Touhou is a phenomenon. Despite area of interest enchantment, this long-running collection of bullet hell shmups has grown into an unlimited shared franchise in Japan. It’s an indie scene unto itself, enabled by creator Zun giving his blessing to folks making and promoting fan works. Touhou boasts twice-yearly conventions dense with cosplayers, a number of official comedian traces and fan-made works together with music, anime, and video games spanning each style, together with boozy RTSs and even football RPGs. And but, it’s nonetheless an nearly impenetrable thriller to these standing on the surface.
That barrier has grow to be rather a lot simpler to traverse yesterday, as Touhou 16: Hidden Star In Four Seasons has arrived on Steam, accompanied by a three-level free demo, and a complete – albeit unofficial – localization patch.
While there have been many alternatives previously to import these video games from Japan, and I do know of at the very least one fan-game to get official blessing for a global console launch, that is the primary time the long-running collection has been obtainable through a serious world storefront, though Touhou 14 got a similar release on Playism again within the day. Despite being a Japanese language solely launch, the Steam model is totally appropriate with the community-made English patch made months in the past for the unique retail launch of the sport. Series creator Zun has said that he has extra religion in his followers to deal with localisation than a third-party firm, so an official translation appears unlikely at this level.
Set within the unusual parallel world of Gensokyo, a lot of the Touhou collection revolves round shrine-maiden Reimu Hakurei and her quest to keep away from doing any work. She’d quite simply hang around with mates, drink, sleep within the shade and depend her shrine donations, however sadly residing in a magical realm filled with fairies, spirits, monsters, vampires and extra implies that incidents occur sometimes, and no person goes to settle down till somebody units issues straight. This time spherical, all 4 seasons appear to be occurring concurrently in numerous areas round Gensokyo, so it’s off to the skies to shoot at fairies till somebody explains what’s happening.
This provides just a little wrinkle to the same old Touhou motion. You’ve acquired your common motion, capturing and a screen-clearing smartbomb, however clearing enemies and ‘grazing’ enemy bullets (have your character’s sprite contact them, however not the central hitbox) will enhance the Season gauge. Hitting the Season Release button will create a bullet-eating short-term protected zone, and in addition offer you a hefty slab of factors when you handle to soak up quite a lot of a bosses assault. Beyond that, that is as simple as Touhou will get, and a strong sufficient introduction to the collection.
As talked about, the big shared dream that’s Touhou extends far past any formally launched sport. Due to the often-commercial nature of Touhou fan-works, it’s onerous to pay money for them exterior of Japan in any authorized capability, however it’s value being looking out for the Koumajou Densetsu series, transplanting the Touhou forged right into a super-polished Castlevania tribute replete with some astoundingly good gothic interpretations of the characters, all backed up by an official (if barely patchy) English translation.
There are additionally some professional-quality animated shorts, treating the setting as if it have been a long-running TV anime collection, and even a collection of Touhou fighting games developed by Twilight Frontier which are counted by Zun as collection canon, making them numbered releases together with the mainline video games. The newest of those is rumored to be headed to Steam as nicely. Good information, as they’re genuinely distinctive video games, mixing shmup components into the combating sport style, and the place the story mode performs out extra like an arcade boss-rush than a conventional collection of bouts. Until then, we’ve acquired Touhou 16.
Touhou 16: Hidden Star In Four Seasons is out now on Steam for £11.39/€15/$15, and if you wish to play it in English, simply seize the patch here. There’s a three-level demo on the storefront as nicely, and is appropriate with the identical translation patch.
