might wanna check either of those out when they're available - I play a delightfully dysfunctional, often deeply-flawed character on Moment of Balance and the novel I'm writing is tonally in a whole different world to Friendsim 2 - dealing with abuse, survival, and the lengths we go to escape inside our minds when our situation becomes truly desperate. Okay that's me done plugging my future work check out Moment of Balance coming to the Bard Rock Network September 1st 2025 okay actually I'm done now

Anyway, yeah - this was always a collective work despite my heavy involvement with the writing and direction, and it was always inherently bound by the Friendsim/Pesterquest formula and characters, so it's nice to be able to work outside of those limitations.

I have extensive and complex thoughts about Homestuck, the fandom, FRAF, etc. etc. etc. that are really nobody's business and don't matter because I'm on my way out. I look forward to working with many of the people I worked with on this project again in various capacities, and I'm happy for the time I spent with y'all working on Friendsim 2.

Basically, this has been an interesting journey - and at this point I'm the last person here, shutting off all the lights and putting the chairs up on the tables.

I wish my team all the best in what they do next. I wish our fans the best in whatever they're up to. And I wish our critics and detractors the best too, because at the end of the day this is a free video game and you're allowed to not like it, no hard feelings (unless you're gonna be, like, bigoted about your criticism in which case what is wrong with you?).

That's all I've got! Thanks for playing, thanks for reading, and thanks for being a part of the story together.

-Jonaya Riley (@jonayariley), Director and Lead Writer for Friendsim 2

[friendsim2]

howdy! finally got to volume 13 and i have two questions. firstly, what does the "some business to attend too..." ending imply in regards of what happens to MSPAR? also, when Trizza speaks about her 'true education', what kind of training/education she go through? I'm really curious! also i apologize if these are supposed to be up to fan interpretation, i just wanted to know if there was a specific implied meaning that i didn't catch

Petrus' "some business to attend to" is basically just "I gotta go do some Empire shit" to get him out of the way for a bit. Practically speaking, he's probably still dealing with the fallout of various rebel activities and the fact that he's still reporting to the Empress at the end of the day.

The "true education" refers specifically to being groomed to become the next (potential) Empress - so a litany of pro-Empire brainwashing, strategy, tactics, and personal combat training. In this timeline, this version of Trizza didn't really have that click with her - in other versions of the timeline she obviously fell in wholesale with it and what it implied about her place in the world.

[friendsim2]

hi! i gotta say i really love Petrus and i think he's so interesting as a character!! is there any extra info or tidbits about him that weren't revealed in-game? totally cool if not but i just crave more content about him.

(game's lead writer/director here) He's actually someone that came out of a no-MSPAR Hiveswap novel I wrote called A Delightful Abattoir, where he was envisioned as the person who's basically the force behind the Alternian military in the Empress' stead while she's off conquering other worlds. The basic idea was to take someone positioned similarly to Dualscar and make him worse.

Since we take a lot of the Alternian military stuff from real-life United States of America military stuff, Petrus is based off of a kind of amalgamation of several US generals (his name partly comes from David Petraeus, a former US general involved in both Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the former director of the CIA), with a good chunk of his attitude coming from the US in Vietnam and the whole attitude of using extreme violence, often against a civilian population, in order to advance the cause of imperialism.

[friendsim2]

Is there any reason the purplebloods are all coded as black people?

There are a couple reasons - one being commentary on some of the aspects of Homestuck and how the purple bloods (and especially the clowns) are portrayed in canon as well as in Friendsim itself (especially with Marvus and his dialogue quirk). The clown religion stuff intrinsically ties back to ICP and horrorcore (including a lot of inspiration and ties to black artists) and to voodoo (albeit in a way that's often not fantastic, hence the desire to add some nuance to that in the route itself).

All of this gave the sprite designer a lot of room to work with building the characters out in a way that they felt reflected their vision for these characters, and then for the route's main writer to explore parallels to our world, like the exploitation of marginalized cultures for entertainment and the stereotypes about violence foisted on those same cultures.

Rather than trying to ignore some of the racialized elements from canon (again, getting back to the horrorcore and voodoo stuff), we wanted to try to say something about the parallels to our own world, similar to the commentary about other aspects of Imperialism from other routes.

[friendsim2]

hi i'm curious; other thann developers, how many people have fullly 100% completed FS2?

If you mean "completed the game, end-to-end, and saw the ending" - idk, Steam stats suggest a few hundred people (like maybe 300 or so).

If you mean "got 100% of all the achievements" - it's kind of hard to say? You can't really look at achievement numbers because some of them are potentially mutually exclusive on a run. If I were to hazard a guess I'd say probably like 50 people - how many people really did look down the stump in Volume 12 or do all of the Technicolor Heart routes?

[friendsim2]

something I've been curious about regarding volume 3 and I'm not sure if this had been asked or answered before

But I know it's supposed to be a commentary on American milliatary and that the milliatary does starve its soldiers

My question is why would alternia specifically starve their soldiers when it's seen that trolls are just naturally stronger no matter the blood caste?

I don't think we ever suggested that the Alternian military was specifically starving its soldiers, at least not in the route? (food supply in general isn't something we talk about much, although Diemen specifically mentions the Empire doesn't let them go hungry in volume 11)

The American military at least very much does not starve its soldiers - it takes a lot of calories to do military shit, and the military is known for having food that would best be described as "bad, but available in large quantity." Provision of basic food/shelter is one of the tools that imperialist armies often use to recruit and keep soldiers around - it's a lot easier to convince someone to fight for you when you're providing them with (usually) hot meals, shelter, and clothing.

If this a theory based on Skylla's art where she's more drawn-out and taller than her original design - that was a stylistic choice to evoke her border collie lusus and contrast her with Konyyl (stocky and bulky) and Marsti (right in the middle). It's not supposed to be ultra-realistic or anything (if Skylla were real she wouldn't have a neck that's like a foot long either).

[friendsim2]

do you think you'd also be interested in revealing story concepts that were either changed or scrapped before the final product? You've talked before on just making it a smaller project focusing on a handful of characters and it had me curious on that and whatever other concepts you or others had in mind that didn't make it or were changed

Yes, a few things changed during the course of development.

A few highlights:

Originally, the concept was a more straightforward "MSPAR goes and saves everyone" but this was scrapped as being not super interesting. This was mostly in the original planning stages, back before we were planning to make original art assets - so it would've been a much simpler project that was a bit more in line with the tone and feeling of the original Friendsim.

The whole "dream sequence" bit of volume 12 was originally completely different - there's actually a bit of cut content there that was actually finished. There was a trial sequence where Tagora and Tyzias are facing off against each other, and then there were these walk-around hallucinations where you saw echoes of some of your past decisions from earlier volumes. Technicolor Heart was a "what-if?" concept that ended up spiraling out because I had a lot of assets I could re-use from another, unfinished game where I'd made a lot of the backgrounds. A bunch of them are photos that I (Jonaya) took traveling in Texas, and some of them are renders that I did a few years back. The art for Maria, Aradia, and Rannel (and the cats) is also re-used from the same unreleased game. The rest of the TCH bit was made possible by not having voiced dialogue and me writing literally the entire script, coding everything, and doing all the UI (which is a pretty shameless rip-off of homage to the Dream Daddy UI).

The concept for volume 1 was originally this: "Tagora and Galekh get into a legal dispute over pre-nup stuff that Galekh tries to stick into the marriage vows. Stelsa and Tyzias pick sides and who the player supports and how the mediation goes determines what Tagora and Galekh decide to do. (specifically Galekh)"

The original volume 8 concept is simply listed as: "Tirona is a fake journalist."

Volume 6 was originally going to be a more on-the-nose discussion of what being queer means in Alternian society, which morphed into the whole quadrant vacillation/multiple people in a quadrant thing that it ended up being.

Volume 9 was originally going to have Tegiri/Polypa/Mallek specifically breaking into the dry dock to rescue the gold bloods that were being held there, which ended up being split off with volume 9 having a more self-contained plotline about attacking the Empire's supply lines and volume 10 dealing with the gold bloods.

We batted around a lot of different possible concepts for volume 12, specifically how Gl'bgolyb was involved and how the whole dreamscape thing would manifest itself.

The Metal Gear-esque segments of Volume 3 (among others) were originally a "could this work in RenPy?" experiment that ended up spinning off into basically every mini-game that the game has.

Volume 3 was re-written a couple times to coordinate better with Volume 4 and how Marsti was characterized. Originally she was much more enthusiastic about being a pilot for the Empire, and her more bitter, anti-Empire vibes were a result of the Volume 4 writer's feedback. The bits where you hang out on the rust-blood side of the compound for a while was also added in to give you more of a view into the day-to-day of their life and what Marsti's doing for them, which also makes what Konyyl and Skylla end up doing more meaningful to the overall plot.

Volume 3 had a version where it's actually Marsti who agreed to plant the charges on the airfield, which was scrapped in favor of having her be unaware of the plot until MSPAR finds her to let her know what's going on.

Volume 5 was originally going to talk a little bit more about how popular culture and fandom connect to the Alternian Empire - volume 5 ended up becoming a more introspective character-focused route, and volume 8 kind of picked up some of the "how media works in Alternia" slack.

Volume 7 was, unsurprisingly, not going to originally include "Hiveswap Act 1/2 but in RenPy" as a thing. This came up as a possibility during the writing process and the plot of the route (blackmailing Zebruh) ended up coming out of that naturally. The original concept was to be pretty much solely focused on the Alternian entertainment industry and how it supports Imperial propaganda, but the more personal focus on the characters was distilled from that to show their place within that system and how they respond to it.

Actually, in general the original concepts for a few routes were more "big picture" and going to talk about themes of how Alternia as a society works, but a lot of that was honed in to specifically look at how the people in the routes act within those systems rather than trying to "very special episode" the concepts/worldbuilding. For example, rather than just saying "Imperial propaganda sucks and is bad and Ardata isn't happy because she's given her life to something that feels hollow" to show how warped her whole perception of everything has become through her interactions with MSPAR. Or to show Xefros and Chixie's disillusionment with the systems that uplifted them as low-blood only insofar as they were able to entertain the Empire.

Volume 13 originally had a bit where you talk to the Sylph of Space more in-depth, including a version that was more meta and talked to the player specifically instead of MSPAR. There were at least three revisions of this conversation that gradually trimmed it down and tried to make it feel more impactful, and finally I just cut the whole bit entirely, choosing instead to end on the cliffhanger of "Scratch is back and he's not super jazzed with how much you've been altering the timeline" which felt like a stronger choice than trying to Say Something™ to the player.

Volume 14 was always supposed to be a showcase of how far the timeline had deviated from the original due to MSPAR's involvement (with the weird stuff around Damara and Scratch being killable now and Lord English being gone), but there was a long period where I wasn't sure how the actual end bit would manifest itself. Adding the game script as an item and introducing that bit of meta-narrative was a late decision to tie things together between Boldir, Scratch, and Damara.

Whether or not MSPAR would get their powers back wasn't a settled question originally. There was a point where killing Scratch would give them their powers back and that was how they got everyone home, but that felt narratively kind of flat - like MSPAR would just become basically a god again who could do whatever the fuck they wanted with Scratch gone, so why not just use their First Guardian powers to also fix Alternia? But part of the point of the game is that there isn't a magical fix-everything solution to the problems of the world, so MSPAR has to learn to live without their powers again and the people of Alternia are able to determine their own fate. Things have been improved by killing Scratch and positioning Trizza in a place of power but nothing is guaranteed.

Trizza wasn't originally going to be a part of the story, and when she was I wasn't originally sure how she would be involved in the plot. I had a long conversation with a friend about Meenah and her place in Beforan society and it got me thinking about doing a version of Trizza who had, through her upbringing, become a more sympathetic and kind person and how she would respond to the situation she was in. Part of the throughline to the game is "what if people change?" so we see versions of people who become worse people, but also people who become better - and the impetus for that and the ramifications of it are interesting to explore.

Other stuff changed over the course of production for various reasons (assets changed, re-worked, character designs tweaked, etc.) but those are the bigger narrative or gameplay aspects that changed over time.

[friendsim2]

So my question is what DID happen to the author self inserts? Like did they die? are they hiding? Were they just dolls handmaid and boldir used for anonymity sakes?

The author self-inserts represent the narrative team and their relationship to the story itself, so them being gone just means that the team has finished with their part in the story and now things are in the hands of the characters, whatever that means.

Which, within the fiction of the game, basically means everything up until MSPAR returns to their timeline. At that point, they're in charge of their own destiny and free of the constraints of being part of the story, just like they were at the end of Pesterquest.

[friendsim2]

Spoiler alert (?) for the final act — just so scrollers can scroll through without not spoiling a bit of it.

What is the quirk of giving characters with weapons established in friendsim rifles? I clocked it immediately with tegiri and held off asking a dumb question, but one of the routes ends also shows Amisia with one, and both of them already have been assigned respectively with a katana and an axe. Both decisions leave me baffled but I’m unsure if there’s a proper explanation for both of them to now have guns or if it’s just that it’s a bias.

(Some major spoilers within)

Short answer: Depends on the character, but generally speaking it's an exploration of the reality of violence in the Alternian Empire - taking away some of the romance or goofiness (with Amisia having a giant axe) because these are tools used to enact violence and exert power in the system. Longer answers, more character specific:

Tegiri might best be summed up as "don't bring a knife sword to a gunfight" - his background was being pulled into training as a Legislacerator enforcer until he ran away after witnessing an entire hivestem being wiped out by the cadre he was training with. He and Polypa are fully committed to fighting against the Empire, and that means using those same tools of violence against them. We find out in Act 2 (and possibly Friendsim idr right now) that the sword he carried wasn't sharp - something he comments on depending on who you talk to during volume 9. But the gun is real, standard military-issue, and it represents a shift of the character away from the romanticized ideal of violence and towards its reality. Depending on what arc you take Tegiri on, that could extend into either rejecting the revolutionary violence and leaving the fight to someone else, or fully embracing it.

The Amisia end-card is more of a reference to Marsti and her shotgun rampage through the tower in Volume 4 than anything else (which was part commentary on Marsti's willingness to take a darker path after volume 3 and part Die Hard reference). There's also some of the same commentary on weapons-as-tools - this is a weapon that exists for a simple utility.

In general, we wanted to show characters who had developed and changed over time, including being in a different place in life - which sometimes meant changes in equipment (Tegiri and Polypa donning body armor and military rifles) or uniform/outfit (Skylla, Konyyl, and Marsti wearing uniforms or Folykl and Kuprum in their Fleet-issue scrubs).

[friendsim2]

hi just thought i'd pop into your askbox to say: the cat ive been catsitting (her name is tabbie, short for Tabitha) has been sitting on my lap when im playing FS2 and when i have it open she tries stepping on the touchpad. 10/10 cat rating

Friendsim 2: Cats Love It™

[friendsim2]

Join us this Saturday, April 19th at 3:00 pm Eastern time as our director, voice director, and a motley collection of our cast and crew play through the final volume and discuss their thoughts and experiences with the game!

[friendsim2]

writing this minutes after finishing volume 14 and all i can say really is thank you. thank you so much to everyone in the team for creating something so magical and with so much genuine heart and passion put into it, and thanks for letting us give our friends as happy of an ending as we could ^u^ FS2 has become not only my favorite HS game, but one of my favorite games/VN overall so thank you so much to everyone ^u^ (also especially for allowing Damara to have a happy ending like she deserves)

Thank you! Really glad that you've enjoyed the experience so much, and thanks for sticking with us all these years!

[friendsim2]

Congrats on releasing the final volume ! Well wishes to everyone 💖

Thank you so much! We're proud of what we've accomplished, and we're happy to have had everyone along for the ride!

[friendsim2]

Ive been fallowing along the development of this game since the concept was announced and it was such a pleasure and a source of constant light through the darkest years of my life. The teams done such a fantastic job and its so bittersweet to see it end. Thank you so much, happy 413 and much love and luck in future projects to you all <3

(game's director/lead writer responding) Thank you so much - I'm really glad that the game has meant so much to you, and I know what you mean about it being bittersweet.

Personally, I'm proud of what we've done with this game, and I'm excited for the future ahead.

Thanks to you and everyone else who has supported us along the way - that really makes the whole thing worthwhile!

[friendsim2]

Happy 4/13!

It's been four years, but we're proud to announce the release of our FINAL VOLUME!

Thanks to everyone that's supported us over the years - please join us this one final time at the end of everything!

[friendsim2]

Happy 4/13!

Big news, Part 1: We're proud to announce the second volume of the Friendsim 2 original soundtrack is now available!

Now let's just give the West Coast folks a minute to wake up for something else big...