Doujin Night 1: How Do I Eighth Note?

Starting this past Wednesday, I’ll be playing a doujin game each week and putting up a review for it on the blog. By the nature of such things, the vast majority of them will be Touhou-based; fortunately, Japanese Touhou Doujin Games are of suprisingly high quality on the whole and should prove to be plenty fun/entertaining. First up this week:

Touhou: Rhythm Carnival

Perhaps you’re familiar with the Rhythm Heaven series of videogames? If you’re not, the pitch is this: you have one (sometimes two) buttons to use, and you have to press them in time with certain audio cues set atop a matching soundtrack. The game follows the pattern of introducing a series of minigames, then remixing them with new music. The gameplay is simple, but crushingly difficult at times (of course, some folks find ways to break the game anyway).

The Game

TRC stars characters from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (plus Aya) in 14 minigames (skating on ice, taking Sentai poses, pouring tea, marching in place, etc.), plus a remix stage where you quickly shuffle between bitesize portions of the previous minigames set to the EoSD main theme. While it’s a lot of fun when you hit the rhythm spot on and get to see the girls doing all kinds of wacky stuff, the game will make you fight for it.

This difficulty is really the game’s downfall for me. I’ve played all the minigames, passed all of them, silver’d a few, even done well in hard mode on a couple. And yet I don’t really want to go back. Since it is a rhythm game, it’s fairly easy to miss a beat once and just be wrecked for the next couple patterns or even the rest of the level. Missing beats in different parts of the song meant my failures would often be incomparably different and hard to get a sense of progression in. Contrast that to the feeling of the Touhou main games, where yes, I get roflstomped at first, but I can pick up a pretty clear thread of progression on subsequent tries as I consistently get past just one more pattern each time.

On the other hand, as we discovered this Wednesday, I’m just kinda terribad at rhythm. So don’t let my bitter tears dissuade you, the gameplay on the whole is really solid and fun. Just be sure to enjoy with a controller (optimal) or a keyboard with very good keys (my standard membrane keyboard was causing troublesome double-hits in some of the games).

The Art

The art style is a whimsical take on ZUN’s rather crude designs from the EoSD era, which fits just right with the upbeat and lighthearted feel of the music and Rhythm Heaven game style. More importantly, it’s all done in Flash (or at lest vector graphics of some sort) with very few colors and minimal lineart, which means it isn’t distracting while you’re trying focus on finding the rhythm you’re supposed to be playing out.

The Music

As for music, well, it’s a rhythm game. It’d be pretty shit if it had shit music, right? Each stage is a remix of a character or stage theme from the main game, usually starring the character the theme belongs to. What would be a Remix stage in the Rhythm Heaven series is instead a remix of the main title theme from EoSD that’s a lot of fun to play, and well worth the effort of unlocking.

In fact, it’s my favorite level in the game and the only one I really see myself going back to try to clear (still not there yet!). The other stages just get a little too long for me to enjoyably work my way through to try to bring my score up on them.

Final Verdict: Hopefully you can figure out that if you like Touhou, you’ll probably to check this out for the sheer novelty of it (just like, I imagine, every other Touhou doujin game I review here). Beyond that, if you’re a fan rhythm games, you’ll probably find TRC to your liking. If you aren’t that into rhythm games, or aren’t very good at them, you might find the game to be difficult to pick up and enjoy.

Touhou: Rhythm Carnival will be available on the club’s online Google Drive until October 10. If you’re looking for it after that time, shoot a request to the anime club’s email or ask a club meeting.