I skipped out on the Vampire Survivors craze last year so HoloCure is my first entry into the hot new genre (subgenre?). The concept is pretty simple. It's a twin-stick shooter where you are dropped on one a handful of maps, and in the normal mode your goal is to defeat the final boss which always spawns at the 20 minute mark. You level up and are periodically given a random assortment of upgrades as you build out your character. There are also permanent upgrades you can unlock in the main menu that persist across runs. In a way it's like a rogue-like stripped down to the bare essentials with the exploration cut out.

As the name suggests, HoloCure is a twist on the formula that is centred around the vtuber organization Hololive. At the time of writing this, there are 38 different characters to choose from, each with their own gimmicks that make for different playstyles.

Besides the normal mode I mentioned earlier, there's also an endless mode where you keep going until you die, as well as a Time mode where you have to kill X amount of enemies in a time limit. Beyond the core game modes, there is also a chill area where you can go fish, hire workers to collect coins for you, garden, and decorate a living area a la Animal Crossing.

There really is a staggering amount of content here, especially if you want to max out all your upgrades and unlock everyone's costumes. This truly is a great free passion project by the creator, and I look forward to seeing whatever else they choose to include in future updates.

This is a vampire survivors clone with characters based on the Hololive company vtubers. I have no interest in Hololive though but I think the game is pretty good.

The biggest strength of the game is a solid roster of characters that each have their unique abilities and are very varied, yet all of them are fun to play and feel viable. I'm legitimately surprised at such an expensive and qualitative roster, it's impressive. The design is also quite cool and the pixel art is nice to look at.

The roster gives you a good amount of content to explore and grind. There are few stages so far though but the game is still in development after all.

The lack of features such as time acceleration is painful though. Each ruin is at least 20min and this can be quite tedious. There's also only one special stage for now (for an average of 5min runs).

The game has relatively few balancing issues and is very fun to play. The enemies and maps are diversified and great. While mostly a copy of VS, its twists make it a good game that I enjoyed.

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

You know, I don't really like Vtubers. Neither do I like their concept, however, I gotta admit this game is way better than I ever expected.

This is way too good for its source material and on top of it all, it's absolutely free. A fan game made for fans, or people who couldn't really care less for Vtubers like me, I guess. Even if you don't get the references, it's not deterimental for your overall experience in my opinion.

If you enjoy Bullet Heaven games, give this one a chance despite its source material. Although, it could have unlockable characters through challenges like most games in this genre instead of gacha mechanics. I don't think the gacha is intrusive and the game give you a ton of resources to unlock said characters reliably, but I won't lie, I'd rather have a challenge system to unlock the girls. Anyway, great free game to just chill.

Vampire Survivors, but free and the characters distinct. A later update added Holo House, a game mode I don't much care for.

Thanks to the fact that unlike in Vampire Survivors who start out with a predefined loadout you can randomly chance on as a character, in Holocure, each character has their own weapon which you can invest in and each weapon operates differently. You have Mumei and her homing feathers when they hit a target. You have Kronii who uses her clock swords to stab at the nearest enemy (and another one to stab at a random enemy).

The game falls apart at high level play, because the game is much easier when you ditch all the other weapon slots to limit rng and just invest in your starter weapon, plus a few combos which provide you heals or enemy slowdown.

Some combos are actively detrimental versus their base weapons too.

Then again, for the price of free, the game is incredibly polished. You won't lose anything but your time if you play this game.