Homestuck: The Animated Pilot is a self-explanatory pilot that adapts the Homestuck webcomic into a web series format. It was produced by SpindleRoo, revealed at Animate! Orlando 2025,¹⁾²⁾ and published to YouTube on September 27, 2025.³⁾

The pilot makes an attempt to adapt 'key points' from the early acts of Homestuck without being monotonous, but cramming this into an 11-minute runtime leads to a disorienting, rushed experience. I find it pointless to 'review' the pilot, knowing what it's meant to do, but someone probably wants my thoughts on the pilot, so here is a condensed list of my 'first impressions' so you don't have to go out of your way to ask. :V

• Anachronisms. Nobody cares about this. However, it's always fun to point out that it's a story of late millennials in 2009, yet they have flip phones (when Dave has an iPhone) and bring up things '80s kids' would only know about. There's also the modern slang, like 'mid', 'PFP', 'DMs', 'aura', etc.
• The game aspect. Explaining the inventory and drawing attention to the meteor *before* the game is installed feels like a bad move, since it would imply that those things are just 'HAPPENING' in the world, and not the direct result of the four installing a game with a very unintuitive title.
• I don't think anything could've captured the initial reaction to Jade's first pesterlog, before realizing that was just a writing skill issue, though it would be kinda dark if they actually acknowledge that.⁴⁾
• Early spoilers, again.⁵⁾ This isn't really an issue since it is a pilot, but the trolls are technically a spoiler, though I wouldn't be opposed to an earlier debut with how integral they become.
• The overall presentation. Most pilots capture a latter point in the series, rather than start from the absolute beginning, so using an Act 1–3 amalgamation is an interesting choice when a flawed rendition of any point around a major Act 3 or 4 animation would've been much more captivating.⁶⁾

Well, that's it. I've never been one of those 'here's my list of headcanon voices' types, and I didn't care about the so-called Vivziepop drama⁷⁾ or the gullibility of Toby Fox fans. Seeing the merchandise, I'm also reaching a point where I probably won't be the target audience anyways, knowing the “to appeal to teenagers, you actually have to appeal to people in their 20s” rule.⁸⁾

• At the time of this writing, the pilot is being pitched to potential buyers, and there's a vague note that merchandise sales at homestuck.store would allegedly help the series become greenlit.

• Homestuck: The Animated Pilot on YouTube