Hololive Productions are looking to branch out their franchise by leveraging its own fanbase similarly to Touhou Project.
COVER Corporation revealed on November 15 the introduction of holo Indie, a fresh gaming brand dedicated to derivative works and fan-created projects.
Holo Indie offers independent or solo developers the opportunity to monetize their creations based on Hololive’s established intellectual property. These games can be marketed on platforms such as Valve’s Steam store, of which COVER intends to establish a dedicated Steam account label for these fanmade games to release under as part of their “Game Developer Support Program”.
Up until now fangames based upon the Hololive franchise were available for free, this new holo Indie program aims to be a mutually benefitting both COVER and fans alike in hopes that these Hololive fangames stimulate interest in the Hololive brand and hopefully expand further outwards to reach new audiences.
This collaboration hopes to provide financial incentives for indie / solo developers into creating more and more fan made games based on COVER’s IP with minimal effort and expenses by the Hololive Productions team.
HoloParade, the inaugural fan-made release under this initiative, serves as COVER’s trial run for the holo Indie brand.
It is a solo-player 2D tower defense game showcasing 65 VTubers and mascot characters from Hololive Production. As outlined in COVER’s announcement, the primary creative force behind HoloParade is the Japanese developer Roboqlo, who handled the planning, graphics, and programming aspects of the game.
But if I were to take off my rose tinted glasses from a technical aspect, HoloParade looks like a mundane flash game with low quality animations that harpers back to simpler times.
It’s a very simplistic title that looks, feels and is genuinely worse than HoloCure, a free-to-play fangame that emulates Vampire Survivors. whereas holo Indie expect to charge consumers anywhere from $3 to $4 USD for HoloParade when it launches on Steam on December 1st.
And in my eyes it just isn’t worth it, it’s a fangame sure but HoloParade looks immensely low rate to actually demand monetary compensation, if the game were free I’d have no qualms about it but to simply shove a 2010’s flash game in my face and charge me three dollars for it? You can just fuck right off with that.
Nevertheless, in HoloParade, your objective is to summon characters to form a parade squad and strategically obliterate the enemy’s base. It’s a simplistic 2D tower defense game.
Each character possesses unique abilities, ranging from ally-healing support to self-destruct attacks. The game introduces the “Symphony Effect,” triggering various impacts on gameplay as characters play musical instruments.
The combination of characters in your parade and the sequence of their summoning appear to be crucial strategic elements. The “Skill” system enables customization with up to three special abilities for each character, allowing for diverse development paths.
HoloParade also incorporates several mini-games and an in-game gacha mechanic for obtaining characters, there are no microtransactions here.
This whole ordeal is very reminiscent of how “ZUN” handles Touhou Project, which is loosely free for fans of the franchise to create their own fangames and indie works utilizing ZUN’s intellectual property and receive monetary compensation, though the restrictions and guidelines are more strenuous with the Touhou Project, developers can opt for holo Indie approval by filling out an application form.
COVER are much more lax on the actual application process for holo Indie but the entire thing remains the exact same as Touhou, the release of HoloParade is merely but to “test the waters” so to speak of how the program does financially for the company.
There’s so many Touhou fangames out there available for purchase or simply for free, the problem that arises is that those of decent quality actually sell enough units to warrant the game a success, other titles which are of low or poor quality are simply sidetracked and forgotten.
I mean for fuck sake, even Compile Heart are making a tactical RPG game based upon the Touhou franchise, it’s an immensely popular IP with a plethora of avid fans and creators, but only the carefully crafted “gems” manage to sell in large enough numbers which is a precedent I want to see with holo Indie and HoloParade.
It doesn’t look like a game worth $3, or even a single dollar for that matter, it looks cheap and disposable, I’m not trying to offend the creator because obviously they’ve put some time into making it but it genuinely isn’t worth the asking price and I hope that Hololive fans can actually see that too.
Because if HoloParade manages to sell more than enough units, COVER would have just successfully swindled their beloved audience allowing more and more fangames to come rushing through the floodgates with varied levels of quality for equally absurd prices if not even higher.
Which is why I am at a crossroads here, I want to see more Hololive fangames lovingly made by beloved fans, but I don’t want it to turn into a monetization warehouse of garbage that manages to sell simply because it’s Hololive, I want HoloParade to flop simply on merit of demanding an improvement to quality and production, but I genuinely hope that COVER doesn’t just axe the whole holo Indie concept because of it.
