Holdover (Custom "Plus" Text) Playthrough Part 1: An Ill & Anchored Girl
52This game has the honor of being the very first doujin game, or Japanese indie game, that I've put on my channel. It's also the very first game I've come to know from its doujin developer, Fox Eye.
Holdover is a short-but-sweet game, but it's also a very hard death trap game (but not even close to I Wanna Be the Guy’s level). If you like Metroid, this game is Metroidvania with retro graphics, and a small tribute to Metroid itself back in 2009, before 2010 dropped and the Metroid franchise screwed itself for a few years because of Other M. As of this upload, it’s been 3 years since I got to know Holdover, and since then, I've learned about all of Fox Eye's other games, some of which could show up on my channel someday, too.
However, that might be a problem, because... the quirk with Fox Eye is that... all of their games are underwater anime girl fantasies. But on top of that, they all have a VERY intimate emphasis on putting their girls in multiple dangers of drowning...
Not quite the Ryona-type of developer since fetishizing girls with blood and gore aren't their MO, but I just have to consider this quite an alternative approach to that "genre", which is why you're probably going to ask me why I'm into this stuff.
It's actually a long, personal story that’s 20 years in the making...
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In Holdover, you play as a cute, blonde, 15-year old girl named Marie (Last Name: Annette?). She's the 3rd Marie on my channel after Skullgirls' Bloody Marie, and Splatoon's Marie of the Squid Sisters. This Marie looks SOOOOOO much like Roll from Mega Man that I'll never be able to get over it, but she is also meant to channel Samus without her armor. Despite that, she's a completely normal human being.
Compared to the other two Maries, this one is a tragic girl, because her scientist father, Tanner, had to seal her in a healing capsule in his huge laboratory for 10 years because of a near-fatal accident that put her in a coma. 10 years later, Marie wakes up from her capsule to discover a hologram from her father explaining what happened to her. This also involved installing a pair of computers to her ankles that are meant to repair her organs and keep her alive, but because she's been inside of her capsule for so long, her limbs are also numb, so she'll have to find some medicine to treat them.
Unfortunately, when Marie does wake up, the lab she's in is now in total ruins. Spikes are everywhere, the security robots that survived will vaporize her with lasers, but most of all, several rooms in the laboratory are flooded. Those computer anklets are heavy and keep her from swimming. Even worse than that, she's not so good at holding her breath underwater, either...
As a matter of fact, out of all of the heroines of Fox Eye that I've seen and played, Marie has the absolute WORST time with breathholding. You will see her struggle and drown faster than any human has any right to. Consider it mercy that she doesn't have a voice in this game to go with that.
The mission of Holdover is to help Marie escape from her labyrinth of a laboratory alive, but this is MUCH easier said than done...
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The game lets you change its dialogue text in a premade Notepad file, and then load it into the game, like what I did at the very start of this video. I added and changed some of the text in this game, mainly giving Marie more dialogue to expand her thoughts on this whole mess she has to go through.
I didn't do anything extreme or bizarre with it. It's more of my own natural extension of the game's original script to give it a bit more of a push. You won't find these specific changes in any other playthrough of this game on YouTube.
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This video focuses on the basics, such as jumping, crawling, opening doors, reading signs and holograms, and quicksaving. For jumping, Marie's not too good at that, either, not just because of those weighty anklets, but also because her legs are numb, and since those weights keep her from swimming, she'll instead have to move around underwater, Mega Man/Sonic style.
You’re going to use that quicksaving a lot if you don't remember the layouts of each room. Being stabbed or shot will make Marie strip naked, bleed out, and die. This blood is the only "traditional Ryona" material of the game, but...
The TRUE main thing to watch out for in a Fox Eye game is how often your girl will be put underwater, and how often you'll have to keep her from drowning. Marie will even lose her breath faster the more she moves around while her head is under. To try and temper this fact, there are a bunch of blue hearts scattered throughout this game. Collect a certain amount of them to level up Marie's 02 each time and lets her hold her breath a bit longer.
It’s such a double-edged sword to have those computer anklets keep Marie alive, while also being responsible for making her a living anchor that drowns a lot, right? I've never seen any other game with this exact kind of predicament.