東方覚醒珠 ~ Fan-made Virtual Autography || Lunatic Trial Showcase!
Touhou community has created a ton of fangames, from all the genres - Action, RPG, classical STGs, VNs, RTS, Puzzle etc. Yet, there are a few that mixes two genres. Let me introduce '東方覚醒珠 ~ Fan-made Virtual Autography' - STG game with a flavor of JRPG!
While it is primarily danmaku game, added elements of JRPG and battling the enemies in this style makes it a somewhat unusual yet interesting experience. It's still in the trial ver., feel free to try out by yourself~!
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The game consists of individual stages - you play them separately, compared to usual STG. I suppose there gonna be more than six, given the choice of gameplay system.
Apart from Reimu and Marisa, we can choose Sumireko as our player, which to be fair is quite strong if you can sustain unfocused shot.
(Btw, if you don't see English dialogues here - don't worry, it is quite bugged on my side - they normally exist in the game~)
Besides danmaku, there is also the "JRPG" side of the game. Instead of normal lives, you have HP bar. Your character is also equipped with fairies that have a major role here. Once in a while you'll encounter a few mobile-game-like automatic "Party Battle" on each stage. Then, the faries will attack the ones you encountered, of course attacking first. Depending on performance, you'll take more or less damage. If HP reaches 0, it's Game Over.
HP can be recovered by heart items dropped by enemies, and grazing bullets, which replenish a lil' bit of it.
You can charge fairies by collecting white and red orbs. When collected enough, they will charge the levels of fairies for the next battle. Additionally, every some levels you'll be able to use a bomb. How much you need to gain one depends on the chosen fairy, and each one can hold one bomb. The effect can be stacked. If you hold Bomb button while having more than one fairy ready, the power of bomb will be much greater.
Defeated enemies can be used to customize your party (you sort of 'capture' them), thus modifying bomb effects, attack power during Party Battle, as well as giving extra effects for your danmaku dodging, like smaller hitbox or bigger grazing radius.
Ah, and yeah, scoring is nonexistent here. Unless you count orbs gathered. Sorry scoring fellas :(
[ My honest opinion? ]
While the game looks promising, and indeed has some charm, I can't certainly tell this is the best way to go. Maybe it's the fact that it is neither usual 6-Stage game, nor Photo game, and combines a mechanism that feels just awkward in STG game like this.
What doesn't mean it isn't enjoyable. Of course it is! If you have a little bit of free time - get the game and play it. I'll be glad to hear your opinions in the comments below!
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[ STORY ]
Map Orb Game, a game that gained immense popularity in Gensokyo at the end of the year. It's a game where players capture fairies with dichromatic balls name "Map Orb" and use them to fight over territories for their factions.
Map Orbs can be obtained from marked spots all over the Gensokyo. Because of their wide distribution and rising popularity, humans are starting to step in the depths of the mountains, and youkai are intruding villages non-stop just to get the orbs.
As the situation escalated, three humans have readied themselves to deal with it:
A shrine maiden whose responsibility is to maintain the order of Gensokyo.
A magician who simply wants to study unknown games.
And... a high school girl who knows better than anyone about starting incidents that spread balls.
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If you enjoyed the video, hit that like button and comment on it, what do you think about the gameplay - every feedback helps me improving the channel!
Fan-made Virtual Autography is available on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/11...
For more fan-made goodies - check out Touhou Fangames List! http://bit.ly/FangamesList
Patreon - thanks for your support! / creepyninja_
Discord - Fanworks 'n Chill / discord
Enjoy! And I hope you'll stay for longer!