bugbound

[bugbound]

Heyyy everyone! I said this in my server but I’m deciding to put Bugbound on an official hiatus, I don’t know for how long it’ll last but with getting ready for college and figuring out mental health stuff I feel like I am not capable of updating it as of right now and as I am adjusting to a whole new environment here in a couple months.

I don’t want Bugbound to feel like a chore to update and to devolve into something that stresses me out even more, so I think this is the best course of action to take. I’m sorry if this is a disappointment to anybody but I’ll try to come back to Bugbound when things are better. In any case thank you for your past support :)

[bugbound]

I don’t have an active blog on tumblr, is it still okay to join your discord? I thought I’d ask

So sorry I didn’t see this sooner!! But if you want to still join ofc you can! Having an active social media account isn’t required! I’m pretty quiet in the discord and slow on updating bugbound rn due to life problems happening but you’re still very much welcome to join and chat :)

[bugbound]

Update

Start from the beginning 

Bugbound Update!

Update for pages 139-144! Also changed the color for Kole’s pesterlog text so it’s not as bright and more legible. Hope you enjoy!

Link to the update will be in a reblog!

[bugbound]

Bugbound Update!

Update for pages 139-144! Also changed the color for Kole’s pesterlog text so it’s not as bright and more legible. Hope you enjoy!

Link to the update will be in a reblog!

[bugbound]

I don’t even know anymore

[bugbound]

I’ve been busy and I come back to find out hussie has a tumblr where he larps as his clownsona. Goodbye again

[bugbound]

Hi, the holidays are coming up and I would like to afford gifts for my friends as well as other stuff, so I’m opening icon commissions done in my hs style :)

Info:

Icons with pride flags or simply drawn backgrounds are available for $16.

I will do: IRL people (with permission from that person), OCs, and basically anything else just ask me!

I will NOT do: Anything that promotes hate (anything racist, transphobic, homophobic, etc.), not safe for work/school

I am accepting payment through PayPal! If you are interested in a commission please contact me on here or on twitter @ dawndood, thank you!

Reblogs are also appreciated <3

[bugbound]

marvus' WHAT

Sorry I never saw this!! For some reason I don’t get notifs for asks anymore

But yeah before the trial marvus tells joey that if she acts as defense hell make sure she gets through the rest of the train unmolested

With the context it obviously means unscathed, but with the long pause and the clown emoticon it’s clear they did this for a ‘joke’ and to make people’s heads turn. The writers know the word is used almost exclusively for sexual abuse nowadays. It’s not like they had him say that to show that he’s a creep and to treat it with any seriousness, it’s glossed over completely cause the writers think a teenager being vaguely threatened with pedophilia and rape is funny I guess

[bugbound]

Every new thing I hear about act 2 the less and less I wanna watch a lets play of it and the more I wanna avoid hs all together :/

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Super petty complain, but the team got the quadrant names wrong when it was explained in Hiveswap act 2! It’s mentioned as red, black, pale and ashen; but it’s supposed to be FLUSHED, CALIGINOUS (sometimes called pitched I think), ashen and pale! A red quadrant can be the flushed or pale ones, and a black quadrant can be the ashen or caliginous ones. Team Hiveswap, get your lore straight... Hussie didn’t make pages of romance exposition in Homestuck for you of all people to get it wrong >.<

Oh!! Tbh I always get the romance terms mixed up so I probably wouldn’t even have noticed at first, but good catch :o!!

It’s real weird of them to get that wrong in their own official game, but hs has been pretty inconsistent in its writing as of late and kinda just makes up whatever they want to (the mailed divorce papers in the epilogues suddenly not being a thing in hs2 comes to mind. As well as the total recon of the trolls from fs lol)

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Not to be bitter but what the fuck was the point of the friendsims if they were just gonna retcon everything anyway??????

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What if I just completely rewrite jade troll lore cause fuck it my story now

[bugbound]

act 2 is… not fun! i can basically go down the reasons i didn’t enjoy the game without spoiling anything about the game’s actual plot.

like i’ve said already pretty much the entire charm factor of the first act is gone. act 1 laughed in the face of trial-and-error point-and-clicks that acted like you were stupid for putting the wrong two items together by giving completely unique flavour for every combination of items. even if you knew two items didn’t go together, there was incentive for you to try! act 2 has none of this. 90% of object interactions are the same almost verbatim “these items probably won’t work together” text. there’s no incentive to try out different items, which makes a majority of the game’s objectives into just “click on the one right thing and then walk to the end of the room”.

the rooms themselves are totally empty! most have between one and three interactive objects in them; any other setpieces, no matter how intriguing they might be to the player and/or the viewpoint character joey, serve no plot purpose and are therefore purely background. the few objects that can be observed have only short, dry descriptions; any object description longer than a single sentence is a RARITY. even extremely obvious and again, interesting to the player combinations yield zero returns. there’s a huge ant lusus in one scene. applying the lusus handbook to this lusus returns the message… there’s nothing in this book about giant ants.

there are entire rooms full of CHARACTERS who can’t even be OBSERVED… 4 characters in a room of maybe two dozen can be clicked on, and no real reason is given for this. i suppose the player is just expected to “recognise” who the “main characters” are because they already saw the troll call… how many years ago?

not only are the rooms empty but they are huge. they are way too large for the miniscule amount of content in them and this is ONLY compounded by the backtracking fetch quests you start being put through in the second half of the act. a character literally makes fun of you for going back and forth through the game over and over again but no remedy is provided. one of the ultimate objectives of the game involves backtracking all the way back to the START of the game… only to be told you have no reason to be there, and should walk right back to the end again.

the entire inventory system is basically a joke in this act. most of your items will not get used. when you do get a new item, you will almost invariably get rid of it again by the time you leave that same room. again, almost no item combinations result in anything funny. one of the only act 1 items that gets used in this act is - if you’ll allow me to spoil one thing - xefros’ microphone, which he gives away to another character at almost the beginning of the act. xefros’ entire “rapping about random objects” shtick from the first game is completely discarded! it literally almost feels like an excuse for the writers not to have to write any more witty flavour than they absolutely have to. joey gets a new abilitech in this act which she uses exactly once. the rest of her abilitechs are basically dead space in her inventory like everything else.

instead of the actually charming… you know… pointing and clicking aspects of the first act, the developers seem to have taken on board how popular the friendship simulators were, and tried to make act 2 a dialogue-driven character game? which would be fine if… the characters were interesting. the fact is that most of the stuff they might have wanted to explore in act 2 has ALREADY BEEN DONE, in the friendsims. let it be said that the ace attorney minigame we all knew was coming takes up about half of the game. anyone who told you hiveswap act 2 was about 8 hours of playtime obviously milked as much out of this courtroom sequence as they could, which, if you don’t care about hiveswap’s small cult cast of jadebloods and tealbloods, is very little. most of the game’s dialog was obviously written for this scene. unlike the rest of the game, almost every little combination of choices has its own unique text in this part of the game: but if you’ve never played an ace attorney game before, you will have a hard time finding any of the right or even interesting combinations. to put it bluntly, unless you were already really invested in some of the elements involved, this part of the game will be a long, boring slog.

the game isn’t even particularly funny. act 1 got laughs out of me. act 2′s jokes either fall flat or quickly beat themselves to death. the cultural references serve no purpose. ace attorney “because lawyers!” is funny as a sight gag (like terezi’s OBJECTION!s in the original homestuck) but it serves no purpose as an extended, hour-long part of gameplay. and why does an ongoing gag about KPOP of all things take up so much of this scene, in a game that’s been patting itself on the back over its appeal to 90s nostalgia? (this to me is one of the most damning examples of the what pumpkin team putting out stuff that they personally find hilarious without once stopping to wonder if it’s a product that will actually have appeal). why is the “highblood statue” used in a single scene actually an anime figurine? because anime is funny, i guess?

the game DOES look beautiful, with little exception (the game’s minimalist philosophy makes most of the rooms like pretty empty, after the immediate “wow we’re on an alien planet!” magic wears off), but i struggle to say it’s even a serviceable bit of software. the gui is practically inscrutable. every door says something different on it. “exit”? “open”? “use”? some doors just have a pair of feet hovering above them, which means “walk through door” (just like in act 1, which worked fine). except sometimes the feet just mean “walk on this floor”. it depends entirely on which room you’re standing in.

the actual gameplay is hardly any better. let’s ignore the ace attorney minigame for once. any puzzle that isn’t “bring item from character a to character b” is literally indecipherable. they’ve graciously allowed us to finally use the hint button, which is completely necessary for some of the more arcane ““puzzles”“ (which are really just more of the same trial and error click-and-clicks), but for some reason… only joey can get hints? you’re free to switch between joey and xefros at any time, but only for xefros does the button say “hints currently unavailable”. if you want hints you have to switch to joey. this has no other bearing on the gameplay.

music is fine, but not “we’ve been sitting on this soundtrack for years!” or “we got the undertale guy to compose for us!” levels of blow-your-mind incredible. it’s obvious that the soundtrack composed years ago is not reflective of a game that was clearly cobbled together within the last 15 months. did i mention that out of the 38 troll call characters who were literally advertised as “the cast of hiveswap act 2″, zebede and charun are just entirely absent without cause or explanation?

[bugbound]

Thinking about how camo shorts on alternia would typically be a nice pink or purplery blue color :)

[bugbound]

I wonder if anyone has fun lil headcanons for the bugbound kids yet 👀

[bugbound]

I actually guessed Alex’s aspect out of discarding logic! Space heroes are often awake long time before the game, and if Kole has just woken up, he can’t possibly be the Space lad, even if he has the First Guardian around. (Not to mention his Denizen looks pretty Blood-y to me :0c). (P.D. Feel free to nuke/censor this ask if it’s too spoilery for others, my brain is way too fixated with smol details ^^;)

No no it’s alright! I like to read and post other people’s theories! I just can’t really confirm or deny them but I will say you’re on the right track with looking at smaller details like that :)c

[bugbound]

i found a twitter thread that actually explains with proof why it’s not a hard fact elwurd is +18 and is (most likely) a minor, if you’d like to have a link? overall it all seems to be a miscommunication/not explicitly stating characters ages issue, if it puts your mind at ease! this kinda issues can be uncomfortable when it’s not clear wtf is going on, so i understand you there

Sure I’d appreciate that thank you :)! If you want to you can dm me it or just send it as a submission if you’re more comfortable with that!