I've been wanting to check it out for a minute now, both as a Touhou fan and because survivors-like games fall into that group of slightly-mindless-flow games I cling to after a long day of work. Some people find danmaku stressful... some people find it comforting.
But Touhou Library Survivors is just a fun game! At the core it's very simple - Patchouli Knowledge, genius magician and asthmatic hermit, has to fend off a swarm of fairies invading her library. Thousands of the little fiends swarm in, you blast them away with dozens of magic spells. There's mini-bosses, bosses, you grow stronger, there's a meta-level-up system that makes you stronger over time, and each round lasts up to about 30 minutes or so. If you've played games in this genre, you get most of it pretty quick. That said, Library Survivors includes a number of unique design choices that I really dig.
The first is the upgrade system - a core of the survivors-like, and one of the things that differs most between each game. Library Survivors gives you this hex grid, on which you can place spells (your basic attacks), triggers (spells that trigger based on certain conditions) and boosts, which upgrade Patchy or her attacks. Very straightforward! Except that the location of items on the grid is extremely important, with upgrades only affecting adjacent tiles (the hex shape makes perfect sense for this). Laying out your grid so that the trigger spells can be activated by as many other spells as possible, while still giving every spell level-ups and boosts, and then leveling up those boosts... it adds a fun amount of strategy and makes you adapt each run. I'm kinda jealous of how well this works - it's simple to understand, but as soon as you see it, you start scheming your optimizations. Incredibly fitting for a nerd like Patchouli.
The second unique design choice is the huge focus on danmaku, which feels very unique to games in this genre, but to a Touhou fan, is like returning home ~ as someone who is at least decent at bullet-hell style dodging, I had a lot of fun here. The chill fun of plowing through hundreds of fairies is peppered by special enemies that cast increasingly complex bullet patterns (take them out quick!), mini-bosses and bosses (recognizable from their original game, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil - so much so that I was totally prepared for Cirno's "Perfect Freeze") and also everyday magician Marisa Kirisame blasting through the stage and filling it with stars and lasers to dodge. These little events keep you from getting too comfy or too bored, and test your skill at using micro-movements to weave between bullets.
More than anything, I really enjoyed just how much love for Touhou Project was put into Library Survivors. It'd be really easy to simply slap fairy sprites on a Vampire Survivors clone and call it a day, but this game truly feels like Touhou, from aesthetic to mechanic, like an experimental offshoot of the main series. In lieu of going on and on for paragraphs, let me Bullet Hell Bullet List you all of the touhou-esque things that make me happy about this game:
- Patchouli's spells are organized by day of the week. This was a cute aside in Touhou EOSD, but in Library Survivors it's implemented as a neat player-build mechanic. The game gives you a small damage boost to incentivize choosing from the spells of the day: Tuesday is for Fire. Wednesday is for water, etc. It's a perfect little reference to Patchy's quirks, and also a great way to incentivize players to try new things.
- The mini-bosses and bosses are built around some of their most defining traits and attack patterns, while remaining simple enough to fit into a game where there's also 200 fairies onscreen. Cirno casts her frozen bullets, Hong Meiling uses her rainbow swarm and dashes directly at you, Sakuya stops time to flood the screen with knives.
- PATCHY'S ASTHMA... I love that this was built in as a mechanic?? If you try to fire too many spells back to back, our poor little magician gets tired and needs to take a deep breath. You have ways to build up her stamina, and learning to find a careful balance between powerful spells, stamina management, and pacing out your attacks is great.
- Look, I just love Patchouli Knowledge. She was my favorite touhou before I knew anything else about the series... I love that she's always in her pajamas just reading books. I love her doofy little hat. This game does her justice.
- Marisa!!! Marisa is also here and in her very Marisa way she exists to be annoying as hell, using Master Spark and other spells to keep you on your toes. She sucks and I love her for it, no one's ever mad when Marisa's around.
- Firing your spells slows you down, much like the "focus" mechanic of mainline Touhou games... Patchy even gets a cute little heart to show where her hitbox is.
- The game flow and pacing is very Touhou. You go through several patterns of enemy fairies in various types of swarms, before fighting a boss from EOSD, then repeat. The game is separated into the same difficulties as any mainline Touhou game, and your challenge is just to see how many bosses you can defeat in a certain mode. You even get a little end comic if you beat the final boss ~
- I was so happy when I noticed the rocket from Silent Sinner in Blue. extremely good
I feel like I had more, but I'll end it here. I had a blast with this game. I want more, but I'm so happy with what I got (for $5?? jeez). If you dig danmaku, you'll feel right at home, and if you dig survivors-likes, well, maybe you'll learn to love the bullet ~
