Passing Into Fantasy

[Heffmoney]

I just wanted to show off a project I've been working on for a few years. It's a distant spin-off. There are P boxes. There are Spellcard Rules. But that's about it. The entire plot takes place in America with entirely different characters. "Touhou" is not in the title for a reason, though if you noticed the title is a play on the opening slogan. Maybe one day if it justifies making a ton of sequels there will be a crossover, but my hope with this project is to cover the things from Western mythology that Touhou can't. (So more like what Seihou wasn't since it'll be mythology rather than scifi.) But for now it's just some silly story about some normal people at an anime convention.

The gameplay isn't quite Touhou either. It's a hybrid between a top-down shooter with keyboard and mouse and the vertical shmup. The goal was "well what if instead of hanging around at the bottom of the screen and always shooting up, you could move around the entire screen and shoot wherever you wanted?". This isn't "Binding of Isaac" though - there is no 'dashing' with iframes, there is a focus mode, and no rpg elements or exploration. There is a slight ability to survive hits as well as a regenerating health bar - but the bare minimum to make up for the fact you're splitting your attention between dodging and aiming while doing the former with your left hand. The skills of analyzing patterns, luring, streaming, etc. are effective and necessary in this game.

I just released the initial version on itch last night. There's still some development to be done. I mostly not only need play-testers, but play-testers who play shmups. I generally can beat Touhou games at normal difficulty and can beat PIF. But beyond my own personal feeling for 'balanced', I don't know if some spellcards are too hard or too easy.

At this time, there are 6 stages, with bosses and mid-bosses, though instead of a progressive order, once you beat the first stage you unlock four stages, and if you beat all of those in any order you unlock the final stage.

Also the mid-bosses drop 'transformations' which can give you different bombs and shot types.

Also, be warned, there's some adult humor. Not enough to make it a pron game, but I don't want kids playing it.

Anyway, here is the link:

https://heffmoney.itch.io/passing-into-fantasy