Behold! The thing I've been spending most of my time on for the past few months years!!
In the time since my last post, I've finished building the main game (stages 1~6) of Treasure Castle Labyrinth, one of my long-time favorite Touhou fangame concepts. It's fully playable! Start to finish! Right now! (On most Windows operating systems!)
TCL creator's official game page: https://irodorian.com/houten
Bulletforge DL page: https://www.bulletforge.org/u/naudiz/p/dong-fang-bao-tian-jing-treasure-castle-labyrinth
The EX Stage and other extra content will be added over the following months. I'm really proud to have gotten this game out the door, and I hope a lot of people enjoy playing it! :D
Skipped ahead a bit and finished tamaonsen's 2023 album 'Labyrinth'. Honestly I'm a fan, but while still being hip-hop it's pretty different in terms of mood/energy and features one member pretty prominently. It's a little more on the like... genre mixing kind of experimental side, especially where Remilia/Flan are concerned but I like things like that. Solid beats all around (wish there was an instrumental album), the original songs were more recognizable to me, less flow-y than Stilling but that's exchanged for higher tempo songs and some energy which I wouldn't call 'hard hitting' (mostly because I'm not sure what that means) but at least made me smile and bounce a bit.
I'm currently replaying Labyrinth of Touhou 1 (this time for my YouTube channel) and while I will never, ever forget this game's terrifying, three floor puzzle, I had somehow forgotten how bad the other floors are too.
Like, I still *love* this game. But the some of the floors in this game are insane. This is the only RPG I've played where completely exploring a map can make that map unusable:
(Haven't reached this part in my replay, but I'm dreading it already)
Man, you know a game is really fucking good when you make plans to buy it a second time when it comes to other platforms.
Please check out DRAINUS, the horizontal shooter from Team Ladybug (of Touhou Luna Nights and Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth). I need to sit on it a while longer but I think this is the best horizontal shooter I’ve ever played, with a really excellent array of difficulties and an incredibly fun, overpowered-feeling (but not actually) central gimmick. Currently on Steam, hopefully coming to other stuff eventually!
Game preservation is really important, for many reasons, but specifically because there's a really good Touhou fangame called Labyrinth of Touhou which fucking broke when coming in contact with Windows 10 and now I cannot play it anymore! And I'm SAD!
Games I Played In 2023 And Whether Or Not I Thought They Were Good- Roundup
Alright I just finished reviewing every game I played in 2023. Here's a list of everything I covered, plus... scores, why not? I'll do an experimental thing- the ✅ score is how good the good parts are, and the ❌ score is how bad the bad parts are. 5's around average, and if ✅>❌ then I feel overall positive about it.
link to Part 1
Potionomics (✅ 8/10, ❌ 2/10)
Horizon: Forbidden West (✅ 7/10, ❌9/10)
Disco Elysium (✅9/10, ❌0/10)
Tunic (✅10/10, ❌1/10)
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (✅7/10, ❌4/10)
link to Part 2
Trails into Reverie (✅6/10, ❌10/10)
DREDGE (✅6/10, ❌3/10)
Wildfrost (✅5/10, ❌3/10)
The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (✅4/10, ❌4/10)
Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend (✅7/10, ❌2/10)
Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk (✅3/10, ❌8/10)