Kick some ass as Ollie, Anya and Reine in this new lo-fi Hololive beat ’em up

A Hololive beat ’em up? Yep, it’s just the latest of many wonderful creations from the Hololive fan community — this time celebrating some of the biggest stars of Hololive’s Indonesia branch, HoloID.

One of the greatest things about the VTuber fandom as a whole is how it is filled with incredibly creative people. Not only are the VTubers themselves wonderfully imaginative and creative performers, but their audiences also possess wide-ranging creative skills — and they’re more than happy to show those skills off for no other reason than to celebrate their favourite virtual stars.

And so we come to Hololive ID Rumble, a Hololive beat ’em up made in two weeks by game maker and VTubers fan jackrockstar. He will be the first to admit that the game is, I quote, “pretty jank and the writing sucks”, but he intends to iron out some of the more obvious bugs, polish it up and perhaps expand it somewhat. And, going on past experience, it’s surely only a matter of time before one of its subjects — or perhaps someone from the broader Hololive ensemble — will showcase it on stream. After all, many of the most popular Hololive-themed games have been just as well-received by the streamers themselves as by the audience.

As for Hololive ID Rumble, it’s a belt-scrolling Hololive beat ’em up in the traditional style, featuring PS1-style low-poly character models, two-button combat and three playable characters. The game unfolds across several distinct stages, each of which are populated by their own enemy types, and only takes about ten minutes to play from start to finish. As you progress, you’ll get the opportunity to play as Kureiji Ollie, Pavolia Reine and Anya Melfissa, and in the final stage you get to pick your favourite girl to finish the job.

And it’s good! Despite jackrockstar’s self-deprecation, it’s clear that he has a solid understanding of what makes classic beat ’em ups work. The moves and combos assigned to the two buttons have distinct reaches and use cases, the collision detection is solid, the controls are responsive and there’s plenty of helpful audio-visual feedback to help you understand what’s going on.

There are even some more advanced elements in there such as dash attacks, collectible weapons and destructible scenery elements — very nice stuff indeed.

I mean, sure, the character art for the dialogue sequences looks like it was done in Paint and is badly cropped to boot, the writing could do with a good proofread and the backgrounds are kind of bland. But it doesn’t really matter; it’s fun, and it does the job, which is to provide an entertaining and self-consciously silly means of celebrating some of the world’s favourite VTubers through the medium of a Hololive beat ’em up — with plenty of in-jokes in there for those who know the HoloID girls well.

While there are some truly excellent games out there based on the Hololive girls — Smol Ame remains the benchmark for many — I don’t think anyone is expecting absolute masterpieces from fan-made games that were inevitably thrown together in people’s spare time. Taking that into account, Hololive ID Rumble is a very solid attempt at putting together a Hololive beat ’em up — and it’d be fun to see jackrockstar expand on the formula further.

A two-player mode would be nice — and since there are three playable characters involved in the story, this would make sense — as would some sort of scoring or time-attack system. More levels would, of course, be welcome, but this would probably require rewriting the story, such as it is. More characters would be great to see — perhaps this could be part of the expanded story. And, of course, a general lick of paint across the whole thing — particularly in the stage backgrounds, and making sure the correct character’s name is displayed on the interface! — would go a long way to giving the game a much more professional look and feel.

But for two weeks’ work, Hololive ID Rumble is an excellent Hololive beat ’em up, and well worth ten minutes of your time. If you’d like to give it a shot for yourself, pop on over to jackrockstar’s itch.io page and play it right there on the Web!

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Pete Davison

Pete is Rice Digital's editor, and a proud champion of any and all games involving pretty girls hanging out, saving the world or both. His first waifu was Rit from Rod Land.

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