Pre-registration has started for Touhou Gensou Eclipse, the horizontal, free-to-play smartphone STG announced years ago by danmaku veterans Cave and finally scheduled for release in Japan on November 22: fan artist u_u_zan is in charge of character designs and main illustrations, and they already have a ton of known community members and circles queued up to contribute art, music, etc.
so, this was supposed to be out at 00:00 this morning, but it got pushed back a few hours
and then a few more
and then a few more
and now they're like, "maybe at 18:00, maybe not"
/cirnoshrug
...well, sort of: it came out on Android, but the iOS version's stuck in the queue and will be out whenever it's out, I guess
the iOS version's finally out now, and the Android folk are going to get a bunch of free currency as an apology for the game not actually working for the majority of the time it's been out
my limited interest in this game has already been tapped out, so don't ask me how it plays
ZAN @-ZAN 2 days ago
I played it. Very strange gameplay loop; despite the framing of a gacha game the characters themselves are treated more like unlocks (that you need to pull) with a long-term progression system? The stages are set up like a STG with some roguelite mechanics thrown in for good measure. After a successful run you can carry over your final powered up character into other modes
I decided to give it a look... and it's Uma Musume, only with STG sections in place of training, and I guess they figured everyone on earth is familiar with that loop and therefore there was no need to explain how it works, but all the confusion I'm seeing online makes it clear that they shouldn't have presumed people would just innately recognise the format.
The STG parts are a little more authentic than I was expecting, too: very Akai Katana, unsurprisingly, but the game does seem to generally expect you to play a little more conventionally than Gomaotsu, which provides a more immediate path to just numbering through stuff... I don't have much of a sense for what will or won't make for a good phone game but my first impression is that this might be too much of an actual game for a lot of people.
