某方妖々夢, often romanized as "Boho Youyoumu", is an obscure fan game based loosely on the Touhou franchise. The game follows Youmu - the fifth boss in Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom - as she explores the world of, uh, programmer space.
The author's website was taken down a month ago. You can download a copy of the game on Touhou fan sites. The game is shown off with a half-baked english patch and all of the weirdness that comes with it.
A program that helps with Japanese fangames is Locale Emulator. Many fangames don't run properly if the system language is set to anything other than Japanese. In this case, all it does is fix the title on the window to display properly. It doesn't affect anything if you do use the english patch; without it the window title is garbled, all of the in-game text is unreadable, and if you were already running Japanese locale you wouldn't notice anything at all.
Personal Note
What is it with this game? Is there some kind of perverse sentimentality that keeps bringing me back? Is it the always-excellent Touhou music remixes? Maybe it's the utter amazement at how a world void of any compelling level elements can still hold my attention? Perhaps it's the unique mechanics that I haven't seen anywhere else?
I've played this game to death. Let's just tear it apart.
System Design
First and foremost, this game is a Metroidvania styled platformer. Upgrades and abilities are scattered around the map. The game also has an undercurrent of RPG mechanics such as experience and equipment. Superficially the mechanics resemble Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, but in a Touhou themed package.
You have 4 buttons at the start of the game: Jump, Attack, Dash, and Pause. Any standard controller would be able to play this game with buttons to spare.
• Movement
The entire map is made on a boxy grid system. The player character
and every single enemy except for one boss are the same size: one square tile.
Youmu moves at a constant rate when the controller is held down. There is no accelleration; she turns on a dime and can spastically dance in place. Initially she can jump 4 tiles high, increasing that to 5 tiles with the boot upgrade.
Colliding with enemies, bullets, or traps does not stop movement at all. There is no knockback anywhere in the game for the player, enemies, or traps.
Design Note: Movement is extremely basic at the start of the game. The dash upgrade is a breath of fresh air after all the precise platforming early on the game and the level design accomidates that fact.
• Combat
Youmu starts out with a large shot weapon. It has a pathetic range and pitiful damage, but can be pressed rapidly to attack everything nearby. You will be spamming this attack on everything; enemies right at the beginning of the game take 4 hits to kill. Shots can be fired in any of the cardinal 8 directions and travel at a fixed speed, meaning that running forward while shooting the shots appear to travel slower compared to the character.
With the limited range and speed of the shot, I constantly find myself getting close to an enemy, shooting them, and watching for return shots. Backtracking is worse: enemies aren't particularly hard to avoid, so early game ends up as a dodge fest.
The enemy's shots travel at the same speed as yours but have no restriction on range. Every enemy that shoots will target you directly. Early enemies only fire a single bullet; enemies later on will throw lots of bullets at you and make dodging everything difficult.
• Information
Every game that has non-obvious game mechanics
Pausing the game brings up a menu with information about your character. The options are equipment, map, information, and quit. At the start of the game your equipment will be empty, but over time as you find rings or buy items from the shop you'll be able to change them out on the fly.
Note: The english translation can seem like a bad pun at times. Forum posts from the translators indicate that the source material is littered with spelling errors and jokes and they made an effort to clean up some of the errors.
Let's take a closer look at the UI:
1. Health - The amount of health you have is consistent with the size of the bar. Endgame health can cover the entire top area just short of the EXP/KRN bar.
2. Experience, Karma - Experience increases as you kill enemies.
•. Karma also increases as you kill wisps, not other enemies.
3. Coins - Used in the shop
4: Level - Increases when your experience bar maxes out
5: Strength - Every point of strength reduces the amount of hits that enemies take by one.
6: Charisma - Each point gives Youmu one more slot to equip rings or other items
7: Readout - Displays information about items or the manual.
• Health, Strength, and Damage
Youmu's health is bog standard. She starts out with 1200 health. Upgrades increase the amount of health she has to a maximum of 4200. Equipment pushes this to a maximum of 5600. Enemies do a fixed amount of damage and when Youmu runs out of health she explodes in a flash of light.
Youmu's health can be regained by drinking potions or visiting the shop.
The enemy damage range over the course of the game is 120-620. Youmu's health tends to increase about the same amount as enemy damage, meaning that you'll be dead in 10 hits no matter where you go. The exception is backtracking to old areas, which are less deadly than normal but not significantly enough to make tanking damage something you'd be okay with.
Enemy health takes the paradigm and flips it on its head. Each area has a "level" that determines how much health an enemy has. Area 1's enemy level is 4; enemies will take 4 hits to kill at base stats. The enemies don't simply have 4 health however... they have 4x the amount of health that the player deals at 0 Karma.
The effect makes trying to calculate how much health an enemy has on an absolute level difficult. Enemy level 4 ranges from 136 to 52 health. The player would never see these values, they would only see that an enemy dies in 4, 3, 2, or 1 hits depending on how much strength they have.
Bosses are the exception to this rule: they have a fixed health pool and take damage based on the player's damage number.
Damage formula: Strength Level + 3 + (previous value)
Design Notes
Having the player only regain lost hit points at shops is brutal. Potions help with that quite a bit, and for most of the game you'll be spending a lot of coins on potions. Still... no health pickups, no regeneration, no rest stops, and no other ways of increasing your current health means you'll be going to the shop a lot.
Enemy health that is tied directly to your strength stat instead of indirectly tickles my brain in a way that other systems don't. It's an obvious change moving from 4 hits to 3 early on in the game and a very nice find when you do happen across a strength upgrade.
• Karma
Karma acts as a damage modifier on Youmu both from damage received and damage dealt. At maximum Karma Youmu will do half the amount of damage as normal while taking twice as much. The amount is proportional: 50 Karma will increase the amount of hits that it takes to kill enemies by 50% and Youmu will take 50% more damage.
Karma is gained when Youmu kills wisps at a rate of 5 per wisp. The gauge maxes out at 100.
Karma can be reduced by potions purchased from the shop. Karma Potions lower the amount of Karma you have by 50 at the cost of 1/4 of your maximum health. Due to a quirk in the way the game handles health, having negative health doesn't kill you. You only die if you're hit by an attack.
Design Note: Karma is completely underutilized throughout the game. It's very easy to not realize what's going on from the one spot in the early game that has multiple wisps and make the rest of the game much harder. There is one point at the end of the game that needs full Karma, and the best place to farm Karma is the first room with 5 spirits in it.
• Experience and Loot
Experience is gained every time an enemy is killed. Enemies give experience based on the zone they are in
Leveling up gives a strength point or a charisma point every other level, starting with charisma at level 2. Health is not gained by leveling up; only upgrades or equipment can improve Youmu's maximum health.
Experience Formula: [(previous value) * 2] - [(previous value) / 5].
Round both values and end result down. One point seems to get lost every level and integer rounding is the only way to explain that
Note: An experience chart and enemy values are listed at the end of the post
• Charisma, Equipment, and the Shop
Charisma points are the currency for equipping items. 10 points are recieved from leveling up and 10 more points are recieved from upgrades scattered around the world, for a total of 20. Items need a certain amount of charisma to equip and
The shop is your safe haven and reprieve from the dangers of the world.
Shop Contents:
Small Potion - 100 coins
- restores 1/3 of maximum health
Large Potion - 500 coins
- restores 2/3 of maximum health
Karma Potion - 200 coins
- lowers karma by 50 and damages the player by 1/4
Shop Warp 1 - 200 coins
- returns to the last visited shop
Shop Warp 2 - 500 coins
- returns to any visited shop, picked from a list
Resurrection Elixir - 2000 coins
- restores the player's health to maximum when they hit 0
Sword of Kirisame - 30000 coins (C3)
- lets the player attack bullets
Power Ring - 2000 coins (C2)
- increases strength by 1
Vital Ring - 1000 coins (C1)
- increases health by 400
Other equipment can be found out in the world
Hakuroken (C4)
- Youmu's short sword. The first one you pick up
Roukanen (C5)
- Youmu's long sword. Both can be used simultaneously
Dream Ring (C3)
- Doubles the amount of coins that enemies drop
Dream Ring II (C3)
- Doubles the amount of experience that enemies drop
Shield Ring (C7)
- Cuts damage taken to Youmu by half
Vital Ring II (C2)
- Adds 1200 maximum health
Power Ring II (C3)
- Adds 2 strength
Designer Notes
The shop saves your game on entry. If you buy something, make sure you go back in. This whole problem could have been avoided if the shop saved on entry and exit.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the combination of both swords makes or breaks this game. Using both of them together marks a huge upgrade over your damage in the past, effectively doubling the damage you deal at close range and adding a risk/reward element to the way you play the game. Unfortunately, by the time you get both of them, you've been working with a limited range shot and the short sword exclusively.
Doubling the amount of experience reduces the grinding if that's the sort of thing you're into. The game can be completed without grinding and most of it will be done early on, so this item seems unnecessary.
Doubling the amount of coins you recieve makes the rest of the game after that point completely pointless for grinding. Just rush through as fast as possible.
The kirisame sword is the best item in the entire game bar none. Unfortunately the cost is so high that anyone who actually wants it will not have it until the very end of the game and won't have the time to build up the skill needed to attack bullets vs dodging them.
• Upgrades
There are 5 types of pickups in the world
Level Elements
I'd like to leave a few notes about the system-related elements here. The next post extensively covers level design and gameplay experience.
The game is broken up into seven loading areas. All of the areas are roughly the same size, with the exception of area 1 which you visit two new sections of it. Backtracking through areas is largely not required unless you're going into a coin dungeon and need to exit the way you came in.
Every level in the game looks exactly the same to begin with as it ends. This is terrible from a player experience for obvious reasons. For the analyst, however, taking things apart is a lot easier. There are no weird hitboxes, hidden mechanics, or fancy animations that obscure all of the information we're trying to use. What you see is what you get; everything is as simple as can be.
The visual style of the game is exactly what you see here: completely bland. Normally that's indicative of a programmer making a game that with poor level design skills. In this case, the creator seems to a handle on system design, level design, programming, and maybe music. Empty levels may just be a design choice to finish the game on the premise that the author just didn't want to do anything with it.
• Rooms
• Hidden Walls
Hidden walls are the signature gimmick of the game. They're scattered around the entire map. The idea of hidden walls can be frustrating, but the actual locations of the walls are all associated with puzzles that involve traversing a single room or hidden items. A few of them are found by accident and a couple would only be found with a map.
Designer Note: Hidden walls are indistinguishable from regular walls. I'd like to see a hint of some kind instead of "magically walk through here because the collider is missing".
• Disappearing Blocks
Data Values
Damage formula: Strength Level + 3 + (previous value)
Damage Chart:
1:34
2:39
3:45
4:52
5:60
6:69
7:79
8:91
9:105
10:121
11:134
12:148
13:163
14:179
15:196
16:214
17:233
18:253
19:274
20:296
Experience Formula: [(previous value) * 2] - [(previous value) / 5]. Round both values and end result down
EXP Chart
2:323
3:583
4:1049
5:1889
6:3401
7:6122
8:11019
9:19835
10:35704
11:64268
12:115683
13:208229
14:374813
15:674663
16:1214394
17:2185910
18:3934638
19:7082349
Special areas: Increase Lv by 1
[Area 1: Stone]
Lv:4
Damage:120
XP:1
Coins:2-3
[Area 2: Forest]
Lv:6
Damage:220
XP:3
Coins:4-5
[Area 1.1: Stone Pass]
Lv:7
Damage:270
XP:5
Coins:4-7
[Area 3: Tech]
Lv:8
Damage:320
XP:10
Coins:5-9
Trap Damage:370
[Area 4: Mountain]
Lv:10
Damage:320
XP:34
Coins:10-20
SpCoins:
[Area 1.2: Stone Dash]
Lv:10
Damage:320
XP:34
Coins:10-20
[Area 5: Red Cave]
Lv:12
Damage:520
XP:110
Coins:14-21
Giant Kedama
Lv:12 (x2)
Damage:570
XP:187
Coins:
[Area 6: Green Ice]
Lv:14
Damage:620
XP:357
Coins:20-30
[Special Reimu Yukkuri]
Lv:15 (x2)
Damage:670
XP:642
Coins:24-37
[Spirits] (Depends on area?)
Lv:5
Damage:170
XP:1
Coins:4-6
Karma:50
[Letty]
Hp:3,135
Damage:220
XP:12
Coins:16
Drop:HP upgrade
[Chen]
HP:5,490
Damage:320
XP:40
Coins:35
Drop:HP upgrade
[Alice]
HP:9,600
Damage:420
XP:136
Coins:52
Drop:HP upgrade
[Prisimriver Sisters]
HP:12,705 x3
Damage:470
XP:244 x3
Coins:50 x3
Drop: None
[Yukkuri]
HP:29,385
Damage:620
XP:1428
Coins:118
Drop:Key
[Reimu]
HP:54,105
Damage:720
XP:2735
Coins:144
Drop:None
[Area 7: Secret Bubbles]
Kedama/Fairy/Yukkuri
Lv:16
Damage:720
XP:1156
Coins:28-43
Giant Kedama/Giant Yukkuri
Lv:16 (x2)
Damage:770
XP:2082
Coins:33
Trap Damage:770
[Sakuya]
HP:300,000
Damage:2000
XP:26984
Coins:290
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