Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 442 My Turn
Before Chu Chen could respond, Marisa had already flown away like a gust of wind, leaving only a string of cheerful laughter echoing in the forest.

Is this a regular performance?

"Yes, this is a standard feature in the current demo, but it may be slightly adjusted in the final version."

Chu Chen nodded and continued deeper into the area. In an open space, he found a tree that looked suitable for making timber.

[Gathering: Wood]

Required tool: Axe (not equipped)

Chu Chen was taken aback. He opened his simple backpack, and sure enough, there was a beginner's axe inside. After equipping it, he was about to hit the tree when three streaks of light suddenly appeared on the screen.

"Don't move!"

"This is our tree!"

"That's right!"

Three pixelated figures stood between the player character and the trees, striking a menacing pose.

Leading the group was a blonde fairy with wings that seemed to be formed from sunlight; to the left was a black-haired fairy with wings like the dark moon; and to the right was a brown-haired fairy with wings shaped like stars.

The Three Fairies of the Forest.

This is also a very popular character combination in Touhou Gensokyo.

[Sonnymilk]: "You outsider! How dare you cut down our tree! This tree is our secret base today!"

[Luna Cherud]: "If we cut it down, we'll have nowhere to play hide-and-seek..."

[Stasafia]: "I can smell an axe on you! You're a bad guy!"

Classic fairy logic: illogical, purely arbitrary.

Dialogue options popped up on the screen:

[1. To be reasonable: This tree has no owner.]

2. Pleading: I only need a little bit of wood.

3. Take action: Watch out, or I'll beat you all to a pulp!

Chu Chen chose option 1 as a test.

[Player]: "This tree has no owner. I just took some wood to repair the shrine."

"Now there is!"

The blonde fairy, Sunnymilk, stood with her hands on her hips and interrupted Chu Chen's speech with an air of self-righteousness.

"We saw it first, so it must be our secret base!"

"That's right! It's the absolute number one secret base!"

Luna Cherud echoed her sentiments.

"My eyes can see that this tree's mood today is that it wants to become our base!"

This performance was actually quite good. For veteran players of Touhou Project, the appearance of these three spirits will definitely bring a smile to their faces.

For new players, these three sprites are quite distinctive and easy to remember.

to some extent.

This is why Chu Chen set the protagonist as a newcomer to Gensokyo; only players who stand from this perspective can gradually understand this world.

Otherwise, if you start by focusing on Reimu Hakurei and then have a bunch of characters talking about things the player has never experienced, it would be a different story.

The sense of immersion is too low.

On the contrary, the presentation style in this demo perfectly shows players just how "awful" these three fairies are, and it even uses the style of Touhou Project.

The conversation was over, and the three fairies, having lost their patience, charged forward, yelling, "Why waste words with him!"

"Beat him away!"

"Defend the base!"

Before the words were even finished, ripples suddenly appeared on the entire game screen, as if a stone had been thrown into the water.

Immediately afterwards, the scene changed, and the player character and three fairies stood on the left and right sides of the screen, respectively, entering the battle interface.

The battle begins. The battles in this Touhou Gensokyo demo have a similar feel to Octopath Traveler, except that the battle camera zooms in a bit more to "sell" the characters.

Because the background of the 2D-HD engine is a horizontal background, the player's character position does not change after entering combat.

The camera locked onto the player and zoomed in, simultaneously displaying the combat UI.

Behind these smooth transitions lies the hard work of countless programmers. There are many such small details in Touhou Gensokyo. They may seem insignificant, but they are what give the game its quality.

As the familiar ZUN theme music played in the background, the battle officially began.

On the left is the player's character, and on the right are three sulking fairies.

Since it's a demo, the battle UI is fairly standard, with two bars below each character: [Body] and [Spirit].

【体】 represents physical strength, or health points.

【灵】 represents spiritual power, which is the resource required to cast skills.

The bottom right corner contains the command menu, with four options enclosed in a talisman-like border: [Attack], [Spell Card], [Spirit Strike], and [Item].

At the very top of the screen is a horizontal action order axis that runs across the entire screen, with the player's and the three fairies' portraits arranged on it, clearly indicating the action order for this round.

When the project was initiated.

Chu Chen had already developed a framework for the game's combat system, which could essentially be understood as a "modified" version of "Stardust Railway".

[Attack] corresponds to normal attack, [Spell Card] corresponds to combat skill, and [Spirit Strike] corresponds to ultimate skill.

The turn-based gameplay of the previous game, Star Railway, was able to become popular.

A large part of the reason is that Star Rail has made additions and subtractions to the turn-based system. It has reduced the depth of turn-based gameplay, and while retaining only the characteristics of turn-based gameplay, it has greatly improved the presentation and accelerated the combat.

The turn-based system in the Touhou Gensokyo demo is the same.

But the difference lies in the [props].

Star Railway has no "daily" gameplay or "production" cycle, so important aspects of this turn-based game have been directly simplified.

However, in the Touhou Project, the "production" gameplay is a very important component.

Therefore, this system was retained.

After all, not all players have a collecting habit. The most direct way to make a system work is to make the products of this gameplay directly affect the outcome of the battle.

Besides.

The combat system in the Touhou project also underwent some "Touhou-style" modifications.

"The UI marker next to the character is a very important combat resource, also known as a 'P point'."

Seeing Chu Chen enter the battle, Ishii Akira's voice rang out at the opportune moment.

"Based on the settings in the original bullet hell game, P points are shared by the entire team. Normal attacks can restore 1 point, while releasing a 'spell card' requires consuming the corresponding P points."

Chu Chen nodded. This kind of routine is basically the same in any turn-based game, so it's not too complicated.

Select attack, target locked as Sonnymilk.

The character model reacted immediately with a smooth pixel animation of the axe striking Sunnymilk, displaying a damage number of "-21". At the same time, a Yin-Yang Orb "P point" below was lit up.

(End of this chapter)