This Week in Mobile Games
What HoloDreams May Come
by Josh Tolentino,
Hello there, and welcome once more to the column! Unfortunately, my soaring ambition to catch up with Genshin Impact in time to try out the new update crashed into the hard reality of Everything Else Going On, particularly a home hard drive failure that left me scrambling to spend my personal time backing up a bunch of personal data and shucking drives like shellfish. But enough about me, this is:
Hololive Dreams is a Credible Rhythm Game and an In-depth Fan Service Fiesta
While I spent time babysitting a whole bunch of archived data moving back and forth from old drives to new, I killed time with none other than the recently released Hololive Dreams, which launched on mobile and PC earlier in July. While it launched without too much comment in the anglosphere outside of existing Hololive fan communities (though they're plenty big on their own), the game saw significant traction in Japan, where it's maintained a consistent presence in the top charts. And even to someone like me, who doesn't engage too much with Vtubers (or streamers in general, really), it's easy to see why.
For the uninitiated, Hololive Dreams comes courtesy of developer QualiArts, which also manages Bandai Namco's Gakuen Idolm@ster (i.e. the Idolm@ster game most likely to get a current global release), and is the first "official" Hololive mobile game (though there are several Hololive-themed games across various genres on PC and consoles). It's a free-to-play rhythm game that features 54 playable Hololive members (truncated here to "Holomems") across four globe-spanning divisions: Hololive Japan, Hololive Indonesia, Hololive English, and Hololive DEV_IS.
I say Hololive Dreams is a rhythm game because playing songs and tapping icons along to the beat does make up the core gameplay mode - the process of playing songs on the in-game "Live Stage" will be familiar if you've played any music-based rhythm game released in the last decade or so, but I would say Hololive Dreams' closest cousins are Hatsune Miku Project Sekai or BanG Dream!: Girls' Band Party! The Bandori similarity is particularly relevant here, because Hololive Dreams' gacha revolves around acquiring new variants of the playable cast with different elements, skills, and traits that help boost your score or make things easier when playing the songs. Like Bandori as well, these skills activate with voiced cut-ins and feature gorgeous character art showing off the VTubers in a variety of situations and costumes. There are also a ton of songs available, with more than 150 songs unlockable through in-game progression. The songs themselves range from Hololive originals to covers of popular songs from bands like BABYMETAL and more.
What sets Hololive Dreams apart, though, is the stuff surrounding the core rhythm game. Buoyed by the frankly thin story premise of "gathering all the Holomems together on an island to build a giant multi-zone theme park," players are encouraged to walk around and explore a fully rendered 3D island using chibi versions of the various Holomems. There they'll unlock new facilities, decorate the zone, and interact with the chibi versions of the other Holomems through skits, cutscenes, missions, and minigames.
There's a surprising amount of content in this exploration-based mode, with different zones and minigames themed after different groups of Holomems, like Hololive English Fantasy running the skipping rope and the Gen 1 Hololive Japan members running the cooking minigame. Skits and cutscenes are also frequent, with interactions between the different Holomems running across group lines and referencing viral moments and in-jokes that happened across the talents' various streams over the years. The different real-life talents were also apparently involved in crafting the different interactions and lines, so the writing carries a strong sense of knowing the assignment and catering to fans familiar with how these talents are (or at least, how they present themselves) in their real careers and environments. There's also the promise of more to come, with events to celebrate Holomem birthdays and new song additions already keeping the scene lively, not to mention Hololive members and affiliated talents that aren't in the current playable selection, such as the Holostars.
All in all, it's a pretty substantial package for the prospective player, and there's something for everyone - so long as the set of "everyone" includes at least a passing familiarity with Hololive. Hololive Dreams is very much a production for Hololive fans over an introductory tool to expand the audience. The story, such as it is, isn't really strong enough on its own to hook a player that might not know who all these characters are, and despite the detailed fictional background each Holomem has to guide their concept and design, not much is done with that (much like in practice, if we're being honest).
In a sense, that's how it should be. Unlike other vaguely idol-themed games like Gakuen Idolm@ster, BanG Dream!!, or even something like Umamusume, where the characters are largely fictional and don't exist in a meaningful way outside their core context, Hololive Dreams is a game that involves the personas of people who exist in real life and are active today. Mostly.
Bar the presence of a few (non-playable) talents that have already "graduated" out of active Hololive service like Gawr Gura and Amelia Watson, I could theoretically turn my web browser to any given Holomem's YouTube channel, and there'd be a good chance I could see them streaming or performing live. I don't need a gacha game to introduce me to them, at least not right now.
In that sense, Hololive Dreams is best seen as a new outlet for existing fans to engage with their oshi, or even find new ones in the stable. Beyond that aspect, though, the rest hangs less on the talents themselves (or rather, the approximations of them that exist in-game) than on one's ability to enjoy its credible rhythm gameplay and song selection.
PUBG Mobile Light Announced, Promises Not to Take Up All Your Phone's Space
Publisher Krafton and developer Lightspeed Studios made a somewhat unusual announcement this week related to its popular battle royale shooter PUBG Mobile (the mobile version of the PC and console battle royale pioneer PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds), in the form of PUBG Mobile Light, a new, less demanding version of the game. It's not every day that the game industry, which tends to prize the tech arms race, announces a version of a game that could be said to look worse on purpose.
In essence, PUBG Mobile Light is a new version of the existing PUBG Mobile that operates in tandem with the core game and shares its progression (existing PUBG Mobile players can use their accounts and owned items and cosmetics), but one that loads faster and can be played on lower-end hardware. It's also much, well, lighter in terms of storage footprint, promising a core package of one to two gigabytes on Android and iOS, with configurable à la carte downloads based on player preference. Considering that PUBG Mobile today can take between 6 and 15 gigabytes to store depending on preferences, that's a massive savings in storage for memory-strapped devices.
This move can obviously be interpreted as a bid by Krafton to expand PUBG Mobile's potential audience beyond the crowd with higher-end devices or PC-based mobile emulators. With its resurgence on mobile, Fortnite currently takes up about 12 to 15GB before you start messing around in creative, but PUBG Mobile Light could theoretically hang in the same spaces as Free Fire, competing for a slice of its massive - and often unremarked-on in anglophone spaces - audience.
Beyond that, one might also see the move as Krafton and Tencent (which owns Lightspeed Studios) seeing the way the wind is blowing with regards to hardware capabilities in the near future. The ongoing mania for AI and datacenter buildout is affecting virtually every sector of computer hardware and throwing wrenches into the forecasts of basically every company making consumer electronics, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and game consoles. Some, like Sony and Microsoft, seem to be counting on a "price-insensitive" sector of well-heeled customers to pay even more for the next generation of hardware, while others, like laptop manufacturers, are pivoting their marketing to insist that less memory for the same price is just fine.
Everyone else is looking for a medium-term future where one can't expect high-end hardware or memory to be as common. More and more players will be judicious about hardware upgrades, hold onto current devices longer, and look into optimizations that make the most of limited or older tech. For my money, optimizing one's game to play on more and lesser devices is the smart play. Entertainment is often the first thing to get hit by cutbacks in times of need, and developers will want players to be able to keep playing their game even when their devices aren't cutting edge anymore.
Final Fantasy VII Dirge of Cerberus Phone Game Saved From the Void
Speaking of devices that aren't cutting edge anymore, how about some classical Japanese cell phone telephones? As evinced in our Pokémon and Sonic the Hedgehog mobile game retrospectives, the seemingly prehistoric keitai game scene was quite lively, hosting any number of spin-offs from high-profile console franchises, including Square Enix's Final Fantasy VII. Say what you will about the whole Compilation of Final Fantasy VII project, but it was not lacking in ambition to put FFVII material on seemingly every available platform, including cellphones. One such game was Dirge of Cerberus Lost Episode Final Fantasy VII, a mobile spin-off of the maligned (unfairly, some say) PS2 action-RPG FFVII spin-off Dirge of Cerberus.
Lost Episode seemed destined to be forgotten like so many other keitai games of the era, but thankfully, and at no small expense, game preservationist Yuvi daisy-chained dozens of GPU servers together to, in effect, brute-force the encryption on an intact copy of the game stored on a lonely SD card. The result is a working, playable, fully emulatable copy of a game that would otherwise be almost completely inaccessible, as well as an English translation patch.
While I won't pretend that this spin-off is a critical missing link in the lore monster that is the greater Final Fantasy VII multiverse, I do applaud sincere efforts of game preservation. Though there might be some who disagree (particularly where it comes to more recent 'abandoned' games) and call such moves little better than open piracy, preservation efforts are critical in an industry that's all too ready to abandon its foundational past at the first opportunity to re-sell people their present.
Honkai Star Rail Takes to Space Beach as it Teases a Zenless Zone Zero Crossover
HoYoVerse has announced its summertime plans for Honkai: Star Rail right around the time its second Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works closed out, with a new trailer teasing version 4.5, To Roll the Stars in Astropolis, which debuts on August 26th. The new event heralds yet another lethal threat to the Astral Express' current stop of Planarcadia. More importantly, though, the Trailblazer will get to go on their first summer vacation alongside Penacony buddies robin and Aventurine.
I say "first" summer vacation because this time around Star Rail is launching players on a seaside adventure, much in the manner of many other games' summer events. Honkai: Star Rail has historically not done beach or seaside-themed events in part due to its space theming, which invariably favors otherworldly scenery and the implied cold depths of interstellar travel. The game's first environment was the eternally snowbound city of Belobog, followed by the roaming Chinese-inspired city ship of Xianzhou Luofu. The perennially twilight cityscape of Penacony followed soon after, then the vaguely Greco-Roman planet of Amorpheous. Planarcadia is the area that most resembles a familiar modern environment, and it looks like miHoYo's taking the opportunity to get the crew - and the players - some beach time for the trouble.
The update will debut two new variant characters, robin: Summeretto, and Aventurine: Waveflair. Along with the new characters, a new racing-themed event called "Overdrive: Whirlwind Grand Prix" will debut, as well as some updates to the existing Divergent Universe mode and the much-desired ability to speed up story dialogue.
Perhaps the most intriguing update, though, still doesn't have a release date yet: A planned crossover between Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero. The crossover, whenever it happens, will see ZZZ characters join the Star Rail roster. While crossovers are part and parcel of many a game (Star Rail itself having two of the more notable ones among HoYoVerse-published games), "internal" crossovers between properties of the same studio are, in my experience, often deeper, benefiting handily from the fact that the internal teams can coordinate more closely with people working in the same company than with a forest of rightsholders, as is the case with cross-brand collaborations. That said, I wonder which characters will make the journey from New Eridu to the Star Rail universe, and will they be "cosmic" enough not to freak out when confronting Star Rail's plot of space gods and interstellar crises?
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is Ready to Take Your Time on Mobile
I've said it before, but one of the key benefits of the current era of mobile gaming is an unprecedented level of parity between home console and PC games and mobile ones, allowing a much more comprehensive ecosystem of multiplatform, cross-compatible games. One such beneficiary is Level-5, thanks to its new, fully-featured mobile edition of Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time, which launched for PC and consoles back in May of 2025. Available on iOS and Android at a low price for console (but on the higher side for mobile, where "free with microtransactions" is the unfortunate default expectation), Fantasy Life i Mobile is feature-complete and includes all the content from both the digital deluxe edition and the extant DLC packs.
For those who are new to the cult of Fantasy Life, the games are best seen as hybrid RPGs, spreading the traditional fantasy tale of adventures and dungeon-delving across a large territory and blending it with broad, free-form life simulation and the many roles and jobs of MMORPGs. You can spend your time doing whatever's available, in practice choosing from one of many different, small "gameplay loops," in addition to customizing yourself, your NPC party members, and your home island. There's even cross-platform cooperative play, which allows mobile players to jump right in with PC and console players.
While the most obvious benefits of the current period of mobile hardware have accrued to market-leading free-to-play games like Genshin Impact or Fortnite, it's nice to see it enable a wave of new premium releases and mobile ports like this and the recently ported Fuga: Melodies of Steel bring traditionally console- and PC-bound experiences to the massive mobile audience.
Maiden's Corner (Mini Edition): ZombiSeed Promises Flowery Zombies And Character-Driven Card Battles (With a Demo)
Indie developer LemonVelvet has launched a Kickstarter page for its in-progress card battle game ZombiSeed, as well as a playable demo on PC. The campaign itself hasn't launched yet, but the final game is planned to be a free-to-play mobile and PC release, supported by a gacha-based monetization system.
The game itself looks interesting, with a premise based on a floral zombie apocalypse, centered around a "Hunter Academy" where virus-immune individuals train their newly-discovered supernatural abilities to hunt down the zombies and discover the truth behind the world-ending outbreak. Players take the role of a teacher at the academy, ready to help a selection of attractive young men "find spring again."
Of course, this'll depend on whether the game can be funded. I normally wouldn't report on a yet-to-be-launched crowdfunding campaign given that inherent uncertainty, but with a playable demo out and a solid-looking core concept, ZombiSeed seems like it could take shape, one way or another.
Let's close out the column with some more news tidbits:
- Dragon Quest Smash/Grow has launched its first summer event, Watermelon Mania 2026. The event runs until September 22nd. Besides progression goodies and special currency, it brings two swimsuit costume sets for the protagonist, one premium and another freely obtained from the event shop.
- Smilegate (they of Chaos Zero Nightmare) has opened a Steam page for its older game Epic Seven, with a release date for sometime in 2026. The game already has its own PC client, so this is, as with other Steam debuts, a way for Smilegate to tap into the Steam-exclusive audience.
- I do love posting fabulously animated FGO trailers, and the one released to promote the ongoing Fate/Grand Order -Starviewing Corridor- art exhibition in Tokyo is good. Produced by CloverWorks and featuring emotive narration from Rie Takahashi, the promo (and the exhibition) follow Mash's journey across the original FGO story and Cosmos in the Lostbelt, featuring cuts from across the saga sure to tug on players' heartstrings.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Spirit entered full release last week, and features familiar JoJo's characters battling over an automated hex grid, and a look inspired by the david production anime adaptations of the series. So far, the game's playable cast draws from the first six parts of the series (Phantom Blood to Stone Ocean), and its main story is a straightforward retelling of Golden Wind. That said, pure licensed anime gacha games don't always have the longest life spans, so it's anyone's guess if this one will hit it big.
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