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"Live in Dungeon" is an interesting but barebones semi-realtime Dungeon Crawler that almost lives and dies on a central (but innovative) gimmick, created by the Doujin circle, "Heavyside Creations" (ヘビサイドクリエイション) in 2021 for PC / Steam and the Itch.io platform. As their secondary title, it's not a "bad" game per se, but it lacks polish and finer details and seems like a proof of concept more than a fully realized experience, especially when compared to their first major work (more later).

As a no-name adventurer dropped in the land of "Wonderlucia", an alternate world where live streaming is the sole form of advanced technology, you and your pet cat attempt to carve out a name for yourselves and gain a following which will afford you bigger and greater opportunities to explore. Use this information as you will because beyond a few thinly veiled mentions about another streamer in the world operating in tandem with you, the game basically has no story and as 85% of the game's dialogue is mostly driven by "Followers" who leave "Likes" to your commentary who have nothing interesting to say, you won't get anything of real substance from the narrative. This is unfortunate as the game's main hook and gimmick is literally driven by the "Narrative-Active Command" system. On paper, this system is pretty cool (and if it spent more time in the oven, it could even be borderline genius): The player, whether exploring or in battle, will constantly gain commentary from your followers which you can respond to in different ways. Every response has a cold, warm or hot reaction which determines how many likes you'll get as well as increase your followers, and the more followers you have, the greater the frequency and extent you can interact with your fans.

For example, likes are mainly used as a form of currency to redeem weapons, armor or skills from an in-game shop (we don't know how it got there, it's just... there). There are no levels the player can achieve, although the game is divided into areas and each area has a set number of items and the odd / generic NPC quest based on your follower count, which serves as a goalpost for progression as staying in one area too long doesn't really serve a benefit. You could also grind for followers and likes since you recover after every battle, but it's not especially necessary for the most part. One cool thing though is that commentary also has a radical impact on how battles play out as the player can build "hype" from attacking and answer followers. Answering followers is also basically mandatory as each response lowers the cooldowns of your actions, and since there is no "wait" during battles (enemies can attack you while you're thinking), you need to be quick on the draw. When your hype is full, you can unleash a special skill which is significantly stronger than your other abilities.

The last feature worth mentioning is unlocked around the game's halfway point when you get a considerable amount of followers, called "Super Comments". This feature also has a timer and cooldown and, when activated, allows you to heal, deal supplemental damage or briefly boost your attack. Although most battles after the first area basically devolve into mindlessly mashing buttons to sift through comments as quickly as possible (and it's probably for the best, as the actual commentary is very limited and thus repetitive), there is a modicum of exhilaration and strategy involved when faced with tougher enemies or bigger formations which will see you rapidly changing up attacks to eek out a victory. This same system, conversely, turns ugly when you temporarily LOSE ACCESS to your followers. As there doesn't seem to be a way to "escape" battles, you could basically lock yourself out on a run if you progressed too quickly or didn't invest in the right skills before exhausting all those nifty likes you've been getting. The only reason it isn't a bigger deal is because the game's short... like 2hrs-ish short. Your cat buddy is also cute but totally useless otherwise.

The audio and visuals are fairly nice given the game's relatively short development cycle and miniscule budget (being developed roughly two years or so), but they actually experimented with an another concept in their first game, PIANOFORTE, which was released in 2019, had roughly 3-4hrs of playtime (so it was essentially twice as long), a cool black & white visual aesthetic, a more nuanced and somber story, party members and an active command battle system around music (switching between offense and defense as the music changes)... while LID would seem more appealing at a glance, I wish PF was translated into English too (it's available digitally on DMM via proxy and Nintendo Switch JP, physical copies are fairly rare... I bought one a while back). This is a video of the game in action. You can get it at:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1610650/LIVE_IN_DUNGEON/
https://heavisidecreations.itch.io/live-in-dungeon

Enjoy.