Touhou Project
The Touhou Project, also known simply as Touhou, is a bullet hell shoot 'em up video game series created by independent Japanese doujin soft developer Team Shanghai Alice. The team's sole member, Jun'ya "ZUN" Ōta, has independently developed programming, graphics, writing, and music for the series, publishing 20 mainline games and 13 spin-offs since 1997. ZUN has also produced related print works and music albums, and collaborated with doujin developer Twilight Frontier on seven of the official spin-offs, six of which are fighting games.
The first five games were developed for the Japanese PC-98 computer, with the first, Highly Responsive to Prayers, released in August 1997; the series' signature mechanics were introduced in the second game, Story of Eastern Wonderland. The release of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil in August 2002 marked a shift to Microsoft Windows. Numerous sequels followed, including several spin-offs departing from the traditional shoot 'em up format.
The Touhou Project is set in a preternatural land sealed from the outside world and primarily inhabited by humans and yōkai, legendary creatures from Japanese folklore that are personified entirely as young girls and women in an anthropomorphic moe style. Reimu Hakurei, the miko of the Hakurei Shrine and the main character of the series, is often tasked with resolving supernatural "incidents" caused in and around Gensokyo; she is joined by Marisa Kirisame after the events of the second game.
The Touhou Project has become more particularly notable as a prominent source of Japanese doujin content, with the series spawning a vast amount of fan-made works such as artwork, music, print works, video games, and Internet memes. Because of this, it has gained a large cult following outside of Japan. The popularity of the series and its derivative works has been attributed in part to the few restrictions placed by ZUN on the use of his content. Unofficial works are frequently sold at fan conventions, including Comiket, where the franchise has frequently held the record for circle participation, and the official convention Reitaisai, where trial versions of the official games are typically distributed prior to release.
Games
PC-98 games
, who was then a mathematics student at Tokyo Denki University working under the name "ZUN Soft", developed the first five Touhou Project games for the PC-98 computer, utilizing the platform's 16-bit color graphics and 6-channel FM synthesis audio. The games were published by Amusement Makers, a student game development club that Ōta was a member of.;Highly Responsive to Prayers
;Story of Eastern Wonderland
;Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream
;Lotus Land Story
;''Mystic Square''
Windows games
After the release of Mystic Square, ZUN graduated from university and the series became inactive for four years. During this time, he worked at Taito as a game developer and also composed music for various games created by members of Amusement Makers. He left the group in 2001 to focus on game development for Microsoft Windows, forming the one-man dōjin circle Team Shanghai Alice and self-publishing all subsequent games. According to ZUN, the Windows games represent a "clean slate" for the series canon, albeit with many carry-overs and references from the PC-98 era. Games numbered with decimals are spin-offs from the main series that vary in genre.;Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
;Perfect Cherry Blossom
;Immaterial and Missing Power
;Imperishable Night
;Phantasmagoria of Flower View
;Shoot the Bullet
;Mountain of Faith
;Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
;Subterranean Animism
;Undefined Fantastic Object
;Touhou Hisoutensoku
;Double Spoiler
;Fairy Wars
;Ten Desires
;Hopeless Masquerade
;Double Dealing Character
;Impossible Spell Card
;Urban Legend in Limbo
;Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom
;Antinomy of Common Flowers
;Hidden Star in Four Seasons
;Violet Detector
;Wily Beast and Weakest Creature
;Sunken Fossil World
;Unconnected Marketeers
;100th Black Market
;Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost
;''Fossilized Wonders''
Gameplay
In the games, the player's bullet power increases on a linear scale as the player collects power-ups dropped by enemies, and eventually maxes out. The player can also collect "point" icons to earn extra lives; the amount needed grows exponentially as the player's score rises. The player can enter "focus mode" by holding the shift key by default, which slows down the player's movement, makes their hitbox visible, and generally focuses the player's attack to make it more powerful. The graze counter tracks how many bullets entered the character sprite but avoided the hitbox, rewarding the player with a score bonus for taking risks.The player can use a "bomb" or "spell card", similar to the "bomb" in many other shooting games. Although the player has a limited number at any given time, losing a life replenishes the current number of bombs up to a certain amount. With some exceptions, use of a bomb will make the user temporarily invulnerable, clear many of the bullets, and cause heavy damage to any enemies on screen. The overall effect the bomb has varies by character and by game. The player can use one during a short period after being hit by a bullet to avoid loss of a life. The amount of time the player has available to deathbomb is usually around 0.3 seconds. Bosses have attack phases, which are also referred to as spell cards, but with bosses the term applies to a prolonged pattern of movements and shots that last until the player depletes the boss' health by a certain amount or the time runs out.
Each individual game of the main series from Perfect Cherry Blossom to Wily Beast and Weakest Creature has additional items that affect some aspect of gameplay, such as scoring or gaining extra lives/bombs. For example, Perfect Cherry Blossom has "cherry points", which are used mostly in scoring, but can grant temporary invulnerability ; Imperishable Night has "time points", which are essential for advancing to later stages, and also determine if the player gets to challenge a boss's 'final spell' on normal or higher difficulties; Mountain of Faith has "faith" points, which boost the score the player receives upon gathering point items and bonuses for clearing spell cards without dying or using a spell card.
Each main Touhou Project game has four difficulty levels with each one being harder than the previous. Regardless of the difficulty choice, there are six stages in each game that become progressively harder. The only exceptions to this are Story of Eastern Wonderland, which has only five stages, and Lotus Land Story and Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, both of which lock the player out of the sixth stage on easy difficulty.
In addition to the four main difficulties, there is an extra stage, unlocked after completing the game without using any continues. The extra stage is more difficult than "normal" and less difficult than "hard", and contains an especially long boss fight. Bosses in extra stages are usually immune to bombs. Some games in the series require a one-credit clear on Normal or above to unlock the extra stage, while on others, it can be done on any difficulty.
Plot
Background
The plots of the Touhou Project revolve around the strange phenomena that occur in the fictional realm of Gensokyo, which ZUN designed as a human village in some remote mountain recesses in Japan. Originally, it was simply called "a remote separated land of a human village in an eastern country." Long before the Touhou Projects story begins, many non-humans like yōkai lived with some humans in the area. After a few humans disappeared into Gensokyo, many humans became afraid of approaching this area, while others settled there to exterminate yōkai. However, as time went on, humans developed civilization and multiplied in number, and thus yōkai worried about how the balance between humans and yōkai would be affected. 500 years before Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, the yōkai sage Yukari Yakumo developed the "boundary of phantasm and substance," which was favored by the yōkai and protected the balance. This was called the "Yōkai Expansion Project" and made Gensokyo a phantasmal world that automatically called out to the weakened yōkai of the outside world. Other things that disappear from the outside world, like extinct animals, lost tools, and architecture, appear in Gensokyo. Since Gensokyo was a plot of land in Japan that is separated by a barrier, it is Japan that is immediately outside of this barrier.As a result of the seal, Gensokyo became inaccessible from the outside world, and similarly, those in Gensokyo were unable to leave. Gensokyo's existence could not be confirmed from the outside world, nor could the outside world be confirmed within Gensokyo. As a result, the isolated community developed its own civilization, independent from the outside world. Although separated by a barrier, it is a bordering world to its outside, as opposed to being in a parallel universe. There also exists on the Moon a place called the Lunar Kingdom, which exists in the same way as Gensokyo in that it is separated from the rest of the Moon by its own barrier, although accessible from Gensokyo. There are no seas in Gensokyo, since it is landlocked. In Gensokyo, there are few humans, and various kinds of yōkai. Some species include magicians, beasts, therianthropes, vampires, bōrei, tengu, mermaids, kappa, and yōkai. There are other species that may be yōkai depending on definition, like fairies, spirits, yūrei, onryō, poltergeists, hermits, oni, and deities which are all portrayed in human female form. Otherworldly places such as Heaven and Hell are also accessible from Gensokyo.
In present Gensokyo, presented in all Touhou Project games since Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, magical and spiritual qualities prevail compared to the outside world where unscientific phenomena were dismissed as "superstition" around the time of the Meiji era. The only known gateway from the outside world into Gensokyo is the Hakurei Shrine on the border of Gensokyo. The spell card rules were also established to keep up the relationship between humans and yōkai in a mock style, which was necessary for the preservation of the balance of Gensokyo. The "Great Hakurei Barrier," managed by past Hakurei miko, was constructed several decades before EoSD, which is described as a "barrier of common sense," and is thus a strong logical barrier that not even yōkai can pass through. The yōkai opposed its construction at first before understanding its usefulness.