Huge News: CAVE to Develop a Touhou Project Game After Receiving Permission!
CAVE will be developing a Touhou-related game
Here’s some massive news: CAVE Interactive Co., Ltd has received the required intellectual property permissions to develop a new Touhou Project game!
CAVE IR News
https://www.cave.co.jp/ir/news/
On the Development of a New Game (PDF link below)
CAVE is a game studio that specializes in arcade danmaku shoot em’ ups. Some of their titles include the Dodonpachi series, Mushihime-sama, and Gothic wa Mahou. They are well-known for being the trailblazer of danmaku shoot em’ ups, a genre defined by curtains of enemy bullets flooding the game screen.
In the afterword for the sixth Touhou game, Touhou Koumakyou: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, ZUN writes:
Independent and commercial shoot em’ ups have been evolving at rates that were unthinkable only a few years ago.
When it comes to danmaku shooting games specifically, however, I’ve found myself frustrated with the direction the genre is heading. If I had to articulate my main issues, they would include the ever-increasing difficulty levels, sheer bullet count as the only draw of the game, prioritizing visual effects over visibility, and unique game systems that have eliminated the need for careful bullet dodging.
I do think many of these titles are fun to play and that’s fine in and of itself, but this approach to game design implies that “the real appeal of shmups comes from the bullet count rather than dodging, since avoiding bullets isn’t fun”. If that were true, why don’t these developers take out enemy bullets entirely and redesign shmups from the ground up? That’s just my two cents.
Because of this, I went back to the basics with Scarlet Devil and pursued what I consider to be fun about bullet dodging by keeping difficulty levels low while avoiding systems that might detract from the experience as a whole.
From the Afterword of Touhou Koumakyou: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
This was in response to the advent of danmaku shmups like the Dodonpachi game that came out in arcades in 2001.
20 years have passed since then, and now the dream team of Touhou Project and CAVE has happened at last! But could this collaboration have been foreshadowed in the newest Touhou game, Unconnected Marketeers? One of Himemushi Momoyo’s spell cards is called “Mushihime-sama’s Resplendent and Restless Daily Life”, after all…
The PDF released by CAVE states:
Our newest title will be a completely new game developed by our company, which had an excellent track record with developing shoot em’ up games like the Dodonpachi series and Gothic wa Mahou Otome ~ Sassato Keiyakushinasai! ~. We plan to put everything we have into this new game and digitally release it in the year 2022.
From 新規ゲーム開発の開始に関するお知らせ (On the Development of a New Game)
Just reading that last sentence is enough to make anyone hyped! CAVE’s Touhou game is slated to be released in 2022. Don’t miss it!
