Touhou 18 - Unconnected Marketeers

Release Information

Type: Bullet Hell
Developer: Team Shanghai Alice
Publisher: Team Shanghai Alice
Release: May 3rd, 2021
Language: Japanese & English (patch)
Silhouette On Cover: Tenkyuu Chimata (Final Boss)
Original Name: 東方虹龍洞～ Unconnected Marketeers

Character Information

Playable Characters: 4 (Reimu, Marisa, Sanae, Sakuya)
Amount of Shot Types Per Character: 1

Description

The story of this game is about mysterious cards, which seem to contain the secrets of various humans and youkai.

Unique Gameplay Mechanics
This Touhou game has a completely new mechanic. The game features Ability Cards (56 of them).
Most of them can be either equipped or bought at a shop menu that appears at the end of the stage.
At the beginning of your playthrough, you won't have many cards unlocked, but as you progress through the game, you unlock more cards.
There are 4 types of cards.

- Active Cards
  You can use them at any moment you want, by pressing the C key, if you have multiple cards, you are able to change between them by pressing the D key.
  Most Active Cards have cooldown periods after using them, which prevents you from using them.

- Equipment Cards
   Equipment Cards give you additional shots, bonus shot types.

- Passive Cards
  Passive Cards give you things such as, increased spell power or abilities to gain more resources under specific circumstances.

- Item Cards
  Item Cards give you more money, Power Points when purchased or collected from enemies that drop them.
 They cannot be equipped at the beginning of the playthrough.

The main Life, Bomb and Power mechanics remain unchanged. You need to collect life pieces to get a life, same with the Bombs.
Max Power amount is 4.00, small Power points give you 0.01, while enourmous ones give you 1.00.

Prologue(Taken from an In-game manual)

    At the Hakurei Shrine.

Marisa:
    "Reimu, take a look! What do you think this is?"
Reimu:
    "This looks like a card with a drawing of that idiot on it......?"
Marisa:
    "Try holding it."
   
Marisa Kirisame handed Reimu Hakurei a card with a drawing of Cirno.

Reimu:
    "This is cold! Were you cooling it or something?"
Marisa:
    "This card has Cirno's magical powers contained within!"
Reimu:
    "Then the rumors might have been true."

    The rumor went that mysterious cards called Ability Cards were circulating about,
    and that these cards contained the magical powers of various humans and youkai.
    And, it was said that dealers of these cards were already lurking all over.

Reimu:
    "The fact that these cards are in our hands must mean the rumors are true."
Marisa:
    "Yeah. I suppose this is an incident... right?"

    Not knowing the purpose or make of these cards, she went to investigate.
    She'd first need to find a card dealer.

Steam Release

The game is also available on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1566410/Touhou_Kouryudou__Unconnected_Marketeers/