Holo X Break is a Beat 'em Up-style game created by Kay Yu (of HoloCure and River City Girls fame) and based on Generations 5 and 6 of hololive.
The game is developed on the Godot Game Engine in contrast to its predecessor's use of Game Maker.
The premise is thus: Nodoka Harusaki has informed the 5th generation of hololive that their boss, YAGOO, has gone missing and the culprits are revealed to be the secret society holoX, the 6th generation of hololive. Now it falls on the hands of Botan Shishiro, Lamy Yukihana, Nene Momosuzu, and Polka Omaru to defeat holoX and save their beloved boss!
This game provides the example of:
- 100% Completion: Just like he did previously in HoloCure, Kay Yu added over 20 achievements, with the last one unlocking only after you've obtained everything else. Knowing that Kaela Kovalskia was going to speedrun the game to completion as soon as possible upon release, the title of the achievement is "This Game Too?"
- Achievement System: There are currently 21 achievements in the initial version of the game. The requirements are pretty standard, such as beating Hard Mode, filling up your inventory, getting all the emotes, etc. One of them tasks you with saving Ollie, which involves reattaching her head to her body.
- Action Girl: All four members of the 5th generation of hololive are playable characters. After defeating the members of holoX, they also become playable.
- Adaptational Villainy: All five members of holoX at best were Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains verging on Harmless Villain territory. Here, kidnapping YAGOO kickstarts the plot of the game. At least, that's what you're led to believe going in. Turns out YAGOO's disappearance and holoX's arrival were completely coincidental. The ending implies that YAGOO's fate is connected to the events of HoloCure.
- An Ice Person: Lamy, as per her namesake and how she's generally portrayed in various videos.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Normally Kaela will only show up between levels to let you upgrade your equipment. However she will show up during Level 5 right before the final boss fight with La+. Otherwise any coins gathered in Level 5 would be useless, as the game ends right after you beat La+.
- At launch, the game had very limited ways to heal Fans, who lacked any real forms of self-preservation. A later patch allowed healing orbs to heal Fans if the player was at full health, making it easier for Fans to last longer.
- Artificial Stupidity: Some of the AI fans will walk into incoming attacks from mooks and bosses, and have no problems walking through acid puddles until they die. Thankfully the mooks are no brighter.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: There are few minor enemies that are much tougher to take down than regular mooks. Especially if you have to face a combination of them on a single screen.
- Inu, the small orca who is Chloe's mascot. It's fast, keeps trying to ram you, and will spit multiple water projectiles at you.
- Ganmo, the giant frogmouth bird who serves as Lui's secretary. He's surprisingly durable and frequently fires tornadoes at you.
- Karasu, La+'s pet crow. It has a tiny hitbox and will constantly spam dark magic at you.
- The Cameo:
- Some members of hololive can be seen in the background minding their own business while you're busy fighting the members of holoX and their minions.
- The emotes players can use during the game feature a great many different hololive members not playable in the game, even including two graduated holomems, Coco and Sana. The emotes are also drawn by several high profile hololive fanartists.
- Checkpoint Starvation: There was initially no way to save one's game (though there were infinite continues, so you could only lose by leaving). As of an update on 06/04/2024 the game autosaves at checkpoints, allowing a player to leave and resume their game. However the checkpoints are still few and far between, being only one in the middle of a level and between levels.
- Color-Coded Item Tiers: Equippable items are color-coded to denote their rarity. In ascending order, there's gray (Normal), green (Rare), and orange (S.Rare).
- Combination Attack: Once you get her health down far enough, La+ will summon the rest of holoX, and they'll all attack you at the same time.
- Continuing is Painful: Like many 1990's Beat 'em Up games, losing will start you back at the start of the current stage. Luckily, it'll send you back to the third stage rather than all the way to the beginning.
- Damsel in Distress: As with most beat'em ups, the plot of the game involves our heroines fighting hordes of enemies to save someone, in this case their CEO. holoX isn't responsible for it; this ties back into the plot of HoloCure.
- Defeat Means Friendship: After NePoLaBo beats all of holoX, they convince the secret society to give up their evil plan and achieve world domination by becoming hololive idols.
- Defeat Means Playable: After the holoX girls are defeated, they become playable characters.
- Die, Chair, Die!: Background objects such as benches, traffic cones, and boulders can be used as weapons until they break.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Botan is a long-ranged fighter, and so she is reliant on guns. Some enemies and bosses will get up close and personal while she reloads her gun in the middle of a fight, but mastering her mechanics gives her the best DPS out of NePoLaBo.
- Distressed Dude: YAGOO is kidnapped by holoX which sets the plot in motion.
- Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: The mooks can be disposed of once you get the hang of your current character. The bosses on the other hand will absolutely wreck you if you're underleveled.
- The End... Or Is It?: The ending starts off happy, only for it to reveal that the girls have overlooked the fact that YAGOO is still missing. The final shot is a silhouette of the giant, corrupted YAGOO head from HoloCure standing ominously in the doorway of hololive's office.
- Equipment Upgrade: Kaela can upgrade an equipment to increase its level and stat values. She can also enhance an equipment to increase its rarity and number of stat boosts.
- Excuse Plot: Like the previous game by Kay Yu and many Beat 'em Up games, the game has a paper-thin plot just so you can play as your favorite hololive generation 5 (or 6 once you beat the game) oshi to defeat holoX and rescue YAGOO.
- Experience Booster: Novelist's Pen increases EXP gain by 20%.
- Flunky Boss: Each girl from holoX as bosses will send out minions to fight along side them.
- Funny Background Event: Various Holomems will show up as cameos in the backdrops all throughout the game, just minding their own business and doing various cute and silly things.
- Gaiden Game: The ending reveals that this game takes place around the same time as HoloCure, with all the characters leaving to "save the fans."
- Grievous Bottley Harm: Lamy's default weapon is a bottle of sake that she uses as a melee weapon.
- The Gunslinger: As is usual for her portrayals, Botan fights using guns. Lui wields one as well.
- Hard Mode Perks: Playing on Hard Mode grants you all of your character's abilities and ultimate right off the bat at level 1.
- Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: As bosses, the holoX members wear their Super Sentai-inspired helmets. The helmets are absent when they become playable, and while the helmets are available as equippable headgear, they don't affect their appearance.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Iroha's mooks are ninjas wearing dark green uniforms in an otherwise bright-green bamboo forest.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Depending on the stats, it can take several dishes worth of food to fully recover health.
- Immune to Flinching: Stronger enemies have attacks that make them immune to flinching, and the game gives their sprite a yellow outline to indicate when this trope is in effect.
- Improvised Weapon: Any item in the background that can be picked up by the player can be used as a weapon will deal some damage before breaking. Including boulders, anchors, and nuclear waste that can inflict damage on enemies.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Iroha as a boss and a playable character can wield two of these.
- Leitmotif: BLUE CLAPPER is heard in the opening cutscene. It also shows up on the final level of the game.
- Level-Up Fill-Up: Leveling up instantly refills the character's HP meter, even in the middle of a fight.
- Limit Break: Once you reach a certain level, you can activate special moves to pulverize your enemies.
- Long Song, Short Scene: The opening scene uses a chiptune version of Blue Clapper, the signature song of Gen 5.
- Losing Your Head: Poor Ollie has lost her head on the beach level.
- The Medic: Nene's skill set revolves mostly around keeping herself and her allies alive, while having relatively limited attack range and output. Her first ability and ultimate utilize healing circles. Her second ability lets her summon a beetle to attack enemies, but the charge time for that is fairly long. But with the right item set up, Nene can auto heal herself almost constantly.
- Mercy Invincibility: It's brief, but it can save you after a knockdown and give you some breathing space to charge up abilities. There are some items that add more invincibility frames as well.
- Mirror Match: Once they become playable, you can have the holoX girls fight against themselves.
- Moveset Clone: Both Botan and Lui are both gunslinger girls in the game, and Lui has the same shooting and reload animation as Botan.
- Mythology Gag:
- One of the first buildings you walk past is the hololive office, as seen in numerous HoloGra episodes.
- There are offices for Shiranui Kensetsu, Dorobo Kensetsu, and Neko Neko Finyance, in reference to their numerous Minecraft construction streams.
- There's a Family Mart parody with a poster advertising Kiara's KFP restaurant. The KFP restaurant itself is nearby, with a missing person's poster for Jimmy, one of the prominent employees.
- One building has Secret Society written in Japanese, with Xs over the windows, referring to holoX's lair in holoX MEEting!. Koyori's Lab is further down the road.
- There's a police station with Subaru's Subarudo Duck on the roof, which is a nod to her Oozora Police comedy videos. There are also wanted posters for Suisei and Miko, which is a nod to their MiComet pairing.
- Marine can be seen riding a tricycle, which is a nod to this video.
- Matsuri can be seen running with bread in her mouth, which is a nod to the hololive Alternative Teaser.
- Calli and Kiara can be seen walking together, a reference to the popular Takamori ship.
- Korone and Okayu can be seen walking together as well. The boxing gloves you can equip are a reference to Korone's real-life boxing training. The entomophobia option is most likely to ensure that Korone can play the game despite the option only affecting Nene's special and one bug in the camp.
- Reine's Keyboard Store is a reference to her extensive real-life knowledge of mechanical keyboards, particularly when she made a custom one as a gift for Kiara's birthday.
- One building has a "Snow Flower" billboard, which is a reference to Lamy's translated name.
- AZKi Tour is a reference to AZKi's famously accurate answers in GeoGuessr.
- KAELA Forge is a nod to her lore as a blacksmith. The building is decorated with Elytras and Ender Dragon heads, just like her house in Minecraft. It also displays 69, which is a recurring joke associated with her. Kaela herself shows up in between levels and serves as your blacksmith, upgrading and/or enchanting your gear.
- hololive Host Club displays portraits of the Promise Ministry and 3rd Host Clubs, which reference streams in which the respective groups parodied host clubs and adopted male personas.
- One building is Haachama's Assassination Restaurant, complete with posters advertising spiders as a special offer. This is a reference to when Haachama infamously cooked and ate a tarantula on stream.
- Iofi's Salon is a reference to Iofi's background as a professional artist, in particular her "IoSalon" streams (where she designs new hairstyles for holomems). She can be seen painting a portrait of YAGOO while Sora looks on in approval.
- Aru's Pizzeria is a reference to Arurandeisu's well-documented love of pizza and streams involving the food.
- The Usada Casino poster is a nod to Pekora's obsession with casino games, as well as a nod to the upcoming project in HoloCure. The war criminal herself also hides in the villain's base.
- Uber Gozaru service is a reference to the running joke about Iroha giving other people her cooking.
- The Nuts Truck Union is a reference to Risu's longstanding association with nuts, as well as her truck driving streams.
- Nodoka shows up in between levels as an item merchant. She explains that her senior at hololive was too busy running a shop somewhere else, and asked her to run things here. This is in reference to A-chan, who has her hands full running the items and upgrades shop in HoloCure.
- IRyS and Bae can be seen sunbathing in the beach level, which is a reference to their popular ship.
- Aqua, one of Ina's takodachis, a giant Gura, and Marine's pirate ship all show up in the background of the beach level, which is a reference to their UMISEA subgroup and video series.
- New Work, Recycled Graphics: Given that game was made by the same creator behind HoloCure, it's no surprise that some assets are reused. More prominent examples include the coins, BL Books, Hope Soda, Idol Costume, Nurse's Horns, Subaru's baseballs, and the giant YAGOO head.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: La+ is by far the shortest member of holoX, and one of the shortest holomems overall. But she's the Final Boss for good reason. Her constant spamming of dark energy projectiles will force you to constantly dodge or roll away. Sometimes she'll unleash spiral waves of projectiles, which veers the normal beat'em up gameplay straight into Bullet Hell. Getting hit will take a considerable chunk out of your life bar.
- Playing with Syringes: Koyori throws them as projectiles, befitting her background as a scientist.
- Rewarding Vandalism: Destroying some background objects will result in money and items.
- Sea Hurtchin: The purple ninjas on stage 3 like to throw these as weapons.
- Schmuck Bait: When you reach Nodoka and Kaela's campsite, you may be tempted to get close to the fire in hopes of finding a save point. Doing so will result in you being set on fire. You can do this continuously even if you run out of health. Thankfully, your health is reset at the start of the next level.
- Sequel Hook: Story Mode ends with NePoLaBo and holoX teaming up and leaving to help "save the fans," implying that they're heading off to HoloCure next.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: No one in hololive bats an eye seeing the girls from Gen 5 and 6 fighting each other in broad daylight.
- Video Game Caring Potential: In stage 3, players can find Ollie's head as a field object. Players can use her head to bludgeon the enemies much like any other field object. However, if players choose to carry Ollie's head to the next screen, they can throw her head onto her flailing body. The reunited zombie rewards the player with coins for their efforts.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Just like any field object, bashing Ollie's head enough times will cause it to break, leaving her body headless. Ignoring her head will also leave her body headless.
