To celebrate Valentine’s Day, Hololive released an interactive dating sim that’s playable via its YouTube channel. The game features multiple branching paths, allowing fans to choose which of their favorite Hololive VTubers they spend their day with.
The game takes place at a party featuring all of the Hololive English talents, who then go their own separate ways. The player can choose to accompany the VTubers to a park, cafe, or theme park, or to stay home and clean afterward. Any given route is about 11 minutes long, and clearing all the possible paths will set you back roughly 45 minutes.
The script for the game was written by Hololive’s own Mori Calliope, with original illustrations by Aneco. The game is voice acted by the Hololive VTubers, who are all dressed in a “special Valentine’s Day outfit.” A mock UI overlay is featured on the YouTube videos to give the feeling of playing a visual novel.
During her Feb. 13 YouTube stream, Mori introduced her fans to the project. She described the interactive experience as, “kind of similar to a dating sim, but it’s much more low key and it’s not extremely intricate or anything. But, I think it will be fun. A fun way to chill on Valentine’s day.”
Mori credited Ceres Fauna’s “holoweEN” project as one of her inspirations for the dating sim, a three-part animated comic that featured voice acting from the VTubers involved.
“If I remember correctly, [Fauna] was in charge of the little Halloween project. She came up with a comic script of alternate universe horror scenarios that we all got to do some voice acting for and insert ourselves into. That was really fun,” the grim reaper VTuber said.
“Well this time, I came up with an idea that I really wanted to see if we could do. I really wanted to try out something that is slightly interactive with the fans. So I thought ‘wouldn’t it be fun if, for Valentine’s [day], we could put together some sort of mini visual novel.’ And we did!”
During the broadcast, Mori shared some of her concerns with writing the script. She was worried that she would not be able to consistently capture each talent’s personality or sense of humor. To counteract this concern, she opened up the script writing to all of the talents involved.
“Fear not. In case you’re worried that it might be out of character for your oshi—because I can’t pin everybody’s personalities perfectly, I’m only [Mori]—it’s okay because I completely opened up the script for all of the girls to be able to change their lines as they like, to fit their personalities more, in case I phrased something in a way that they felt uncomfortable with,” she said.
“I opened it up to them so they could make it more fitting to [their personalities]. So, in the end, it really was more of a collaborative [effort], but I came up with the basic scenarios and most of the script.”
Despite her initial concerns, the collaborative scriptwriting was a success. The Hololive girls were all able to put their own personal touch to the dating sim. This is something Mori said she values across all projects, as it gives each VTuber a chance to shine.
“Sometimes, since I’m only really well versed in my own sense of humor, I’m so worried about making jokes or writing jokes, that the other girls wouldn’t say, that I’m worried my writing was a bit stale and bare bones,” the streamer said.
“But a lot of the girls also inserted their own brand of humor jokes which made me chuckle, a lot. Thank goodness for the other ladies. I can’t do this without them. I’m just really glad we got to do something like this together.”
Mori also discussed that the project was initially going to be much smaller in scope, saving it as a back-pocket idea for if she ever went on a break.
“This was initially an idea that I just wanted to do for myself, for when I went on a break or something like that. But I’m glad we all did it together,” the VTuber said.
Mori encourages fans not to just play through the route of their favorite member, but to give all of the paths a go.
