Retron
Onshi
So if you didn't know, a few days ago, Touhou Station Jam 2026 was held. In short, this event involved you making a game in 5 days, in which ZUN and Beat Mario themselves would have a chance to play your game. It's been a few days since the jam ended, so I've decided to dump all my thoughts on it here.
First of all, this years theme. There were 5 to pick from
How this system works is that the three points of the triangle represents different things. Top is your main attack, bottom left is your sub attack and bottom right is your passive ability. You can equip the souls you find in any slot. Pressing [R] will rotate the triangle, changing what soul is assigned to what. It's a decent enough mechanic I guess, it works. Though if I actually had a bit more braincells, I probably could've thought of something actually interesting.
Now, those who've read previous posts of mine regarding game development [which looking back, I regret making] know that I am inflicted with scope-creep. I hate this thing so much. Originally, I had 4 total bosses planned with 3 total areas for the game. You'd play as Renko, first encountering Orange, then run into either Rika or Yumemi (you need to defeat both in order to unlock the final door), and finally face of against Sariel. Halfway through the jam, I realize this isn't feasible. At all. So I cut the Yumemi idea out. Then, a day before the jam was up, I realized making a game is actually really time consuming (what a surprise), so I cut out Sariel. Now we're left with Rika and Orange. 3 hours till the jam's submission time, I finally came to the obvious conclusion that I need to limit my game to ONE bossfight if I ever wanted hope to actually submit this game. Judging by the title of the game and this post, I think you know who had to go.
As a result of me cutting all these bosses, entire areas were cut too, leaving the game with just one area with repeating ground and wall textures. Since the game wasn't going to be as long as I originally planned, I had to cut out even more content I was thinking off. Originally, there were going to be 30 souls (to add 30 to the theme). Early on, I realized this is stupid, so I lowered it to 10. But now since the game world is so small, not big enough to hide 10 souls, I lowered it even more to 5. But sometimes, less is better. Most of the unused content never got past the point of planning, but there were some I was able to sprite. Particularly the enemies in what was supposed to be Rika's area.
Sorry about the size.
So, the deadline of the jam came and went. I submitted a game I was only semi proud off. But at least I was able to submit it and not dip out the last minute like so many game jams before. The ending was rushed, the dialogue between the characters (a whole whopping 2 sequences) were scuffed as hell and I wasn't even able to properly play test it from start to finish. And to add to that, everything was in "Japanese". You see the quotation marks are there because my understanding of the language could rival a culturally insensitive tourist that wears a kimono on the street and says 'ni hao' to everyone thinking he's 'indulging in the culture'. In other words, my translations are straight ass.
Then came the day of the livestream, where ZUN and Beat Mario play some submissions. There was a total of 49 games submitted, if I recall correctly. I think only 20 of them were played on stream? Mine was not one of them. Well, you win some you lose some. Getting the game completed was already enough for me. Plus, I heard my name said when they were thanking all the participants. Re-to-ro-n-su-ko-pu-san.
Oh, I also forgot to mention that I borrowed music from MarioGM. They were kind enough to let me use their tracks in my game, with proper credit of course. If you haven't listened to MarioGM's remixes on the PC-98 tracks, what are you doing. Stop reading this and listen to one right now.
And you reached the end. If you didn't read all of that, I don't blame you. There's a lot more I could've said, but I really don't think I should continue. Oh yeah, here's a shameless plug for the updated version of the game: https://boxtraininc.itch.io/lost-orange-memories
So I'll leave you with this image of an unused drawing for the game (idk where I would've used it), until I decided it was kinda ass and didn't color it.
And have this since I have nowhere else to post it (Image VERY unrelated to the overall post).
First of all, this years theme. There were 5 to pick from
- 冬 winter
- △
- 30
- 告白 confession
- ライブ live as in concert, stream, or whatever
- A idol performance games where you have to beat people up to the beat on stage in increasingly stylish ways (Ultrakill style) to reach a certain score requirement
- One of those Japan type gameshows (you know the ones) with live commentary on the bottom from Yukari, Kasen and Okina
- Kill 30 enemies to summon a boss and kill them too.
- Winter Olympics
- A bullet hell romance visual novel (I had no idea what the hell I was cooking)
- Something to do with [name]△. Since that's a shortcut of saying someone is cool in a very 'slangy' way. [e.g. Reimu△ can be read as Remiusankake, which sounds like Reimu san kake/kakkoi, which means 'Reimu is cool' or something.]
How this system works is that the three points of the triangle represents different things. Top is your main attack, bottom left is your sub attack and bottom right is your passive ability. You can equip the souls you find in any slot. Pressing [R] will rotate the triangle, changing what soul is assigned to what. It's a decent enough mechanic I guess, it works. Though if I actually had a bit more braincells, I probably could've thought of something actually interesting.
Now, those who've read previous posts of mine regarding game development [which looking back, I regret making] know that I am inflicted with scope-creep. I hate this thing so much. Originally, I had 4 total bosses planned with 3 total areas for the game. You'd play as Renko, first encountering Orange, then run into either Rika or Yumemi (you need to defeat both in order to unlock the final door), and finally face of against Sariel. Halfway through the jam, I realize this isn't feasible. At all. So I cut the Yumemi idea out. Then, a day before the jam was up, I realized making a game is actually really time consuming (what a surprise), so I cut out Sariel. Now we're left with Rika and Orange. 3 hours till the jam's submission time, I finally came to the obvious conclusion that I need to limit my game to ONE bossfight if I ever wanted hope to actually submit this game. Judging by the title of the game and this post, I think you know who had to go.
As a result of me cutting all these bosses, entire areas were cut too, leaving the game with just one area with repeating ground and wall textures. Since the game wasn't going to be as long as I originally planned, I had to cut out even more content I was thinking off. Originally, there were going to be 30 souls (to add 30 to the theme). Early on, I realized this is stupid, so I lowered it to 10. But now since the game world is so small, not big enough to hide 10 souls, I lowered it even more to 5. But sometimes, less is better. Most of the unused content never got past the point of planning, but there were some I was able to sprite. Particularly the enemies in what was supposed to be Rika's area.
Sorry about the size.
So, the deadline of the jam came and went. I submitted a game I was only semi proud off. But at least I was able to submit it and not dip out the last minute like so many game jams before. The ending was rushed, the dialogue between the characters (a whole whopping 2 sequences) were scuffed as hell and I wasn't even able to properly play test it from start to finish. And to add to that, everything was in "Japanese". You see the quotation marks are there because my understanding of the language could rival a culturally insensitive tourist that wears a kimono on the street and says 'ni hao' to everyone thinking he's 'indulging in the culture'. In other words, my translations are straight ass.
Then came the day of the livestream, where ZUN and Beat Mario play some submissions. There was a total of 49 games submitted, if I recall correctly. I think only 20 of them were played on stream? Mine was not one of them. Well, you win some you lose some. Getting the game completed was already enough for me. Plus, I heard my name said when they were thanking all the participants. Re-to-ro-n-su-ko-pu-san.
Oh, I also forgot to mention that I borrowed music from MarioGM. They were kind enough to let me use their tracks in my game, with proper credit of course. If you haven't listened to MarioGM's remixes on the PC-98 tracks, what are you doing. Stop reading this and listen to one right now.
And you reached the end. If you didn't read all of that, I don't blame you. There's a lot more I could've said, but I really don't think I should continue. Oh yeah, here's a shameless plug for the updated version of the game: https://boxtraininc.itch.io/lost-orange-memories
So I'll leave you with this image of an unused drawing for the game (idk where I would've used it), until I decided it was kinda ass and didn't color it.
And have this since I have nowhere else to post it (Image VERY unrelated to the overall post).
