buskerdog
Onshi
Black Market of Bulletphilia ~ 100th Black Market is a game made by ZUN. It is a game I personally enjoyed extremely. It is not without its flaws, given the exploitable nature that comes with the ability card system, but nonetheless ability cards are still a fun mechanic and I like what this game in particular did with them. Some people were disappointed by this game due to expecting a greater emphasis on roguelike mechanics - I'm not one of those people, and as a matter of fact roguelikes are the game genre I dislike most, so I'm happy that 100th Black Market is the game that it is and isn't a roguelike. However, that's not what this topic is about. What this topic is about is how 100th Black Market, despite being a ZUN game, is the most un-ZUN like thing he has ever made. And that's something that brings me a lot of excitement.
Game Structure
Being a spinoff, this game is laid out in a much different way to the traditional Touhou experience, using what is essentially a level select instead of the usual linear path Touhou has. This is far from the first time ZUN has implemented this sort of thing in a spinoff game, but what sets Touhou 18.5 apart is the randomisation of patterns you encounter throughout a stage. This random attack waves are structured in a pretty simple manner - there is a pool of possible attacks you go up against, and then a difficulty modifier for all of them that increases towards the end of the level (not forgetting a random boss to cap off the level). Some levels also make "new" patterns out of facing you with two easier patterns, but stacked simultaneously. It's not the most sophisticated procedural generation you've ever seen, but it works for a Touhou game. And that variety in how a stage plays is important here, because the other thing this game is built on is repetition - repeating levels to collect as many cards as you can, earn cash to buy those cards, and defeat all the bosses to get each of their unique cards and to power up Marisa's starting equipment capabilities. This kind of macro progression system, alongside the random generation, are two things we don't normally get to see from ZUN...
Screen Real Estate
There's another way this game deviates from ZUN's usual design, too. In fact, it's something absolutely massive that jumped out at me right as I started playing, and that's the UI. The right-hand side of the screen that is usually reserved for a flashy life and bomb counter, alongside other information like your power, and of course very importantly a stylized logo, is instead completely barren in this game. Most of the things you'd usually expect to see on Touhou's UI simply aren't in this spinoff, but even lives, which are still present, have instead been moved to small icons occupying a corner of the play area. So, what gives? This area instead serves as a tab of all your character stats. As you collect cards that effect things such as power level, damage multiplier, cooldown reductions, and so forth, all of it gets tracked here, with actual numerical values to boot, so you know exactly how much a given effect is helping you. It's a UI that gives you a very tactical presentation of what you're doing. But that's not even the most unusual thing about this Touhou game's UI. There's something missing among this game's mechanics that is incredibly uncharacteristic of ZUN - and that's the score. This game has no scoring system. We know ZUN likes his old-school way of making games, and a good old fashioned high score mechanic is the one thing that has tied every one of ZUN's creations together up to this point (well, apart from the kickass music and oops, all bullets). The complete absence of a score is something so unexpected it that is took me a good moment to take it in once I realised it. It shows that ZUN knew this was a very different kind of game he was making, and that things ought to be done differently.
Story?
A problem I've stated in the past with Touhou games is how the context of the story's beginning is never well communicated to the player. You pretty much always have to look in the game's manual to find out what's going on, or figure it out along the way after a few dialogues. 100th Black Market seems to address this directly as if ZUN himself has read my comment. When you hit start game for the first time, before even being taken to a level select you are thrown straight into a tutorial level that introduces the spinoff mechanics to you, and right at the start of it is a prologue that explains what is currently happening and why Marisa is here. It's just a few boxes of text across the middle of the screen, certainly not the most elegant way of conveying this information, but the point is, it's there. And I appreciated it a lot. It's not what ZUN usually does, but now it is something I want him to do more.
I think that Touhou 18.5 does a lot of other interesting things a spinoff, which I could certainly talk about. However, these are the things I want to bring attention to as particularly un-ZUN things to do. Now, I don't think this means ZUN is going to start drastically changing the way he makes his games. Future mainline Touhou games are sure to stay very traditional, just the way ZUN likes it. However, the changes demonstrated here do make me excited for how Touhou will evolve in the future.
I'm sure he's not throwing away scores in mainline Touhou anytime soon, but that doesn't mean that Touhou doesn't have any space to grow - or that ZUN is completely unwilling to take a new direction.
Now, I've got another thread I need make tomorrow. Something that's been a long time coming...
Game Structure
Being a spinoff, this game is laid out in a much different way to the traditional Touhou experience, using what is essentially a level select instead of the usual linear path Touhou has. This is far from the first time ZUN has implemented this sort of thing in a spinoff game, but what sets Touhou 18.5 apart is the randomisation of patterns you encounter throughout a stage. This random attack waves are structured in a pretty simple manner - there is a pool of possible attacks you go up against, and then a difficulty modifier for all of them that increases towards the end of the level (not forgetting a random boss to cap off the level). Some levels also make "new" patterns out of facing you with two easier patterns, but stacked simultaneously. It's not the most sophisticated procedural generation you've ever seen, but it works for a Touhou game. And that variety in how a stage plays is important here, because the other thing this game is built on is repetition - repeating levels to collect as many cards as you can, earn cash to buy those cards, and defeat all the bosses to get each of their unique cards and to power up Marisa's starting equipment capabilities. This kind of macro progression system, alongside the random generation, are two things we don't normally get to see from ZUN...
Screen Real Estate
There's another way this game deviates from ZUN's usual design, too. In fact, it's something absolutely massive that jumped out at me right as I started playing, and that's the UI. The right-hand side of the screen that is usually reserved for a flashy life and bomb counter, alongside other information like your power, and of course very importantly a stylized logo, is instead completely barren in this game. Most of the things you'd usually expect to see on Touhou's UI simply aren't in this spinoff, but even lives, which are still present, have instead been moved to small icons occupying a corner of the play area. So, what gives? This area instead serves as a tab of all your character stats. As you collect cards that effect things such as power level, damage multiplier, cooldown reductions, and so forth, all of it gets tracked here, with actual numerical values to boot, so you know exactly how much a given effect is helping you. It's a UI that gives you a very tactical presentation of what you're doing. But that's not even the most unusual thing about this Touhou game's UI. There's something missing among this game's mechanics that is incredibly uncharacteristic of ZUN - and that's the score. This game has no scoring system. We know ZUN likes his old-school way of making games, and a good old fashioned high score mechanic is the one thing that has tied every one of ZUN's creations together up to this point (well, apart from the kickass music and oops, all bullets). The complete absence of a score is something so unexpected it that is took me a good moment to take it in once I realised it. It shows that ZUN knew this was a very different kind of game he was making, and that things ought to be done differently.
Story?
A problem I've stated in the past with Touhou games is how the context of the story's beginning is never well communicated to the player. You pretty much always have to look in the game's manual to find out what's going on, or figure it out along the way after a few dialogues. 100th Black Market seems to address this directly as if ZUN himself has read my comment. When you hit start game for the first time, before even being taken to a level select you are thrown straight into a tutorial level that introduces the spinoff mechanics to you, and right at the start of it is a prologue that explains what is currently happening and why Marisa is here. It's just a few boxes of text across the middle of the screen, certainly not the most elegant way of conveying this information, but the point is, it's there. And I appreciated it a lot. It's not what ZUN usually does, but now it is something I want him to do more.
I think that Touhou 18.5 does a lot of other interesting things a spinoff, which I could certainly talk about. However, these are the things I want to bring attention to as particularly un-ZUN things to do. Now, I don't think this means ZUN is going to start drastically changing the way he makes his games. Future mainline Touhou games are sure to stay very traditional, just the way ZUN likes it. However, the changes demonstrated here do make me excited for how Touhou will evolve in the future.
I'm sure he's not throwing away scores in mainline Touhou anytime soon, but that doesn't mean that Touhou doesn't have any space to grow - or that ZUN is completely unwilling to take a new direction.
Now, I've got another thread I need make tomorrow. Something that's been a long time coming...
