With the new year now here, it’s not that hard to look back and think of all the games we’ve gotten as well as look back at games that have survived and even garnered a sizeable following to keep them afloat. The problem with this – for some – is how do we space our time out with so many games but with so little time for them to keep our attention while jumping from one to one. With that being said, I pondered how I should spend the last remaining hours of 2023 since I’m not spending it with family and friends (okay, this sounds rather depressing, I know….I don’t have a huge social life outside of online, alright?). Well….how else, playing some frickin games! So I decided to look around on Youtube and Twitch to make a decision on what to play and almost decided to go back to playing Final Fantasy XI – Horizon (this is a private server) or Warframe, the latter being what I’ve been more heavily invested as of the past few months since I’ve been playing on every Tuesday night with friends. I went with FFXI and started to fire it up while looking for a vtuber to have playing in the background while I play and stumbled upon Kureiji Ollie, one of the many talents within the Hololive talent pool as part of Hololive Indonesia Gen 2, who was streaming at the time and showing off the new public updates to Cover Corps. upcoming social sandbox MMO game titled HoloEarth.
Before even watching Ollie stream the game, I already knew about HoloEarth and even had the installation file on one of my many hard drives but just sitting there collecting dust. Being intrigued with what I was seeing, I decided to go ahead and install the game and jump in, even managed to get myself to show up in Ollie’s stream (yay! – Look on the left side of the following pic).
I wasn’t expecting much from my own experience with the game since this is a very early public beta….I mean, there is literally nothing to do here outside of running around and talking to people. All of the social aspects of this game has really brought up some very nostalgic feelings I had from a previous anime-inspired social MMO. You may (or may not) have heard of it….it was called “Ai Sp@ce.“
Ai Sp@ce was a massive multiplayer online social game developed and produced by the Ai Space Production Committee and released back on October 15, 2008 in Japan only. This was back in the time where the only big social MMOSG was something like “Second Life” (do people still play around in that?). Ai Sp@ce used the characters and properties of 3 big visual novel companies; that being Key/Visual Arts, Navel, & Circus with Clannad, Shuffle, & Da Capo 2. There were two aspects of the social experience with Ai Sp@ce, that being its social/visual novel gameplay and its 3rd-person shooter gameplay. It was a rather odd but unique experience back when I played this. Making money was a pain though as Ai Sp@ce gave you a weekly allowance (which you had to go to a bank to pick up) which barely was enough to get anything. For the social aspect of the game, you’ll run through a virtual version of Akihibara or one of the three schools from the used visual novels that this game uses. Running around town and looking at the TV screen plastered around which showed video feeds or streams from Nico Nico Douga made it a fun time as you’ll get to see advertisements, videos, and such for things you may or may not have seen or known. They also gave you a house/apartment room for you to build up and model to further the social experience which was fun in that no ones room was ever the same. Unfortunately, the game was shut down on June 30, 2011.
Everything about the social aspect of Ai Sp@ce are what I feel whenever I jumped into Holoearth and it honestly made me tear up on the inside. You can’t imagine how long I’ve waited for a social MMO with an anime aesthetic since then and there has been nothing like it since till now. Holoearth’s social aspect seems to hit every nostalgic feeling I had for Ai Sp@ce (minus the weekly allowance…I don’t think Cover Corp is going to be giving us something like that…..or will they?) but the secondary aspect of Holoearth is a complete departure from what Ai Sp@ce took. Instead of a 3rd-person shooter, Cover Corp. decided to go into the direction of Minecraft….or rather, one of the inspirations from Minecraft, that being a game called “Craftopia.”
Craftopia is a sandbox game where you can do whatever you want and build whatever you want. It’s currently in early access but has had a huge update known as the “Seamless World” update which rather than the game be broken off into seperate segregated islands, it’s instead one huge world with multiple biomes. Craftopia gameplay loop basically has you do a couple of story quests until they run out and you start doing your own thing (or until the devs add more story content) which involves in you gathering resources and building whatever you want within the limits & materials the game gives you. This is what Holoearth seems to be heading towards with its sandbox portion of its gameplay.
Unfortunately to the public, you’re only able go into an instance known as your home area which pretty much is devoid of any questing & adventuring at this time but instead gives you a little preview of what the building aspect of the game will be like. With this, I decided to take full advantage of my time with this build and try to build a little getaway for myself with what little free time I have for myself. Just like in Craftopia, you’ll need to regulate your health along with your stamina meter but Holoearth takes it a bit further by adding a hydration meter also……YEAH, YOU NEED TO HYDRATE YOURSELF. It’s not a bad thing but I guess Cover Corp. is putting little nods to their talents who are often told to hydrate themselves by their fans during their streams so might as well do it ingame also. There have been previews of what the adventure world would look like but it was only playable to the Hololive management & talents which they showed off to the fans.
With that being said, I’m hoping Holoearth will scratch that itch I’ve been having since Ai Sp@ce ended its service. Although Ai Sp@ce wasn’t anything big, it was special in terms of a social game and one that I’ve longed for a return to. Holoearth already has an English translation within the games system settings so I’m speculating a global release whenever it’s ready and when that time comes, I’ll be front and center to enter its world.
Holoearth is currently in early public beta with very limited activities. There is currently no date as to when it will be fully released (we’re not even sure it will even be this year or next). You can download the beta right now on the Holoearth Website.
Special Thanks to Kureiji Ollie for streaming this on a day I was off work and for showing everyone how to set the game into English (I was the one who posted the question asking about it near the end of her stream.) You can find the stream by Kureiji Ollie below.
