Make a Touhou Fangame!

[Yumetou]

So Zun breaks into your house at midnight and demands at gunpoint that you make a Touhou fangame. What kind of game would you make, and what would its genre be? What would the premise and story be? Which characters would you focus on, and why? You have ultimate control, and all the time in the world to make your dream game! Or Zun buries you in the back yard next to Mima and Shinki.

[Cheestits]

Yes, so provided that this imaginary "I" character doesn't suck at making games, I would make an RPG about... Marijuana.

The story revolves around Yuuka- whose main source of income (she runs a flora shop) proves to be insufficient because she spends all of her money on fertilizers for the sunflowers. Using her powers, she starts distributing marijuana grown from her hair to various residents of Gensokyo. Her job is to avoid the Gensokyo FDA and/or convince them to allow for her business of 420 greens to run smoothly via addiction, force or sheer manpower.

To play the game, Yuuka will have to resort to the magic of botany, make them illegal Canadian leaves more appetizing and hallucinogenic as she will be using them in battle against the authorities, as well as to attract more people into being part of her drug empire. Imagine minecraft enchantments, but for weed. The money gathered will then be used to bribe people like Reimu and Sanae to promote her premium blunts, buy ingredients and recipe books to make stronger weed, and you best believe it can be used to make a shrine dedicated to ZUN. The game will feature a map of the entirety of Gensokyo, with the various notable destinations being traversable for Yuuka and allowing for her to expand her industry. Running around shops, creating a blackmarket for everyone, from children to fairies to gods. Every once in a while, you will be raided by the local authority, in which case you will be forced to engage in a high octane sequence of shmups, where you will be able to utilize the powers of weed to intoxicate the raiders.

Your goal is to compromise the sages and permanently making your products legal in Gensokyo, and you lose when you run out of funds or get caught red-handed in this supposed "incident" which may or may not involve the main cast of character.

 

Edited September 3, 2023 by Cheestits

[Sci]

Resisting the urge to say Moriya Shrine: The Game--

[Yumetou]

I don’t think it’s a secret I have a fascination with Mima. The fact she was such a key part of the franchise and just fell off the map never fails to stir my fascination. But my boys Juunimeta and Eulogous have expanded that interest into the general 98 era. If I did a fan game, it’d probably be based on that part of the history.

 

There’s a $5 game on Steam I can’t remember the name of. The premise is simple; you play as the Devil who has purchased a rundown apartment block. You attract various monsters to live in your apartments, keep them happy and use them to fight adventurers and heroes come to loot your stuff. I think a concept like that would fit Touhou well. Imagine playing as a vengeful Mima come back into Gensokyo to rescue your apprentice from the evil shrine maiden who has bewitched her with concepts like ‘friendship’ and ‘Youkai are bad, m’kay?’

You would go through a series of stages you could customize for a sidescrolling dungeon, and populate it with various types of ghosts, youkai and demons to defend it. Some could work well together, while other types hate each other. You could customize rooms to optimize your monster choice or throw in traps. Cast spells to give minions an edge. Recruit various characters from the PC-98 and Windows era as a dungeon boss, all as various heroines or generic fantasy characters fight their way into your dungeon. With the end goal of traversing the levels and making a dungeon so deadly, it takes down Reimu herself. All to bathe the land in darkness and rescue your surrogate daughter.

 

Juuni, Eulo and I were chatting the other week over what Yumeko would look like were she reintroduced. The idea gave me a concept for a 98-focused RPG adventure. Yumeko the Sword-Maid wakes up in a world I can only describe as ‘the dimension of irrelevance’. In this strange new world, you have to recruit allies like Elly, Gengetsu and Satsuki, marching your way through a dull hellscape to try to find your way back to Gensokyo. The only way back is the Yin-Yang orb, which Mima tells you can grant wishes. Would probably put a lot of focus on character-interactions, maybe with a morality system which affects the ending. For instance, if you ignore Mima, she decides to become the god of this new world. If you have high affinity and low morality with her, she may choose to train you as her shrine maiden. Or if you have high affinity and high morality, she will use her wish to see Marisa one last time to say good-bye.

[The_Trader]

On 9/3/2023 at 8:33 AM, Cheestits said:

Yes, so provided that this imaginary "I" character doesn't suck at making games, I would make an RPG about... Marijuana.

The story revolves around Yuuka- whose main source of income (she runs a flora shop) proves to be insufficient because she spends all of her money on fertilizers for the sunflowers. Using her powers, she starts distributing marijuana grown from her hair to various residents of Gensokyo. Her job is to avoid the Gensokyo FDA and/or convince them to allow for her business of 420 greens to run smoothly via addiction, force or sheer manpower.

To play the game, Yuuka will have to resort to the magic of botany, make them illegal Canadian leaves more appetizing and hallucinogenic as she will be using them in battle against the authorities, as well as to attract more people into being part of her drug empire. Imagine minecraft enchantments, but for weed. The money gathered will then be used to bribe people like Reimu and Sanae to promote her premium blunts, buy ingredients and recipe books to make stronger weed, and you best believe it can be used to make a shrine dedicated to ZUN. The game will feature a map of the entirety of Gensokyo, with the various notable destinations being traversable for Yuuka and allowing for her to expand her industry. Running around shops, creating a blackmarket for everyone, from children to fairies to gods. Every once in a while, you will be raided by the local authority, in which case you will be forced to engage in a high octane sequence of shmups, where you will be able to utilize the powers of weed to intoxicate the raiders.

Your goal is to compromise the sages and permanently making your products legal in Gensokyo, and you lose when you run out of funds or get caught red-handed in this supposed "incident" which may or may not involve the main cast of character.

 

War of teh ultinate wed new season dropped yo

[Eulogous]

I'd want to make a vertical shmup, like mainline Touhou games, but instead of a traditional arcade experience, I'd want to make it a series of score attack challenges, time trials, mini stages, pattern trials, and boss scenes all broken up in a way the scene shooters break up content. I'd contextualize them as things happening around Gensokyo and its connected regions, and you're working towards solving an incident by having multiple smaller problems. There'd be multiple characters to select for the scenes, but Global progress is shared, so you can complete it all with your preferred character and not have to repeat content. With incidents happening all over, I'd make it fairly non-linear, but have character locked to a certain region (set of content) until you finish most of it. 

Example is have say, Sanae/Aya locked to Youkai Mountain's region completing content until she's done, and then you'd be able to use her in other regions because she's solved what was happening there. You'd be able to swap do different regions anytime to progress on them, so there'd be freedom in how you eventually complete the game.

I'd want to make it fairly beginner-friendly (because think how many times you've seen "I like Touhou, but I'm just not good at shmups"). I wanna aim for something that teaches and eases people into the genre and rewards them for their time spent with things like achievements, or extras like characters, or dialogue scenes (Touhou is known mostly for its characters first and foremost, and it's important to keep that in mind when making something). Also, no micro-dodging projectiles with semi-random speeds and trajectories for hours on end. That should be a lesson, but not the only lesson for the entire game.

The Story is that someone is working behind the scenes to wear out Reimu with multiple smaller incidents (idea is to reintroduce characters who'd have a grudge against her conspiring together), so other characters from all over can work together or solo to solve it. I wanna avoid the weird situation in mainline where every character seems to complete the incident, but it's obviously intended for Reimu to be the one who does it. Having tons of smaller incidents everywhere lets other characters have a chance at being playable without having to center an entire plot onto them, and can give them interactions too.

[Gri]

29 minutes ago, Eulogous said:

I'd want to make a vertical shmup, like mainline Touhou games, but instead of a traditional arcade experience, I'd want to make it a series of score attack challenges, time trials, mini stages, pattern trials, and boss scenes all broken up in a way the scene shooters break up content. I'd contextualize them as things happening around Gensokyo and its connected regions, and you're working towards solving an incident by having multiple smaller problems. There'd be multiple characters to select for the scenes, but Global progress is shared, so you can complete it all with your preferred character and not have to repeat content. With incidents happening all over, I'd make it fairly non-linear, but have character locked to a certain region (set of content) until you finish most of it

Short post (may post more later): This sounds like a neat concept at glace.

29 minutes ago, Eulogous said:

I'd want to make it fairly beginner-friendly (because think how many times you've seen "I like Touhou, but I'm just not good at shmups").

Careful. Many of those who are saying this just don't play because they hate losing. To them, losing = they are bad. They prefer saying they are bad, when losing once or twice is perfectly normal for arcade game like those. One of my friend, who had never played any shmups and isn't that good in video games managed to get to PCB stage 3 without using continue on Easy (the game closed because of sticky keys, unfortunately). 

Pretty sure anyone that actually bother playing the game can 1CC on Easy fairly quickly (probably in about 3 runs). Sure, having a PointDevice mode like LoLK makes the game much more accessible, since anyone with enough persistence can get to the end, without losing progress.

41 minutes ago, Eulogous said:

Also, no micro-dodging projectiles with semi-random speeds and trajectories for hours on end.

A bit of randomness is necessary to keep the player on their toes. Otherwise, when you memorized the game, it become boring pretty quickly. Sure, there can be BS random, but that's what bombs are for. The games aren't that bad with BS random, until you start playing on Lunatic where some part are too tight (like you sometime get in a spot where if you don't move, you get hit, but if you move, you move pass the gap and hit the next bullet. This happens especially with Marisa fast speed and fat hitbox).

[Gri]

On 9/8/2023 at 8:40 PM, Eulogous said:

I'd want to make a vertical shmup, like mainline Touhou games, but instead of a traditional arcade experience, I'd want to make it a series of score attack challenges, time trials, mini stages, pattern trials, and boss scenes all broken up in a way the scene shooters break up content. I'd contextualize them as things happening around Gensokyo and its connected regions, and you're working towards solving an incident by having multiple smaller problems. There'd be multiple characters to select for the scenes, but Global progress is shared, so you can complete it all with your preferred character and not have to repeat content. With incidents happening all over, I'd make it fairly non-linear, but have character locked to a certain region (set of content) until you finish most of it. 

All right, full post about the concept now:

This could actually be a very nice game that combine various gameplay from the mainline game. For example, there's a series of "scene" that are related to the UFO incident, so during those scene you have to play around UFO token to get through (whether aiming for score using blue one, or surviving use red/green, or even trying to break as many as you can). Another example would be the "season" incident, where you have to use you're season release to survive/score as many point as you can. You could even have "survival" challenge where you must last a specified amount of time (much like PoFV). I am getting hyped just thinking about the possibility, image this one: Cirno having to use her GFW ice power to protect an ally (that doesn't move, so there's no annoying random). Or having to use "cherry border" to survive deadly spells (collecting cherry item + unfocus shot to charge it).

Having smaller incident also make it easy to justify having a larger cast, and I like the idea of having only some character available for some scene. It can play pretty well into the story, as well as offering some variation into the gameplay. I do think the game should force the player to try out each character at least once, in a kind of "invisible tutorial" way where you force the player to do ~2 scene, but the first one is easy and builds of the character strength (ex: Youmu can take out multiple "strong" fairy in a single charged slash), and the second increase the difficulty a bit using the character's weakness (ex: Youmu's has to get closer, so the player must now learn when to get close, and when to get away). 

Regarding accessibility, I think simply having difficulty setting would be enough. Currently, this is what makes the Photo games inaccessible to newcomers (only ISC is good since you can "choose" your difficulty depending on which item you use, or not). Maybe give the option to increase the amount of lives for longer survival-scene / boss-scene, or have broze-silver-gold ranks for score-scene.

Such game would take a lot of work, depending on the number of character, scenes and difficulty/rank. One can dream (thanks for sharing that dream).

[NetsumuNico7]

I always thinked of this stupid but strange idea for a funny, hilarious and mostly Random Fangame Featuring Sanae.

The idea was like this:

You guys have played Old MFGG fangames (Most Likely the first 2000'ish Mario fangames)? For those who don't know, they are mostly chaotic and has lots of random things going on, LITERALLY RANDOM STUFF, and the stories were funny and out of place.

So i want to imitate that...

The game is about Sanae (i choose her because i used her in a collab game for the 2hu Game Jam 8) in a 2-D pixel art plataforming game.

It will start as a Normal game, Sanae needs to go on a short adventure to SDM, due Suwako send her to ask Patchouli if she can help Hanako wierd sickness, the game starts cute and straight foward, the game starts to get stranger in one of the Patchy attacks (yes, she is a boss, because she only wanted to show her new spellcard) where Patchy uses a spell, which Sanae transforms into a snake; Sanae manages to defeat her, she goes back to the Moriya with some medicine for Hanako, until she unexpectedly meets with...   Yukari???? Who is acting strange...

After defeating her, the game will turn CHAOTIC. Yukari Sends her to literally the masive world of the internet, unknowing where the h*ck she is now... She will explore the masive world of the internet of 2026! Meeting really popular places like youtube, 4chan, discord, Moriyashrine, Twitter... IN ORDER TO ESCAPE AND SAVE THE MASSIVE WOLRD OF THE INTERNET!!!!

This is the most odd i can imagine, what do you think? Thank you for reading!

[ReisenFanatic17]

an educational game featuring well-known touhou OCs (apple girl + half human half kappa half unoriginal) and unused and not well known 2hus (rin satsuki, yatsuhashi...)

the game is a platformer, shooter, quiz game, rhythm game amalgamation-whatever (just like most edutainement stuff), it's kinda long and it teaches morals (like good manners, empathy, being yourself...) by first having dialogue, then the gamplay, then repeat the last steps differently (because the world is complex!) and finally a quiz and A REALLY CATCHY SONG!!!!!!

it's gonna be called "rin moves to mysteryland!" because why not slip in a touhou 4kids patch reference?

and eventually, it's gonna be for toddlers who just got to school and (i really love this) *fake cough* PRETEENS!!!!! BECAUSE THEY NEED A LITTLE REVIEW OF THEIR LESSONS (if you know what i mean)!!!!!!

 

and if that actually exists, send me a link. it's for... research purposes.

 

 

i love edutainement games.

[kymoh]

Very cool topic! I read through most of the other replies, and I think you all have amazing ideas :)

7 hours ago, ReisenFanatic17 said:

it's kinda long and it teaches morals (like good manners, empathy, being yourself...)

I especially love that idea, ReisenFanatic :D

Feels like so many games these days are about violence so that sounds cool.

 

 

Me personally, I always wanted to make a big open world game (map is like 2 km wide) in which there is no real objective except survival. You get to start at a human village, and try to make friends or enemies or whatever.

I am thinking about a HUGE emphasis on npcs that adapt to the environment. For example if you help out certain people, their enemies start to hate you. Or if crop yields are getting low, villagers start blaming each other. You can even spread rumors that people may or may not believe! It's probably nearly impossible to make such a complicated system, but I like to imagine :)

Anyways, the character and settings.

Since I only play touhou 4, the main character is mountain youkai Orange. She might pass as a human to most, but needs to be a bit careful near people like Reimu. 

Overall nobody is really hostile at the start, but environmental factors (famines, rain, earthquakes), player interactions, and npc actions slowly shape relationships.

 

It all depends how you react. You could be a helpful person that is friends with everybody. You could be a secret murderer that the police keep struggling to catch.

It's your game, your world, your life! 

 

Writing this during class so I might be making no sense right now hehe. Thanks again Yumetou for the interesting question :P