(Dosso Dossi, 1515)

Touhou life sim fangame where you're a human whose goal is to become a youkai without Reimu splitting your head in half.

Like ... you start out living in the safety of the Human Village, and you spend the first phase of the game learning magic and danmaku and survival skills so that you can live alone outside of the Village without dying; however, the longer you stay in the village, the more you have A Reputation As A Human, and consequently, the longer it takes to shuck said reputation -- and if you try to make yourself youkai-like while still living in the Village, that's another potential reason why you might get Fortune Teller'd. maybe you're an Outsider who came to Gensokyo specifically to youkai yourself, meaning you start out without any kind of reputation, but also your basic "wilderness survival" level is lower.

upon transforming, your build automatically changes based on what kind of youkai you've become, you get to rejigger your build a bit in other some minor ways, and your personality changes in ways you don't 100% have control over. you then have like a year to start an Incident, which plays out based on how your build and plot have ended up. the Incident itself probably won't result in a Reimu Bad End no matter what it is, in and of itself; even "destroy Gensokyo" can be handled by one of the usual player characters as long as you stop after you're beaten, whereas if you do some weird shenanigans which can't be stopped by throwing Reimu at the problem, they Sages will deal with it some other way by like Yukari manipulating some boundary to turn your own Incident against you, or one of them tossing a strategically-aimed Flandre in your direction. hey, maybe you could play as an Incident-resolver and defeat yourself!

as a youkai, the life sim is very different, but you're pretty much out of the woods as long as you cause Problems now and then. scare and/or eat humans, kind of thing. or just harass Reimu and contribute to the Shrine's bad reputation.

some possible bad ends which aren't caused by Reimu:

• got eaten in your home in the Forest of Magic or wherever, because you quit living in the Village before your defending-against-youkai skills were up to snuff
• starved to death because you burned your bridges in the Human Village before your regular wilderness survival skills were up to snuff
• starved to death after becoming a youkai because you became something other than a Magician and you weren't scaring/eating humans enough
• started dating a youkai while still a human and you slept over at their place long enough that they decided to eat you, or whatever other character-specific bad ends (i.e. Alice bodyhorrors you into a doll). the game still treats this as a successful romantic route.
• pranked to death by fairies while still human (it's always obvious when this is about to happen, you can pretty much only get this one if you actively go out of your way to let it happen)
• killed/ate any major characters other than a Hourai immortal, resulting in retaliation.
• (Planescape Torment narrator) "You've tested your immortality against the wrong being!"
• killed/ate Merry and created a time paradox

so, working on the website wasn't the only thing we did in the past 7 days. we also did a couple of doodles - and then wrote a story to go with them; to try and make the experiences of the last month fit together in a way that made sense to our very sleep deprived brain... and for a justification for how some things might be moving forwards. part 2 will be posted sometime tomorrow

"so", said the ██████
"i know you've been a lot of things", snapping the collar around the new yinglet's neck
"but we've both seen what being zhat zhinged has done for friends", setting the timer to unlock on the 31st
"and i think it'll be good for you", confirming that all overrides should be disabled

"a couple of things to remember since you're more used to transformations that go away at the end of the level", as spindly paws checked over the new body they were attached to

dawn of the first day

738 hours remain

silence.

...

...permeated by a phone alarm.

an arm longer than expected, far overreaching the target before adjusting; jabbing at the touch screen with a far less pronounced claw

checking self in the mirror, a sense of immense disappointment at the return of the original form - a nightshirt that was just a little oversized, rather than a blanket; running fingers over fangs that while still pointy, were no shelltooth.
even more surprise at finding out the loop was not the expected three-day cycle

████ appeared in the doorway and dropped their coffee, but managed to catch it before it hit the floor, making rare use of their cat-like reflexes ¹
"i... wasn't expecting to see you like this again, so soon." they swooped in to took a closer look at the dragon's eyes.
"...your mind is a month older than your body, that would do it; the lock expiring by itself wouldn't change you back but once time shenanigans are involved... so, what was it this time?"

"the whole majora's mask zh--thing"
"...well, that'll be kind of interesting from the timelines merging, maybe you'll get paid again if your bank account carried over"

a slight smile.

"i'd offer to formlock you again, but being honest, seeing how bummed out you are by this, i don't think you need it. close your eyes."
dex did as they were instructed
"i was going to give you this once the month was done, but you may as well have it know - keep your eyes closed, give it a squeeze, use it as you need to"

a hard plastic object, with two distinct textures.
with a squeeze, it sprayed somezhing out in dex's general direction
...and then it was a lot larger in the hands than it was.
...and then, opening their eyes, the perspective was a lot closer to how it had been for the past month

for their troubles, ████ received the most affectionate bite

until the 31st, the month progressed mostly as it had previously done
a few less instances of embarrassing explanations when carded buying clam based beverages
(a few more clam based beverages as a result)
some things at work solved surprisingly quickly, and a little less having to explain "a really long cold" with every team meeting with camera off
(still some, though; bouncing off the walls during them was more entertaining)

on the 31st, a small fire in the vicinity of the town's famous Red Explosive Barrel factory was stopped by a random passerby; a heart shaped patch of singed grass was the only evidence there had ever been a problem.

and the yinglet who would have ended the world was not particularly prepared for part 1 of their plan failing
they were especially not prepared for another of their kind leaping down from the rafters directly on top of them and using them like a skateboard

1. Editor's note - do they count as catlike reflexes if I'm a cat