At this point, everyone should be familiar with Hololive, one of the biggest Virtual YouTuber idol agencies to currently exist. They employ talent from all over the world to play a character while streaming and have only grown in popularity as time passes.
Despite having a massive number of characters with their own quirks, lore, and inside jokes, Cover Corp. hasn’t ventured much when it comes to video games. Their only attempt so far, aside from small cameos in other games, is hololive ERROR, a first-person title based on a short horror miniseries posted on their YouTube channel.
This doesn’t mean that Hololive’s audience hasn’t dipped their toes into fan-made games like HoloCure, Smol Ame, and Hinotori Rhythm. The latest addition to these fangames is Idol Shodown, Hololive’s own fan-made fighting game.
Idol Showdown is a 2D fighting game set in the Hololive universe, taking representatives from multiple generations and pitting them against each other to see who’s the strongest.
Most of the characters from the game are from Hololive JP, but some EN representatives did make it in as assists and background gags. Takanashi Kiara from HoloEN’s Myth was one of the western talent to make it into the game.
Idol Showdown currently has 8 playable characters, 4 stages, and 9 assist characters, all from the Hololive universe. Three more characters are set to come out later, with the next one presumed to be Usada Pekora, since we can hear her iconic laugh echoing at the end of the game’s release trailer.
If you want to know more about the game:
This is a free unofficial fan-made project, made out of love for hololive, hololive fans, and the fighting game genre.
After 2 long years of hard work, the first complete fan-made Hololive fighting game is here!Easy Controls: Pick up on this game’s easy-to-learn control scheme in no time to get straight into playing. Even hololive fans who are inexperienced with traditional fighting games can have fun!
Rollback Netcode: Besto Games has been hard at work developing the game’s online rollback netcode to make the online experience as smooth as we can.
An Immersive hololive Experience: Explore the vast world of hololive from our roster of iconic hololive talents, with moves inspired by their most memorable moments and personality traits. Fight across the virtual world in lovingly recreated hololive locations. Jam out to remixes of your favorite hololive original songs while raising idol hell.
Fast 2D Combat: Hololive talents are reimagined as core fighting game archetypes with a unique twist. Raise chaos in the battlefield with flashy attacks and high-octane action.
Idol Showdown is a solid title for fighting game fans, with beautiful spritework and a decently high skill ceiling. It even features some iconic FGC character archetypes, like Kiryu Coco serving as the grappler and Nakiri Ayame as the high-pressure rushdown character.
The game also features quite a bit of single-player content, just in case you don’t want to jump into the game’s online mode blindly. This mode lets you play matches against increasingly-stronger opponents in the Virtual Frontier mode.
On top of being completely free, Idol Showdown also has rollback netcode, which makes the online mode much smoother to play. The online mode is currently in beta, but it does let you fight players worldwide, create personal rooms, and see what ping your opponent has, just in case you want to avoid a laggy match.
Idol Showdown is available for free on Microsoft Windows (through Steam)
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