HoloCure - Save the Fans is still one of the best and best-rated roguelikes on Steam, and its lead developer, animator Kay Yu, is now at work on a second game that looks like a River City Girls-inspired 2D co-op brawler.
Kay Yu's new game, Holo X Break, was revealed last night in Japanese and English, immediately intriguing players literally all over the world. The announcement trailer is light on gameplay, but does show four playable characters decked out in collectible items and gear, plowing through screens of oncoming enemies. It's a bit like HoloCure, then, but with a new and tighter perspective.
In a tweet sharing the English trailer, the dev writes: "Oh oops I made a second game." Separately, he said: "For the past year y'all have been CUREing but now, it is time to BREAK."
🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/9ROG3EnkBkMarch 1, 2024
HoloCure is great and Holo X Break already looks great, but there's a bit more to this feverish reception than just 'video game good.' There are a lot of roguelikes on Steam, with seemingly dozens more added every month, but even with so many absolute classics on Valve's storefront, only a small handful are capable of beating HoloCure in user reviews.
This Vampire Survivors-inspired fan game combines the vtubers of Japanese brand Hololive with bullet hell mechanics and an array of collectibles and minigames, and in under a year this winning formula has earned it 28,427 user reviews with a 99% positive score. Even if you aren't a fan of Hololive and don't know a thing about vtubers, the game's just plain good – arguably the best Vampire Survivors-like ever made, and there are tons of stellar games in this little subgenre.
SteamDB and Steam250, which tabulate review scores slightly differently but collectively offer a good picture of Steam ratings, both agree that only the likes of Hades, Vampire Survivors itself, The Binding of Isaac, and Slay the Spire can out-muscle it, which is about as impressive as company comes. The game is also totally free, with Kay Yu repeatedly refusing to make any money by selling it even after Hololive owner Cover opened an official indie game arm that allows approved fan games to monetize.
Will Kay Yu, who's assisted by what seems to be a small team of staff that one localizer described as "working sleeplessly," actually charge for this new game? It doesn't sound like it. In a Twitter exchange, one fan asked if Kay Yu is sticking to HoloCure's price point – that is, free – calling it "just stupid" for "a game of that quality." Kay Yu's response, "about that," has once again left fans desperate to show support somehow.
The whole situation is a fascinating collision of quietly enormous audiences. Primarily through the sheer power of fun gameplay and Easter eggs, HoloCure has opened doors and enabled collaborations once thought impossible. Judging by its reveal trailer, for example, Holo X Break seems to feature the voices of its star vtubers, all of whom are among the biggest in the entire industry with millions of subscribers between them. Especially in Japan, Hololive vtubers are often regarded as celebrities, so this is no small cameo. The game's trailer was also shared by A-chan, a well-liked Hololive management figure who has nearly 900,000 Twitter followers of her own.
チームHolocure！？YAGOOさんが行方不明になってしまった…！？！？めちゃめちゃ気になります…！ https://t.co/X2iAKxKrQjMarch 1, 2024
There's still a lot we don't know about Holo X Break, but the fact that it's a new, seemingly free game from Kay Yu and his team, and one clearly leveraging a few ideas from HoloCure, is more than enough to put it on my radar. Here's hoping it's out this year.
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