SMOK: Legend of the Laid-Back Heroes is a hololive fan-game with turn-based RPG mechanics. The plot follows the protagonist, who gets themselves killed through incompetence and finds themselves face to face with Mori Calliope, apprentice of the Grim Reaper herself. Despite being judged and condemned to Hell, they manage to trick her and escape to a fantasy world in dire need of saving from the impending arrival of the Demon Lord. But they won't be alone during their adventure, as they will have help from hololive's own SMOK: Subaru, a master swordsman turned duck only capable of expressing herself through emojis and shubaaaas, Mio, a sage who provides for the group's physical and emotional support, Okayu, a dark mage with the ability to break the fourth wall and Korone, a berserker who hides a dangerous personality behind her perpetual smile.
The game is very lighthearted, with tons of references to its source material's many in-jokes, and featuring virtually the entire cast at the time of the game's release following some role or another.
It is made on RPGMaker, and used Turn-Based Combat mechanics with the added twist of the protagonist's Luck Manipulation Mechanics. It is available for free in Japanese and English here
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This fan-game provides examples of:
- Adaptational Nice Girl: Everyone knows the real Sakura Miko can be one of the most chaotic and unseiso hololive members, but here she's a polite and pure shrine maiden that's admired by everyone. Subverted and inverted when she awakens as the Demon Lord, becoming megalomaniachal and smug. Then the inversion is subverted when Watame explains that as impolite as she can be, she would never fall to the level of evil she's demonstrating, revealing that she's under Demonic Possession.
- Affectionate Parody: The game is mostly very lighthearted, and often parodies both hololive talents and the typical conventions of JRPGs.
- And the Adventure Continues: At the end of the game, Okayu recommends that the player save again since they've just come from a long Boss Battle and cutscene. Then it turns out the save option is disabled on the menu. What follows is a cutscene explaining that the Save Police has vanished and the Demon Lord was merely a pawn of the "Manipulator of the World", a misterious Greater-Scope Villain being investigated by Irys. Sora mentions that she'll send the Holo Council on the case. The game then cuts to the credits, featuring SMOK walking on a road.
- And There Was Much Rejoicing: When Calliope lets the protagonist hear of their coworker's reactions to their death, laughs can be heard in the game soundtrack while the company's president laments the bad reputation they brought to it and the workers cheer in the bar when they hear the news.
- An Ice Person: Mio can cast the "Freeze" spell, which does this.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The game lets you skip the musical puzzles in case the player cannot turn the sound on for some reason.
- Afterlife Antechamber: The protagonist first meets Calli in one.
- Ascended Demon: Tokoyami Towa grows to regret her service to the Demon Lord and resigns from her job, joining the heroes.
- Back for the Finale: The entire hololive-based cast is summoned by Matsuri to help in the fight against the Demon Lord.
- Boxing Battler: Korone, whose basic attacks all involve pnching the enemy in some way.
- Bubblegloop Swamp: The heroes must traverse one to get wood for the construction of the Shrine. They also meet Ollie there.
- Celestial Bureaucracy: The protagonist manages to trick it into reencarnating in a new world.
- Co-Dragons: The Demon Lord has four of them, officially named admins: Beelzebub, Towa, Kanata and Pekora. The last one also has Moona as her own Dragon and Hyper-Competent Sidekick.
- The Cavalry: The entire hololive cast, summoned by Matsuri to help defeat the Demon Lord and his armies and put out the fire.
- Darkest Hour: The Demon Lord has awoken and is about to Take Over the World while a gigantic fire has started from the explosion of his castle that will eventually consume the world if not extinguished. Noel even calls this "the biggest crisis since the beginning of history".
- David Versus Goliath: Invoked by the protagonist when facing the Demon Lord alone, as their pitiful stats are the only way to avoid triggering the latter's "Return from death".
- Demon Lords and Archdevils: The Demon Lord, naturally.
- Fallen Angel: Amane Kanata is first seen in Heaven, but later appears to have been fired and is now working for the Demon Lord. However, this was merely a ruse. She was in fact a spy sent by Sora the whole time, and apologizes to the heroes for pretending.
- First Town: Once you exit the forest, you arrive at a town with the typical shops, inns and NPCs.
- Fourth-Wall Observer: Okayu consistently displays this ability. This is most notable just after the Demon Lord's awakening and recruitment of his Co-Dragons, where she tells everyone to get ready for the impending boss fight before the ominous music switches back to generic background music, at which point she declares false alarm.
- God of Chaos: Matsuri, who is so removed of people's idea of divinity even Miko has trouble recognizing her as such. Since the Epilogue mentions the Council, it's a given that Baelz is also close to being this.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The "Manipulator of the World", probably Omegaα from the EN branch, was behind the events of the game.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Suisei joins the party while under the dungeons of the Demon Lord's castle.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You input the protagonist's name and gender while responding to the Celestial Bureaucracy in Heaven.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: While Suisei is a loyal servant of the Empire, she takes great glee in hunting and murdering creatures. Including the protagonist.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Okayu casts "Forbidden Art: Sync", synchronizes her HP with possessed Miko's and then swallows Pandora's Box, which kills the character that just did that. This expels Leviathan from the shrine maiden's body. Luckily, she survives the experience.
- Holy Hand Grenade: Mio can cast the "Goddess' Judgment" spell, which does this.
- Human Shield: The Demon Lord has no shame in using Miko as this.
- Lethal Lava Land: The "Road of the Elite" is one of these, dealing continuous damage to the party while it's traversing the area.
- Loser Protagonist: The protagonist has very basic abilities that deal little damage, and is incapable of rising above level 1, not even with divine help.
- Lost in Translation: Several puns in the original Japanese are simply translated as "JP pun. Please laugh.".
- Luck Manipulation Mechanic:
- The protagonist's Debug Mode lets them see the result of all upcoming dice rolls along with the numbers they need to be and can thus see which attacks will succeed and which won't. You can use this information to correctly guess the most powerful attack that will hit, and when to use attacks that require multiple attacks or actions that require none to ensure the enemies get the bad rolls.
- One of Okayu's skills, Destiny Reversal, lets her invert all dice rolls, turning previously good rolls into bad ones.
- Magitek: The party use devices that use magically-generated lightning to cause electrolysis, allowing for underwater breathing.
- Mean Boss: The protagonist, at the start of the game, fires a worker for a minor mistake and subtly mocks him when he begs. They also consider themselves the only competent individual in the office, and aim to achieve the spot of director.
- The Mole: Kanata pretends to be a loyal servant of the Demon Lord, but is actually this for Sora.
- Mushroom Samba: An overdose of Haachama's onigiris causes this in the protagonist, who experiences a nonsensical hallucination that culminates in Them getting married to Yagoo.
- Mythology Gag:
- In their previous life, before choosing a name and gender, the protagonist looks like the typical representation of Coco's fanbase.
- Korone primarily attacks with Good Old Fisticuffs. She's a boxer in real life.
- Items that restore MP are usually named after some variation of "Quantum Chicken Soup Grass Big Chungus", the nonsense Word-Salad Humor used by fans to annoy Coco.
- When the group first meets Ayame, she leads them to the Adventurer's Guild while singing the famous "dochi dochi" song from when she became lost in Minecraft. She similarly becomes lost here.
- Okayu's love of onigiris gets to a point where the party delays the main plot just to search them.
- Subaru gets confused for a duck, so much that it overrides her class.
- Towa is so nice that other characters regularly question whether she is even a real demon.
- The Demon Lord's Castle is in truth a castle built as a shrine for Sakura Miko, whose real life counterpart once built a castle in Minecraft and declared herself as the Demon Lord.
- Marine has constant back pains, which brings her age into question.
- Gura's first line is, of course, "a".
- Fubuki recites her full "glasses are really versatile" rant when explaining why she likes them so much.
- When Subaru calls Mio her mother, the latter answers "I don't remember giving birth to you". She says the same line much earlier when it's joked a bunch of wolves are her family.
- Haachama's cooking is so bad that it actually causes hallucinations in people that eat too much of it, such as the protagonist.
- A character that equips Anya becomes "anyafied" by gaining her iconic eyes.
- The Lethal Lava Land is called the "Road of the Elite" after Sakura Miko, whose real life counterpart has infamous bad luck with lava buckets in Minecraft. Fittingly, It's the only route to get to Miko's castle.
- Who else does Kanata choose as her boss fight but gorillas?
- Despite lacking Sora's typical godly personality, Matsuri is still a goddess, referencing her memetic mispronounciation of "I am good".
Matsuri: I AM GOD!- Rushia's attack consists of her signature scream. The lack of relationship of that to necromancer powers is lampshaded by Mio.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Along their adventure, the heroes help gather materials to build a shrine for Miko. It ends up becoming the Demon Lord's Castle. This also indirectly leads Leviathan to possess her.
- Noob Cave: The first area is a cave with low-level monsters that won't provide any difficulty.
- Ominous Save Prompt: Before each boss, an NPC belonging to the Save Police will encourage you to save your game.
- Playing with Fire: Mio can cast the "Incinerate" spell, which does this.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: Your gender merely affects the specifics of a single Gender Confusion joke.
- Redundant Rescue: Luna can fend herself much better than all of SMOK combined, easily killing the monster that had kidnapped her.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Usada Pekora, after Kanata and Towa defect to the good side, declares that she, too, was Good All Along. The heroes, naturally, don't believe her but still accept her help.
- Seemingly Hopeless Boss Fight: Possessed Sakura Miko will kill the party unless they follow Okayu's plan of linking her to the boss, then eating Haachama's onigiri.
- Side Quest: In-Universe, Okayu convinces the party to delay the main quest so they can follow a sidequest searching for onigiri.note After the rise of the Demon Lord leaves them without time, Sora decrees that anyone that completes the onigiri sidequest shall immediately ascend to level 60.
- Shifting Sand Land: One of the areas is a desert inhabited by creatures weak to fire and strong to ice.
- Shock and Awe: Mio can cast the "Thunder" spell, which does this.
- Shout-Out: Korone's Gatling Punch ability's description reads: Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora!
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Shion lives in a mountain covered under snow. It includes a temple with the standard RPG ice puzzle.
- Smug Super: The Demon Lord is very smug, openly mocking his enemies's attempts to oppose him. This is already blatant when in his true form, where his dialogue more than compensates for his lack of a recognizable facial expression, but is seen most prominently when possessing Sakura Miko, making her reach the very limits of how smug an anime-style Retraux computer drawing can smile. He is also extremely powerful, requiring nothing less than trickery, unholy food, the world's most powerful heroes working together and sheer luck to beat.
- Songs in the Key of Lock: Several rooms in the undersea temple will require you to memorize a melody and repeat it by pushing the specific buttons. Luckily, you can also choose to skip it if you're playing with sound off or just don't want to.
- Sudden Gameplay Change: While both of these still use 2D Eastern RPG maps and the same movement mechanics, they don't involve the typical combat sequences:
- The stealth sections involve hiding from cultists using the environment and memorizing their movement patterns.
- The chase sene involves activating the buttons spread across the cellar in an exact order while Suisei is chasing you.
- Stealth-Based Mission: At several points of the game, the party has to cross an area filled with cultists that are looking for them and will cause a Non-Standard Game Over if you cross their line of sight. You will have to learn their movement patterns and hide behind objects to evade them.
- The Mushroom Samba section uses the same mechanic, with the added difficulty of sprites of Korone blocking your screen from time to time.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Flare's device can make the party do this, although unlike most examples, this is done not by magic but by electrolysis.
- Taken for Granite: What happens to all normies in the world after the Demon Lord's ritual.
- Temple of Doom: Two: one under the sea and the other at the mountain peaks.
- The Lost Woods: The temple is inside one of these, which must be traversed in order to get to the first town.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: At the very end of the game, the Final Boss,Leviathan, has an ability that allows him to come back stronger if the damage he receives surpasses his remaining HP. Being already in his third form, he has become nigh unbeatable, and with only 6 HP remaining, it's virtually guaranteed he will ascend to a fourth form and bring about the end. Fear not, because our Loser Protagonist, perpetually stuck at level 1, is here to save the day, bringing the Demon Lord to justice!
- Too Dumb to Live: When faced with silica gel with a note reading "Do not eat", the protagonist, of course, eats it.
- Under the Sea: At one point the party explores a small area at the sea bottom.
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: While most of the game is a lighthearted Affectionate Parody of both hololive and the Eastern RPG genre, the Big Bad Leviathan the Demon Lord is a powerful demon that not only possesses Miko's body who uses her as a Human Shield, but also is a spiteful jerk that wants to Take Over the World and regularly insults the heroes in his Evil Gloating.
- Warrior Princess: Luna, while assumed by everyone to be a helpless Damsel in Distress, easily slaughters the monster under her castle. In the finale, She is among those summoned and helps put out the flames of the Demon Lord's castle.
- Will-o'-the-Wisp: The swamp has them, but they're helpful unlike most examples since they indicate your status in the region-specific puzzles.
- Winds of Destiny, Change!: Okay's Destiny Reversal inverts the results of all dice rolls, the effects of which range from nothing changing to completely altering the following rounds.
- Wrestler in All of Us: Korone eventually learns powerful Cast from Hit Points attacks, all themed after wrestling moves.
- Zero-Effort Boss: Leviathan, in his third form, has only 6 hit points left. The dice in the fight are scripted so that the first one will always allow the protagonist to attack with their 6 damage attack.
- "I told you. Every small thing makes a difference."
