Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism

What is this game?

This game is the 11th installment of Touhou shooting game series released by Zun.

What is Touhou?

Touhou is the Japanese pronunciation of Eastern or Oriental, but people usually refer this series as Touhou project or simply Touhou. In this series of blog, I will use Touhou 11 for an easier reference.

In Touhou 11, we start with 2 major characters---Hakurei Reimu and Kirisame Marisa to solve the problems of the Gensokyo (meaning "imaginary world") through the battle of "danmaku" (In Japanese, Dan means "Bullet", and Maku means "Veil". Two words together, and we have "Veils of Bullet").

Characters and Mechanics:

Once we choose which character to play with, we choose 1 out of 3 partner to go with our heorines. They each support you with different attack weapons and abilities. For example, one of Hakurei Reimu's partner, Yukari's support weapon is needles, which give us forward concentrated fire. Yukari's support ability allow players to shift positions instantly from 1 side of the wall to another.

The main goals for this game is just the same as the other shooting games: finish the game, don't die, and see the best ending.The game comes in 4 difficulties, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. Once finishing Normal without continues, you can unlock the Extra Mode.

For each enemy you defeat will drop items for point and/or power up. They are the source of you fire power and your bomb. The bomb mechanic makes you temporary invincible and save your life. But different from other Touhou installment, same character with different support partner comes with different bomb effects.

Dynamics:

I like all the installment in Touhou series and other shooting game; they are super dynamic heavy. I think it's impossible to describe the difficulty with word on any shooting game. Video replay will tell people everything.

video

Now, the video is doing Lunatic. You may think "OMG WTF" just by looking at it. But deep inside the game, people can see patterns. Touhou is all about read the patterns and conquer that pattern. Same as other shoot-em-up, people will try to get point as much as they can. e.g. the video above.

Aesthetic:

What attracted me to Touhou series is not just heavy amount of bullet on the screen. Zun composed all the music, designed all the characters and programed all the game mechanics all by himself.