You're so right, and thanks
pontifus
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To point out one specific thing I liked about this one--being as vague as possible so as not to spoil things--the idea that a character's previous adventures actually had a lasting impact on them is interesting in this context. Often even official/canon Touhou stuff more or less starts and ends with a kind of sitcom status quo for the characters (i.e., Marisa and Reimu should be about 38 years old but exist in eternal comedy manga time). I'm fine with that, I like comedy manga etc., but I like seeing the alternative too.
Was looking forward to playing the strategy games this jam, but didn't realize one of them was a King's Bounty/HOMM-type game, or anyway a puzzle game using those mechanics. I think I needed one hint because it took me a bit to figure out how waiting worked and I'm obtuse and didn't read the instructions ... but either way I'm here for this kind of thing. The units feel nice and diverse, especially once you get the hang of the eagles. Also happy to see some Okuu content.
Haha, thanks for grinding through the whole jam version ... the updated version takes 3-4 hours, which maybe still would've been too long for a jam game, but I think feels about how we wanted it to pacing-wise. I'm glad it is in fact possible to finish in its initial state, though lol
Yeah, bombs aren't really worth the cost in the jam version, though status effects are pretty useful vs. the bosses. The gold fish is always faster than you and was set to run way too often, so you basically never get a chance to attack it.
Yeah, suspected some of these things would be issues and just, you know, ran out of time to try to mitigate them. Eternally failing the don't overscope for a game jam challenge. Character power growth needs to be less rng-dependent, and healing before bosses is a good idea given that the challenge is really just supposed to be bringing the right tools to the fight...at one point Reimu was going to heal you but we didn't end up putting that in for some reason. Appreciate the feedback.
lol yeah, we needed a possessable, scareable NPC, and as unlikely as an actual human visitor to the shrine is, everybody else who visits would've been too big of a threat ...
For me the controls not working issue seemed to happen at random, but I guess it probably has something to do with the movement state that's active when you lose. Still trying to figure that one out.
The VN/interactive fiction entries are strong this time, and this one is no exception. The visuals and music are polished and evocative, and a bunch of ghosts, monsters, etc. being scary via ghost stories rather than actively terrorizing people is a fun Touhou-y idea (I mean if Byakuren won't let them go wild, they have to maintain their mystique somehow...). Definitely makes me interested in seeing more from the team members.
Not sure there's such a thing as an unappreciated Touhou character, really ... there was supposed to be some stuff in there about how she feels overlooked as the middle sibling and decides to cause problems for that reason, but then suddenly it was 15 minutes before the deadline.
In theory you should be able to possess the random villager, though not Reimu, but we did have an issue with buttons occasionally not working for some reason. We knew of at least one way you could get stuck in the hold state involving breakable items, but the bag thing is an exciting new one. But anyway, thanks for the comments--this is an idea that I do want to try to get fully working at some point.
First thing is probably an error related to exporting the game in rpgmaker--good to know that's happening.
The second thing, yeah, I can see how it would be confusing. The thermometer shows the relative heat/hp loss speed of the area you're in, but there's only one level of heat in this jam version, so basically it's irrelevant other than showing you when you're safe.
Thanks for playing and pointing this stuff out.
I definitely think we ended up with a lack of context around the mind-reading, and I can see how it doesn't necessarily feel like you're pulling ingredients out of people's brain garbage. We wanted to do something with the idea that mind-reading would involve being confronted with several bits of information, but then because of the general atmosphere we wanted, we made it so that there isn't a wrong answer, which maybe confuses the issue. It might've made more sense as a more specific mechanic, like something that opened up extra options.
Thanks for playing and commenting (and mentioning the thing about how Renpy builds distributions). Yeah, we didn't really want it to be possible to fail outright due to the choices anyway, but we had a bunch of ideas for additional character responses and alternate endings that we abandoned around 2am Sunday when we realized we still needed to make sure we had any kind of a coherent beginning, middle, and end.
Haha, "good Cartoon Network show" is sort of the energy I want, so I'll take it. Thanks.
As a general comment, all these comments have been really nice, and we both appreciate it even if we don't get around to replying to them all. I feel bad that I haven't had much time away from work to play many of the other games. But I will sometime this week for sure.