and how to fail to have it reach people (title would be too long).
I picked up something called Touhou Project, which is a shooter on Windows made by some guy in Japan. The development team consist of one guy, who does the programming, art, music, and everything else in the game. The game looks something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqH43tDi ... re=related (from various games). It might be hard to tell on Youtube but the actual game doesn't look any worse compared to most shooters that's not a graphics powerhouse, like say Raiden or Gradius. All the game in the series sell for around $15 (1470 yen). Since only one guy develops the team it sure can't cost too much, and I certainly don't mind paying $15 for a game like that, except for one problem.
It should be obvious from the video this game isn't remotely playable by normal human beings. Neverthelss I decided to download a demo Touhou Project 11, the latest one available, and proceeded to get totally spanked. I'm not a huge fan of shooters but I can usually beat most of them on a normal setting after enough tries, but this one I can't even get past the first stage on easy. You have unlimited continues but you always start at the starting area of one subpart which means if you're not able to beat a boss in 3 lives you won't be getting anywhere. If you continue at all you get the bad ending, and all the achivement awards requires not dying on the boss phases to get them. I think someone said this game on normal is about as hard as Ikagura on the highest settings, and there are two settings above Normal (Hard and Lunatic).
To further complicate things, you can probably tell from the video that this game is very artistic. There's a build in replay feature because you're probably not going to be able to watch the whole screen while you're dodging the stuff, and the pattern picked in the video are what people consider to be the best patterns in the games, which are only available on the Lunatic difficulty. So basically unless you're a shooter living god you won't ever get to see the best part of the game except on Youtube. The last two patterns are the last two patterns from Touhou Project 8, which is number 221 and 222. I'm guessing if I actually got that, I'd be lucky to get past pattern number 10. Apparently the game also has some very well developed characters for a shooter and they're also developed by their Hard/Lunatic levels, as the patterns have names that reveal characteristic of the person you're fighting against. So in short, you're basically missing out on everything in the game if you can't play at the high difficulty levels.
On one hand, I'm quite impressed one guy can create a game that is easily worthy of buying in today's environment, and on the other hand, it's a shame that a game is totally out of reach for average joe like you or me simply because the difficulty is borderline on impossible. The weird thing is that the game obviously have enough bragging rights built into it. If you look at a video of an *average* player who can beat the game without dying, and then compare it to the Japanese guy who goes by the handle of "Emperor of Heavens", you'll realize that the Japanese guy has a score 10 times higher than an average person who can beat the game without dying. This kind of reminds me of an article I read on the Ninja Gaiden remakes about how you shouldn't make a game where the average guy can't possibly beat. I'm quite willing to take 999 lives and whatever title of suckage to do the last 2 patterns shown in the video, but that option isn't even offered, and as much as I like this game, I'm not going to buy something I can't get past the first stage!
I picked up something called Touhou Project, which is a shooter on Windows made by some guy in Japan. The development team consist of one guy, who does the programming, art, music, and everything else in the game. The game looks something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqH43tDi ... re=related (from various games). It might be hard to tell on Youtube but the actual game doesn't look any worse compared to most shooters that's not a graphics powerhouse, like say Raiden or Gradius. All the game in the series sell for around $15 (1470 yen). Since only one guy develops the team it sure can't cost too much, and I certainly don't mind paying $15 for a game like that, except for one problem.
It should be obvious from the video this game isn't remotely playable by normal human beings. Neverthelss I decided to download a demo Touhou Project 11, the latest one available, and proceeded to get totally spanked. I'm not a huge fan of shooters but I can usually beat most of them on a normal setting after enough tries, but this one I can't even get past the first stage on easy. You have unlimited continues but you always start at the starting area of one subpart which means if you're not able to beat a boss in 3 lives you won't be getting anywhere. If you continue at all you get the bad ending, and all the achivement awards requires not dying on the boss phases to get them. I think someone said this game on normal is about as hard as Ikagura on the highest settings, and there are two settings above Normal (Hard and Lunatic).
To further complicate things, you can probably tell from the video that this game is very artistic. There's a build in replay feature because you're probably not going to be able to watch the whole screen while you're dodging the stuff, and the pattern picked in the video are what people consider to be the best patterns in the games, which are only available on the Lunatic difficulty. So basically unless you're a shooter living god you won't ever get to see the best part of the game except on Youtube. The last two patterns are the last two patterns from Touhou Project 8, which is number 221 and 222. I'm guessing if I actually got that, I'd be lucky to get past pattern number 10. Apparently the game also has some very well developed characters for a shooter and they're also developed by their Hard/Lunatic levels, as the patterns have names that reveal characteristic of the person you're fighting against. So in short, you're basically missing out on everything in the game if you can't play at the high difficulty levels.
On one hand, I'm quite impressed one guy can create a game that is easily worthy of buying in today's environment, and on the other hand, it's a shame that a game is totally out of reach for average joe like you or me simply because the difficulty is borderline on impossible. The weird thing is that the game obviously have enough bragging rights built into it. If you look at a video of an *average* player who can beat the game without dying, and then compare it to the Japanese guy who goes by the handle of "Emperor of Heavens", you'll realize that the Japanese guy has a score 10 times higher than an average person who can beat the game without dying. This kind of reminds me of an article I read on the Ninja Gaiden remakes about how you shouldn't make a game where the average guy can't possibly beat. I'm quite willing to take 999 lives and whatever title of suckage to do the last 2 patterns shown in the video, but that option isn't even offered, and as much as I like this game, I'm not going to buy something I can't get past the first stage!
