Banzoin Hakka, Vain and Shoto Spend an Evening Surviving Co-op Game Invokyr

HOLOLIVE — Banzoin Hakka, Vain and Shoto spent a Friday evening working through Invokyr, a cooperative dice game in which players collect idols, carry them back to an altar and try to survive whatever is hunting them. Hakka and Vain each streamed the session on their own channel, and the three played together for more than two and a half hours.

Vain went live first and said it was nearly midnight for him and that the collab would run until about 2 a.m. He said he had never interacted with Shoto and was looking forward to meeting him. Hakka, who said he had been working at a studio in Japan, joined the call in the opening half hour. The three traded introductions and sorted out a few technical problems with the chat display before settling on a lobby and picking characters. Hakka’s stream title billed the game as “evil Jumanji.”

“I’m honestly feeling competitive. We got to do this again.” — Banzoin Hakka, Vain and Shoto, after their run ended

Play settled into a loop: find the idols scattered through the rooms, bring them to the altar for money, spend it on upgrades such as health and stamina, then head back out. Dice drove nearly everything, from heal and resurrection dice to teleport and bomb dice. The group died often, to traps, to one another’s dice and to enemies that included a mannequin, a yeti, a shadow man and mimics that played back the players’ own voices. Later areas added clones of the players, a snowy level full of snowmen and penguins, and an idol that left one player able to see only through another’s view.

Their last run ended when a lightning trap went off and the players died in the fire. One of them said they were feeling competitive and wanted to go again, and another pointed out that they had gotten far on a level-four difficulty setting while playing blind, without reading a wiki. Two of the players said they liked the game more than R.E.P.O., and the group compared it to Lethal Company. Before signing off, the three said it was nice to meet one another and agreed to run it back.

Shoto left first. Vain thanked viewers and said he was going to bed. Hakka said he would have played another round if he did not have recording to do the next day, and he carried on alone for about half an hour. He talked about three straight days at the studio, showed the bento he ate there and described plans for a movie day once his recordings were finished. He closed the stream by raiding a Twitch channel that runs a chicken camera.