Went into this as an extremely fairweather Hololive fan who was also curious about these Survivor-type games that have been all the rage lately, and man this genre is really effective at getting you on its treadmill, huh? Every round ends with me thinking "Maybe just one more" or "I bet I'll get further once I have enough money for this upgrade". There's always one more thing keeping you from perfection, and the gameplay is structured in such a way that getting power-ups makes you feel powerful but never too far from being overwhelmed, so you better get to that next level fast. If I didn't have any self-control I would easily dump hours into this. Great presentation and very admirable for a fan project, but damn this shit is powerful.

Where it Shines:
Spritework - 10/10
Music - 10/10
Unlockables - 10/10

The Good:
This game, is phenomenal. For starters:
- Free. Not F2P. FREE. No MTX.
- Tons to unlock. Like an insane amount of characters, upgrades, and even a house you can sim in.
- Still being supported by the devs, for free
- Great music and art
- Not as boring or basic as Vampire Survivors as you actually have to dual stick this one. It's practically superior to that brain dead game in EVERY way.

The Bad:
I honestly think the balance for certain characters can be a bit off, some being too good, others being bad, but all in all that's a minor complaint as there are so many to choose from.

Summary:
If you like VS clones, this game is superior, period. It does everything better, for free. After playing this I realize how lazy VS is as a game, how basic and unfun it actually is, and how it kinda disrespects you as a player. Yes, this is a degenerate waifu game, but it's cute, not horny, and I recommend to everyone who likes this genre. What have you got to lose, it's literally FREE with NO MTX

****note on my ratings:
half ⭐: hot trash garbage
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite
half star ratings between those mean it's slightly better or worse than stated in this list.
*

Honestly despite knowing nothing about vtubers this game is so much fun.

I unlocked all the characters and did some of the hard levels.

I still frequent this game for 15-20 mins in the morning before I leave for work.

Despite marking this game as complete I can tell that I will still come back to this game often, for being free to play what more could you ask for?

A 5/5 without a doubt!

It's clear a lot of love was poured into this, really can't overstate the creativity of the characters' abilities and tasteful fanservice, but I wish the shop progression leaned more on providing new tools rather than stat increases. How well I fare on the second level feels more like a measure of how much I've invested into these stat increases than actually getting good at the game, which ain't really my cuppa. Not to say there isn't strategy in picking your level-up upgrades, but if you haven't used the shop much this won't be enough and you'll really feel the chasm between yourself and the later enemies. Well, in my experience anyway. Maybe some baller Holocure players can offer some advice there.
I haven't played Vampire Survivors but I wouldn't be surprised if it had similar issues.
Also wish there was a clearer hitbox; I really like being able to herd and weave between the enemies. or maybe im bad that is also valid

feel bad dunking on something that didn't cost me a penny, so i'll say it's admirable how much care and effort is being put into something released for free. love a good passion project.

Exceptionally well-made twin-stick survival shooter that makes great use of the virtual youtuber franchise but isn't dependent on it.
+ large pool of distinctive playable characters who each get their own weapons and abilities
+ colorful presentation with a lot of charming designs
+ challenging levels that gradually approach bullet hell tiers
+ fun item synergies (though not very balanced)
+ catchy if a little monotonous music
+ decent UI apart from minor quality of life issues
+ good amount of long-term content including a whole farming side game
- significant unlockable stat boosts making grinding necessary for success
- very poor performance/optimization compared to similar games

I went into the Vtuber rabbit hole back in 2019 and of course it was Hololive that introduced me to the world of Vtubing. So when a fan-made game of Hololive based on Vampire Survivors (i haven't play it and i might soon) called Holocure released i was really shocked and hype to try it out. It was fun, chaotic and addicting more than anything else.

Two things that made me appreciate this game every time i play it, the first one is that it has a gacha system for the characters but it won't cost you any payment instead the characters are unlocked by collecting coins in the game and then spending them a thousand at a time on an in-game gacha mechanic. Yu, the developer is keen to emphasise that the gacha is purely in-game currency and does not involve any sort of monetisation, you just need to play the game a few times to unlock the additional characters.

Second and this might be the best thing about Holocure is that you don't need to know anything whatsoever about Hololive to appreciate it. If you have never explored VTuber culture at all, the game’s intro sequence provides a brief bit of context, and from there the playable characters can all simply be seen as cute girls with unique abilities. At the other end of the spectrum, however, if you are deeply immersed into VTuber culture and Hololive culture specifically then the game is absolutely rammed full of references and in-jokes that will continually delight your experience.

Weirdly, I think this is better than Vampire Survivors? This is mostly the result of scores of little changes, the kind of balance changes that would be too tedious to list in a review, but they add up to a product that is far less frustrating to play than normal Vampire Survivors. Most notably, evolving weapons isn't tedious, items have far more interesting effects, and characters are unique in ways that are interesting for longer than the first 15 seconds of a run (upgradable passive abilities). Thank god I'm not spending one passive slot every single run on spinach!

Really, the biggest downside to this game as a casual Hololive fan is that I am fiending for more characters, but given how big a head start Vampire Survivors had in producing content for the game, it's impressive that this game can hold a candle to the original at all.

I'm somewhat showing my bias as I do enjoy some of Hololive streams from time to time, but:
It's like Vampire Survivors but free, looks better, has a strafe, each allows more interesting builds since each character has a unique power up, and these characters have a better defined synergy immediately because of this.
I was a lot more pleased with this type of 'Vampire Survivor' clone, so much so that I legit wanted to donate a bit to support the project- but the game's creator has stated they prefer not to receive any monetary compensation.
All things considered while I'm still not as addicted as some to this kind of formula I'll be keeping an eye on updates for this in the future.

This game is really good. It's easy to turn off your head and just totally get into the flow of the game, the art is nice, the music is good, it's very pleasant to play when I'm not in the mood for something that requires me to think much. I try not to talk about a game's price (unless it's predatory monetization) but the fact that this game is free is frankly absurd.
I'm not big into Hololive, I occasionally watch Callie but that's about it. I only mention that so nobody thinks this game is only for hardcore Hololive fans and gives it a pass because of that.

Of course the game isn't perfect either. The balance around healing is a bit wonky, if you aren't playing a character built around healing you're gonna need the Nurse Horns.
I also dislike the meta progression. The upgrades feel like they barely matter and just lead to people who played the game a bunch getting slightly higher scores.
Unlocking characters is cool, but doing it through gacha is such a weird choice. I played for 5 hours and wasn't able to unlock all of the characters while getting a lot of duplicates, which was very frustrating. The way the banners are split is also weird, I just never saw a reason to pull on the banner that only has units I already have, a tiny boost in power did not feel worth it.

What's even the point of stage mode? The couple hundred coins you get for clearing it? It would be much cooler if the game tracked which characters you beat stage mode yet and if there were actual higher stages to unlock.

Many character-based games like this struggle with making each character feel unique. Not this game, everyone plays very differently from one another. Instead, the game struggles a bit with making each individual run of a single character feel unique. Maybe this could be solved by having a small chance to gain skills (and maybe even weapons) from other characters because you could do some pretty interesting builds with that (think IRyS with Guardian Tree).

This has turned into yet another review of a game I enjoy a lot that mostly talks about negatives, sorry about that. I really love this game, give it a try.

Edit: The few issues I had were mostly fixed with the update, it's even better now

HoloCure was a very addicting game for me to play lately. As a Hololive fan, I got the most fun out of this game as there were so many references throughout this entire game, whether it was just through the characters, the enemies themselves, the power ups, even the music and levels are references themselves.

As a game, it is a roguelike survival-esque game where you run around and slain enemies in order to level up and get stronger. The more time you stay alive, the more stronger and challenging the enemies become. The game offers many power ups that can boost armour, stats, health recovery, or even give you new weapons to boot in order to survive. Despite this fan-game being one to one with Vampire Survivors, anyone who isn't a vtuber or Hololive fan will still get the most enjoyment out of this game.

Unique to this game are characters who have special attributes like passive skills and even specials that can turn the tide of the round. My favourite characters I enjoyed playing were Hakos Baelz, Gawr Gura, Kureiji Ollie, Vestia Zeta, and Calliope Mori, as they brought the most fun and chaos through out my matches. Another thing that Vampire Survivors doesn't have is the Holo House, a mode that lets you hire fans of their oshis and bring in cash for your upgrades, but also allows you to customise your home, grow crops to feed your fans and to also cook buffs for the next round, and to fish in order that you can either feed to your fans, cook into meals, or trade them to Bloop for money. Good luck finding the shiny fish as it took me days to complete that achievement...

HoloCure is one of the best Steam games I have played for months and I recommend it to everyone. Plus it's free on top of that and it's getting updates that adds more characters in the mix. Now we just wait for update 0.7 to drop.

HoloCure é um daqueles jogos que pode destruir sua vida se você deixar. O jogo é inspirado no modelo de jogos como Vampire Survivors, mas para mim é uma evolução direta do mesmo, e conseguiu elevar bastante minhas expectativas para um jogo desse gênero.

Sinceramente, eu não sei se há pontos negativos em HoloCure, tirando o fato que depois de umas 50 horas de gameplay ele começou a se tornar um pouco repetitivo. Até a data de escrita dessa review, HoloCure é um jogo totalmente gratuito e pode ser baixado facilmente pela Steam, além disso, o jogo oferece uma quantidade imensa de conteúdo, e devido à sua gameplay viciante e divertida, com certeza vai roubar umas boas horas de sua vida.

HoloCure é baseado no universo da HoloLive, e isso ao meu ver é um excelente ponto positivo, pois além de ser uma ótima carta de amor para os fãs dessa comunidade, ajuda a manter o jogo interessante e repleto de coisas para se descobrir. O jogo conta com dezenas de personagens diferentes para se conhecer, cada uma com seu estilo de gameplay diferente, assim como seus respectivos atributos únicos, e ela são liberadas através de um sistema de Gacha que, por mais incrível que pareça, não é abusivo com o jogador.

No geral, Holocure é um excelente jogo que com certeza vai te render várias horas de diversão até começar a ficar cansativo, mas vale ressaltar também que o jogo é bastante ativo, e vai receber bastante atualizações que incluirão ainda mais conteúdo.