Snowbound Blood is a free role-playing video game that lets you play as a deadly corporate agent in the world of Homestuck. Developed and published by Deconreconstruction, this visual novel is a 2D interactive fiction adventure that features a heavily text-based narrative and investigative gameplay. It is the spin-off story to Vast Error, a previous fan project by the same developer team, and contains episodes that are gradually released.

Top-notch investigation

Homestuck is a 2009 action-adventure webcomic that was written, illustrated, and animated by Andrew Hussie. Spanning thousands of pages for almost a decade, it became a highly popular series that spawned a large following and hundreds of creative fanworks—all thanks to its unique evolving style of media and storytelling. One of these fanworks is Vast Error, a fan comic adventure first created in 2011 and eventually became just as popular as the original material.

You don’t necessarily need to read Vast Error first to enjoy Snowbound Blood, however. In this game, you follow the adventures of Chief Regulator Secily Iopara of the Repiton Corporation, who has been tasked with hunting down a precious treasure that was stolen. Starting from a simple robbery scene, you have to make your way by investigating locations, collecting clues, and interrogating other characters to find the truth of what happened—all the help of your trusty Trollodex.

The gameplay relies heavily on its text-based narrative. While you’ll get dialogue scenes between characters, everything is narrated in detail when it’s just Secily on her own. Plus, you’ll tend to choose dialogue or action options, like in any visual novel. However, this isn’t just any VN you can jump into. The stellar writing greatly amps up the mystery surrounding the case, but it’s really better to know Homestuck’s quirky jargon first before reading.

Another great fanwork

All in all, Snowbound Blood is an amazing fangame to a highly-popular fandom. It expands the story of another popular fanwork and offers an interesting story, as well as extended adventures in the form of volumes and episodes. However, this isn’t recommended for anyone who has yet to read Homestuck as it’s fully immersed in the webcomic’s lore and terminology. You can go ahead and play this even without checking out Vast Error, though.