Reclamation Project - Part 8: A Fatal First Impression (Boho Youyoumu)

This is a two part series focusing on the fan game Boho Youyoumu. Systems analysis can be found here.

In the previous post we focused on analysis and game mechanics. This time, we're focusing on the story itself impressions of the design and game flow, and how the player would expect to see notable encounters throughout their experience.

This time I'd like to walk through the first few minutes of this game. There's a particular story that the design lends itself to and a series of mishaps that is likely to happen the first time anyone plays this game.

A colored map with many of the game mechanics has been created by Ace of Hearts. If you want to follow along with the map instead of playing the game yourself, we're starting right in the center of the map.

First Impressions

There's a bit of story to get started. Yuyuko tosses Youmu off a cliff while explaining that she is hungy one and must retrieve her two swords - Roukanken and Hakurouken - because Yuyuko lost them while she was carving delicious turkey. Just kidding, I have no idea what they're saying and the story matters so little to the gameplay that you could replace the text with nacho cheese and drool with no ill effects.

The entire purpose of this setup is to give the player an "excuse" to adventure. You have some limited exposure to the character, their goals, and how they would approach the situation. It's a bit like getting in character and setting up the scene so you, as the actor behind this character, have the motivation to continue.

The cutscene appears to fade out and back in on actual gameplay. This is sleight of hand; you don't have control until the scene effectively ends after Youmu stops bouncing off the walls careening down a massive pit. The pit itself is uninteresting, but around halfway down you encounter something odd:

This is the first hint that there is something more to this world than meets the eye. It may be bland and empty, but there's things to find and places to explore. It's also the first hint that this is a Metroidvania style game. You will be coming back here at some point just to find out what this is.

We finally get control over the main character at the very bottom of this space. This is the first time the player gets to become Youmu and can experiment with what she can do. What can we glean from this space here?

Not much.

The space itself is a repeating texture that appears just as large as the player character. Closer inspection of the background reveals it too is the same texture. We came from above and can go left or right.

The UI is small and out of the way. We have the character's name, a health bar, EXP, whatever "KRN" is, and a coin counter. The developer decided that these mechanics needed to be visible at all times, so they should be important and central to the gameplay.

What about Youmu herself?

She can do three things: move at a constant rate, jump about halfway up the screen, and shoot bullets the size of her body that abruptly disappear when they get a bit further away than this.

There isn't a whole lot else that we can glean from this area. Other games have trained players to think that going right equals progress, so let's go there.

The very next screen has a few characters that we would recognize from Touhou 7: Yukari, Ran, and Chen. I want to say that Yukari has apparently lost her pudding and needs to take her Shikigami and her Shikigami's Shikigami on a walk to find them.

This room is larger than one screen. The camera naturally pans down and our rivals are heading out. Let's chase!

The setup for this scene leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The player doesn't know it yet, but there's a shop directly past the top right exit. They also have no indication just how important the shop is to the core game loop. Even the most careful player is likely to wander down a corridor, backtrack, get themselves hit a couple times, and die. Without visiting the shop they don't have a save and get booted back to the main menu with nothing apparent gained.

This problem is made much worse by the shop being the only mechanic in the entire game that can provide healing. Just walking in refills your health and saves the game. The shop provides potions to heal with and serves as a central hub around which you explore outward. Without any of this you're left wandering around clueless and the possibility of saving your coins or for the eventual long trip is impossible.

Keep this in mind as we move forward. I'm going to walk through the most likely scenario and how I played the game the first time.

While the story about the Yakumo family chasing pudding is still going on, the player meets their first obstacle: a fairy. This encounter is in an unsafe area and the player doesn't know how it's going to react, so they need to take quick action. The most likely way of dealing with that is the same as what happened 5 seconds earlier: down the hole! They've probably gotten hit in the process and with the other fairies around they need to keep moving and shooting and...

What's this shiny thing? I'm sure we've seen one of these before right at the beginning of the game. Time to fight back!

A bit of investigation does nothing here. Shooting the walls don't do anything, killing all three fairies doesn't do anything either, and there's nothing apparent about the level other than this repeating texture with shiny walls and flat floors.

Investigating the next room has nothing apparent for secrets either. They'll continue along shooting fairies and jumping around for a moment until they reach a point of no return.

Curious players will jump down the pit and spot another one of those glowing orbs. A bit of experimentation later and the secret to this item will reveal itself: some of the walls are not what they appear to be. The reward? A charisma pendant.

With new knowledge in hand, we can find the answer to the first riddle: another hidden wall. Our prize? A health-increasing mushroom!

Act 2: Wait, aren't we in the first act? This only took 3 minutes

Most of the game revolves around exploring an area as far as the player feels comfortable and returning to the shop. I cannot stress enough how badly this idea is communicated to the player. In fact, after the player dies the first time they are going to walk left instead of right at the start and end up here instead.

That is a wall that is just slightly too high for Youmu to jump up. It's a bit infuriating actually; Youmu's jump height at this point in the game is 4 tiles high. The spot she's trying to get up is 5 tiles high, just out of reach.

...this post is unfinished because the game just gets worse from here. You wander around blindly with your health slowly being whittled away, everything looks exactly the same, and honestly I just like analyzing bad games. There's a special kind of fun that can be had from ripping apart a game that is exactly as deep as it looks, and even if I did re-create the entire thing there isn't a whole lot to go off of.

Ah well. Let's wrap this project up.