Taisei Project Normal 3cc (Reimu A)
13Figured I'd showcase this game.
It's a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) Touhou fangame, meaning the code is visible to the public and anyone is free to modify or contribute to it.
The system is kind of like Ultimate Vitality of Imagination (though this game is older). Press C to consume power and start a "border". During this time, grazing produces bolt items. When the border ends (either by the orange meter hitting the purple, or actively by pressing C again), bullets around you are cancelled into purple Volt items. Collect enough of those and you unlock the last spells. It's a pretty interesting system.
The game is also incredibly smooth and performant, and it compiles quickly too.
Unfortunately, the good things I have to say end about there. I have quite a few gripes about this game:
- The bomb effects are way too intense
- Bullet visibility on many boss patterns and even sometimes during the stages is poor
- Bullet sprites are too small leading to deaths where you don't even know what hit you
- Balancing is incredibly out of wack. This normal is hard or higher on pretty much any other Touhou fangame
- Patterns are acceptable but not memorable outside of a small handful. Stage patterns, in a seeming attempt to tie to the mechanic, usually just consist of "spawn lots of bullets in a small area, then spew them out"
- Overall presentation is quite underwhelming, the sound effects, patterns, and music do not combine and orchestrate with each other for the audiovisual experiences both the maingames and fangames are known for.
- The music is pretty forgettable and lacks energy. Stage 1 themes are in my opinion the most important track in a Touhou game and this game's stage 1 track makes me want to fall asleep.
- What are those boss sprites, just...yeah.
This game has been actively developed as an open source project for over 5 years now, and I'm curious whether the developers ever have a final end vision for the game in mind, or if it's just whatever gets cooked up by the contributors gets added.
To sum it up, it's just not fun to play for me.
Either way, I'm probably being too harsh, but this is probably the last time I'm touching this game unless something major changes.
I played the latest v1.4 code from GitHub, commit hash 6f5f419c
Download it here: https://taisei-project.org/