What Pumpkin Studios
What Pumpkin Studios was an indie game studio responsible for creating and releasing the point-and-click adventure games based on the cult webcomic Homestuck, Hiveswap and Hiveswap: Act 2. The company was founded in 2015 in Miami, Florida, USA and New York, New York, USA after the Kickstarter to fund a Homestuck-themed game was successful. The founder of What Pumpkin was Andrew Hussie.
The company appears to still be active as of April 20, 2021, though no updates or game announcements have been posted, since.
Origins
The company that would later become What Pumpkin owes its creation to the Homestuck Kickstarter founded on September 4, 2012. With the funding successful, having raised $2.5 million USD by October, Hussie had the funds and the necessity to break ground on an in-house game studio. Initially, the game was announced as being handled by a company known as The Odd Gentlemen.
It was announced in October 2014, however, that What Pumpkin would be taking over the programming and development duties. Too, the studio appeared to be an in-house operation with two locations. The site in Florida was handling merchandise, and the one in New York, game production. [1] Announcements followed which stated Hiveswap would be two separate games and episodic. [2]
Fans were initially confused by the changing of the guard when it came to what production company was going to handle the game development of Hiveswap, but a non-disclosure agreement kept the previous team from discussing exactly why they had been replaced.
Hiveswap Production and Release
Unlike what preceded it, Kickstarter updates in 2015 centered around game production footage and screencaps. Of note, the images released at the beginning of the timeline showed a game taking place in a 3D environment, when later caps would show everything rendered in a 2D style. This was a controversial decision and topic amongst fans at the time.
Adding to the controversy was the dissolution of the NYC offices in December 2015. The whole of the staff was fired with little warning, mere months after plans were supposedly in motion to "upgrade" the studio.
Despite the controversies and roadblocks, What Pumpkin finally released Hiveswap on September 14, 2017.
Related Links
References
- ^ A Brief History of Homestuck by Sarah Z on YouTube
- ^ The Hiveswap Fiasco by Giovanni, October 3, 2020