Gensou SkyDrift Available Now for Nintendo Switch and Steam!

TOKYO – Dec. 12, 2019 – Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) publishing label UNTIES and the team at illuCalab, including a former Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8DX developer, drop the spell-slinging tag-team racer Gensou SkyDrift onto Nintendo Switch and Steam for Windows PC today. A PlayStation 4 version will race to the finish line in Q1 2020.

Choose two of 20 characters, each with her own drive handling stats and power-ups, to ride on each other’s backs as driver and vehicle. Swap between them on the fly to glide through the twists and turns of the tracks and wield the right spell at the perfect moment to lap the competition.

Each character’s exclusive deck of spell cards is packed with abilities based on her traditional Touhou Project traits. Zip through hoops on the track to boost speed and gain mana. Drawing spell cards at full mana pull more powerful spells capable of slowing down opponents' speed, shooting around corners to hit dodging rivals, or jumping into the air on the back of the wind to avoid obstacles.

Navigate more than 15 tracks, each featuring a stunning view of Gensokyo, including paths filled with cherry blossom trees and a nighttime course with beautiful views of the realm’s skyline. Be the first to cross the finish line against computer-controlled opponents in Story or Time Attack modes, or face up to seven other teams online or locally in Versus mode.

“GENSOU Skydrift brings rare depth to the genre because players can take advantage of the huge range of possible character pairings,” said John Davis, G&R Representative, UNTIES. “With dozens of combos, there’s a playstyle for everyone from casual to hardcore, and the best players will hone down favorite combos for each and every track.”

GENSOU Skydrift is a fan-made entry in the Guinness World Record holding Touhou project, available today on Steam for Windows PC and Nintendo Switch for the regular price of $23.99 USD/€ 21.99. A 20% launch discount will be available across all Nintendo eShop regions until Dec. 31; Steam’s sale runs through Dec. 19. It supports English, Japanese, and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional).

For more information, please visit the GENSOU Skydrift official website and follow @UNTIESWORLD on Twitter.

About UNTIES

Based out of Tokyo, Japan, Sony Music’s video game publishing label UNTIES is dedicated to expanding the reach of Japan’s best indie developers. Their name derives from their goal of untying games from specific platforms and sharing them worldwide. For more information, visit the UNTIES website or follow @UNTIESWORLD on Twitter.

About Touhou Project

Touhou Project, recognized by the Guinness World Records as the "most prolific fan-made shooter series,” is a collection of games set in the world of Gensokyo and using a recurring cast of familiar characters. Predominantly consisting of vertical shooters, the Touhou Project includes games developed by the original creator, one-man studio Team Shanghai Alice, as well as fan works made by other developers.

About illuCalab

illuCalab is an award-winning Japanese developer with experience working on Mario Kart 8 and other popular titles.


Article by Susan N.

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Tokyo Dark: Remembrance - Switch Review

Do you like gritty crime noir stories? A taste of the supernatural? Point and click adventures? Well then, now that Tokyo Dark has graced the Switch with it’s presence, you can have all this too, and on the go!

Tokyo Dark is an adventure mystery sort of visual novel style game, where you play as Ayami Itō, a detective working in the Tokyo police department. After her partner disappears, she delves into the dark underbelly of Tokyo to bring him back, and it isn’t the “criminal” kind of dark, either. You guide detective Itō through the dark and supernatural, the creepy businessmen, and the cat-atonically wonderful cat café’s, all in search of answers.

Gameplay is both rather simple yet sort of complicated at the same time. While the core mechanics are pretty much point and click, the SPIN system gives a nice twist on the experience. As you guide Itō around Tokyo, little boxes pop up that you can use to interact to with your environment. These boxes allow you choices, usually “look” or “investigate”, and are how you interact with both objects and people, with up to four choices that you push in a cardinal direction to choose. The vast majority of choices will affect one of your SPIN stats, which are Sanity, Professionalism, Investigation, and Neurosis. If those don’t give you an indicator as to how this game is gonna go, not too much more will. Different options will be given to you when investigating or making choices based on where your stats fall upon the gauge, which can be checked by accessing your menu if you need to check them.

What Tokyo Dark has that really sets it apart though is that all your choices and decisions feel like they really matter. With every action affecting your stats both negatively and positively, you really need to think about what you want to do. Even just examining things over and over again, or walking back and forth between the same areas too much can increase your neurosis, making you susceptible to larger hits to your sanity when something spooky happens. Compounding this, the game autosaves after basically everything, meaning unless you want to restart from the very beginning, your choices really do matter. With the option of simply loading a save file to try a different option, at least during your first playthrough, it gives a much greater weight to the choices you make, giving a feeling of truly “owning” your in-game decisions. With everything you do being permanent after it happens, you really start to evaluate your choices.

Like the original PC release, there are little cat statue things to collect, although it took me way too long to figure out it was the ‘X’ button that collected them. Admittedly it felt a little off not being able to at least tap the cats, but at least it makes the really hidden ones a bit easier to collect. The music is creepy when it needs to be, and lighthearted when it should be. When you’re exploring the creepy areas, the music gives you a sense of dread or worry, and the artstyle is really nice and vivid. The animations are pretty well done, and they even have a few fully animated cutscenes as well.

Overall, I really loved Tokyo Dark Remembrance. The feel of having your choices permanent with the constant autosave really gives weight to your choices, and the story and characters are really interesting. The artstyle is well done and the backgrounds are really well done. The story was engaging and with more than ten possible endings, there’s a lot of replayability value. Tokyo Dark is a game I almost instantly got hooked on, and with good reason too. I had a great time delving into the depths of Tokyo, and I hope you do too.

Game Information

Platform:
Nintendo Switch
Developer(s):
Cherrymochi
Publisher(s):
Unties
Genre(s):
Point and Click, Visual Novel
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
PC

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Richard

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Touhou: Azure Reflections - PC Review

Released as an enhanced version of a game originally published in 2012, Touhou Azure Reflections is now available on PC for all you fellow bullet hell aficionados out there. With some interesting gimmicks that will keep more veteran players entertained, or striving for score, and a story mode that can be easy enough for newcomers, Azure Reflections certainly paints a solid picture for the genre.

I believe I’ve used this phrase before, but the Touhou series, and generally other bullet hell styles as well, can usually be summed up as “the most colourful death you’ve ever experienced”, and Azure Reflections is no stranger to that. A sort of “retelling” of the events of “Embodyment of the Scarlet Devil”, local lazy and forever in poverty shrine maiden Reimu finds herself once again trapped in the mist of the Scarlet devil mansion. Is Remilia up to the same old tricks? Has the maid decided to host a revolt? Is Flandre going to beat you into next century? The first two maybe, the last definitely.

While the traditional Touhou titles are top down auto-scrolling shooters, Azure Reflections is a horizontal shooter, allowing you, and forcing you, to shoot both forwards and backwards in order to dispatch those annoying fairies (yes, Cirno too). While the standard fare is there, choosing a character (if unlocked) and shot type to help you get through the mansion to resolve the incident, there is a fancy little barrier system, where you can pull up a barrier to absorb bullets and then make a sort of bum rush at the enemy in order to return that absorbed damage. This is in addition to the spell cards that give you the bullet clearing/high damaging blast and your standard shot.

There are a few other changes to the standard formula, where you can actually take damage and recover your “hit point” as long as you don’t get hit within a time window after taking the first hit. This is a great system for newer players who need a little help learning the ropes (or those that aren’t as good at the games). Another interesting change for the newer or less proficient (like me) audience is that you can clear the storyline on easy. Yep, that’s right, you don’t get cut off for being a weenie this time, as long as you meet the other requirements (which they handily tell you if you fail to meet them). My biggest issue is trying to horde spell cards for no real reason. Probably because I want to earn the spell card bonuses. You can now also customize your appearance with accessories that you can purchase, which also happen to have effects attached to them, such as increasing the graze score bonuses. Are you all about the fashion, or all about the efficiency? Either way, there’s something there for you.

As can generally be found in the Touhou titles, the music is well done, with each character and stage having their own remix of the songs from the original Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil. The graphics are crisp and sharp in the standard anime style for the series, but come in multiple expressive variations. The neat little “cutscenes” during battles where the characters are duking it out are pretty cool too, and you can even unlock a model viewer and jukebox for music listening and character viewing.

While the title definitely feels easier compared to some, or most, of the other Touhou titles, that’s what the harder difficulties and self imposed challenges are for! Seriously though, any game that has a difficulty called “Lunatic” with the description “for crazy people” you know is gonna be like ramming your face at a brick wall. Although Azure Reflections is relatively easier, except the stupid bats, there was a lot I really enjoyed about it.

One of the aspects of the Touhou series as a whole that is also applied to Azure Reflections is how the characters interact with each other. Usually there’s a lot of rather un-serious banter, a couple of puns or gags, and occasionally a serious line or two. While most of this can get lost in translation, whether official or fan, I’m glad to say that the banter in Azure Reflections was well translated and doesn’t fall off the mark of what I’ve come to love and expect from the series.

As a whole, Touhou: Azure Reflections is a bit of a niche title. Most people I know aren’t super big fans of the bullet hell/danmaku style games, and those that will play them don’t necessarily recognize the Touhou franchise. That being said, what it offers is not only true to its roots, but also offers its own twist to keep things fresh and interesting. If you’ve got a hankering for colourful bullets, a masochistic tendency to watch yourself get shot down, a desire for an anime-esque scrolling shooter challenge, or a fancy soundtrack, you can’t go very wrong with Azure Reflections.

Game Information

Platform:
Sony PlayStation 4
Developer(s):
Unties Games
Publisher(s):
Souvenir Circ.
Genre(s):
Side-scrolling
Bullethell
Shoot 'Em Up
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
NA

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Richard

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Touhou: Gensokyo Defenders - PC Review

Having fought against various foes in order to reign supreme in the lands of Gensokyo before Christmas, Richard took our first look at Gensokyo Defenders on the Switch. With the latest Touhou releasing on the PC for fans of bullet hells, shoot ‘em ups and tower defense, you’ll be following the Ice Fairy Cirno on her adventure of domination and personal growth though the new set of bullet hell battles once known as Danmaku.

Gensokyo Defenders hits a good balance of character interaction and trap placements. The action based tower defense style is a hard one to balance and while some are better than others, this one finds a home somewhere in the middle. Like most tower defense, enemies will be following a predetermined path to your base which contains a limited about of hit points. In order to prevent this from happening, you’ll be using a character to fight them off while also placing defenses in your enemies’ paths to help you out by either slowing them down or thinning them out.

Starting off with Cirno before other characters both new and old, or at least new and old for me, join up, you’ll be learning the ropes of defense which rely more on your character, your skills with the shoot ‘em up style, and your tactical use of magic spells with a limited mana pool. Moving around the map is easy and can be done either quickly to beat the enemy back to your base or more slowly that allows you to perform your range or magical attacks. Something a little interesting is that no two characters are really the same which makes trying them each out quite fun. You’ve got those that are balanced like Cirno, but then you have others that are giant wrecking balls like Utsuho who will destroy the enemy and your own trap placements if you’re not careful. She’s scary...

Placing your own traps is easy as long as you’re paying attention to what you’re doing. Some traps like spikes or bushes are designed to be put in an enemy’s way so that they walk over it and get hurt or slowed. Others, like the towers, are designed to be placed off to the side of the path in order to hit anything that is walking by. As you complete stages you’ll gain access both to new trap types and the possibility to level them up.

With a total of four towers that can be equipped at a time, and these are not locked by characters, it was nice that you could remove any upgrades and apply them to another. The same system applies to character boosts which can increase their hit points, mana points or speed amongst other abilities. The catch to all of the above? The amount of points that you can invest depends on how well you completed a stage.

Completing a stage is as easy as defeating the boss on the very last wave. Completing a stage well however depends on how many hit points your base has left at the end. One enemy getting through is one point gone. You dying on the field of battle is about five points gone. So in reality, and part of the better design, is that you can afford to let one or two through, but more than that, and you’re getting a two out of three star performance. Each star you get equals one upgrade point so you’ll really want to aim for those three stars if you want to keep up with the scaling difficulty.

If there were any issues with Gensokyo Defenders it would be that the PC port is not quite the smoothest that it could have been. Even while using a controller the mouse cursor is constantly in view on the last menu item that was selected making it a good idea to keep the mouse close by. Added to that, there’s a bit of screen tearing that can happen and with no Vsync option, the visuals can give a bit of a headache until they finally decide to smooth in. The only other issue that I had, and this was more of a me issue, is that the overall wave process felt slow and there was no way to speed it. This could get pretty long sometimes especially when you had almost an entire wave of slower mobs.

Overall, Touhou: Gensokyo Defenders may not be the best Action Tower Defense out there, but it’s a good one. With many different characters and loads of stages, it’s provides a fun time and the craziness that Touhou is renowned for.

Article Start

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Neetpia
Publisher(s):
Unties
Genre(s):
Action
Tower Defense
Mode(s):
Single Player
Multiplayer
Other Platform(s):
Nintendo Switch

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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Tokyo Dark heading to consoles! - News

Having originally released last year, Tokyo Dark became one of Richard's GotY entries for 2017. Now heading over to the consoles, it looks like we'll get another chance to dive into this noire-esque point and click adventure with Tokyo Dark - Remembrance - later this year for both the Switch and the PS4.

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Aug. 6, 2018
Sony Music Entertainment Japan / UNTIES

We are announcing TOKYO DARK -Remembrance-, a Director's Cut of fan-favorite PC mystery adventure TOKYO DARK, featuring all-new story chapters.

TOKYO DARK -Remembrance-

Deep below the sewers of Tokyo, there is a door. All who enter are lost forever... 

The original version of the mystery adventure game TOKYO DARK was released on Steam in September 2017.

Its unique story and artwork, a hallmark of developer Cherrymochi's style, won the hearts of countless fans both within and beyond Japan.

TOKYO DARK -Remembrance- completes the mysteries left by the original, bringing a Director's Cut of this masterpiece to Nintendo Switch™ and PlayStation®4 this winter.

As protagonist Detective Itō, you will explore Tokyo searching for your missing partner. Can you bring light to the dark horrors lying beneath this metropolis?
Will you lose your mind doing so... or worse?

Description 

Tokyo Dark is an anime-style horror adventure game. The story follows Detective Itō across Tokyo, searching for the truth behind her partner's strange disappearance. Featuring puzzles, stat management, and difficult decisions, Tokyo Dark puts the narrative in the hands of the player. Players' decisions change Itō's character, opening or locking options and leading to more than 10 different endings, including new ones added in this special edition.

History 

In January 2015 Tokyo Dark was submitted to the Square Enix Collective where it achieved an incredible 94% rating by the Collective members and was later Greenlit on Steam. Following that, the game had a successful Kickstarter campaign in summer 2015, and it was later announced it would be published by the Square Enix Collective. Tokyo Dark released for PC on Steam 7 September 2017.

Features

• Branching story with more than 10 different endings (including a New Game+ exclusive ending).
• Difficult decisions - every action affects Detective Itō's attributes and options.
• Beautiful anime-style character art, with locations inspired by real locations in Tokyo.
• Original soundtrack by Reign of Fury frontman Matt 'Bison' Steed.
• Animated sequences produced by Graphinica, a world-class animation studio.
• Localization by Japanese novelist Ureshino Kimi.
• The S.P.I.N (Sanity, Professionalism, Investigation, Neurosis) system keeps track of every decision you make, changing how other characters react and the actions available to you.

About UNTIES

Based out of Tokyo, Japan, Sony Music's publishing label Unties Games is dedicated to expanding the reach of Japan's best indie developers. Their name derives from their goal of untying games from specific platforms and sharing them worldwide.

About Cherrymochi

Cherrymochi is an independent game studio that aims to bridge Japanese and Western game design. Based near Tokyo, Japan, they are inspired by Japanese pop culture, anime aesthetic and Western adventure games. The studio's international team members are from five different countries and pools their multicultural experience to make story-focused games for an international audience. Cherrymochi's first game, Tokyo Dark, was released Sept. 7 2017.


Article by Pierre-Yves

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Azure Reflections - PS4 Review

The Touhou series of games can probably be summed up as the most colorful death you will ever experience in a game. Taking a bit of a change from the standard top-down danmaku/bullet hell/schmup, we get the side-scrolling fan game spin-off Touhou: Azure Reflections. Following the Touhou standard while still imparting it’s own charm, Azure Reflections is probably one of the best Touhou games for newer players to ease into, not to say it’s particularly easy on harder difficulties, but it certainly is more accessible.

The Touhou series of games, including their fan game spin-offs, have always been a bit of a personal favorite for me, not that I’m particularly great at them, but I certainly enjoyed them enough. Azure Reflections is a sort of retake on The Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil, an official Touhou title that was, incidentally, the first one I ever played. A red mist covers the land of Gensokyō, and it falls to the local shrine maiden and resident problem solver, Reimu, to solve the issue. And yes, that’s pretty much the description for both games. In Azure Reflections, both Marisa Kirisame (the ordinary average magician) and Cirno (the super last boss ice-fairy) can also participate in the resolution of this incident.

If you haven’t played a Touhou style game before, first let me say that they’re usually pretty difficult. Essentially, you will have an auto-scroller through a stage where you have to evade a seriously massive amount of bullets, and then you reach a boss, and have to dodge even more bullets. Thankfully, your hitbox is rather small, and you can change the settings to have it visible while playing, or just while slowly moving.

In traditional Touhou fashion, you have bombs that can clear bullets/enemies and damage bosses, and different shot types you can choose when starting a game. New for this particular instance, we have the side-scrolling mechanics of being able to shoot both forward and backwards. Additionally, you can now use a barrier-charge move, where you can activate a barrier to absorb bullets, and then use that absorbed power to do a dash attack at your foes.

Your barrier recharges naturally over time, although it will charge faster when performing grazes, which are basically getting close enough to the bullets that you can’t believe you didn’t get hit. While you can still power up your shot type with P items, they now hold a new purpose. By expending a portion of your P items, you can remove some of the bullets in the vicinity around you. Another change is that you aren’t instantly shot down upon getting hit. Instead, you get stunned for a bit, and another shot will bring you down if hit while stunned, essentially making you a two hit point wonder instead of one.

As is common in Touhou games, whether fan spin-off or not, the music is really great, as pretty much all of the soundtrack is remixed from the original Scarlet Devil soundtrack, and they were done really well. The graphics are nice and crisp compared to the old-school style, and the anime-style character portraits for the interactions were well drawn and had a lot more variation than I was expecting.

Speaking of the character interactions, I’m pleased to say that the often comedic banter that doesn’t really take much seriously is still an integral part of the game. Including accessories that you can purchase with in-game funds in order to adjust your character’s appearance or provide beneficial bonuses was a really interesting idea, meaning that you could purchase accessories that would increase your graze distance, reduce your stun time, or enhance or slow down movement speed. Or you could go the fashion route instead.

With a really stellar tutorial for introducing new players to the Touthou system, and veteran players to the new quirks, Azure Reflections is really easy to step into. While a lot of the game is unlockable through completing the story and capturing opponent spellcards (which is more or less a sort of  “challenge mode” during boss fights), neither are particularly difficult to do with a bit of practice, at least on normal difficulty, and there are always the harder difficulties with their own rewards for more seasoned players or those looking for a challenge.

Overall, Touhou Azure Reflections is a really great spin-off with its own fresh gimmicks and playstyles, with enough of a challenge for veteran players, while easy enough for new players to get into. With a solid soundtrack and interesting characters, a great beginner tutorial and some nice variation with accessories, Azure Reflections is a fine game if you’re looking for more Touhou in your gaming diet, or if you’ve been interested in getting into the bullet hell type games but have never known where to start.

Game Information

Platform:
Sony PlayStation 4
Developer(s):
Unties Games
Publisher(s):
Souvenir Circ.
Genre(s):
Side-scrolling
Bullethell
Shoot 'Em Up
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
NA

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Richard

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Azure Reflections is now available now for PlayStation 4! - News

So the second Richard saw TouHou he was already sold. So for everyone else, Here's the newest TouHou that has released upon the PS4 for some fast paced Bullet Hell action!

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Azure Reflections, the vibrant, side-scrolling, bullet hell from Sony publishing label Unties Games and developer Souvenir Circ., is available now for PlayStation 4.

Embrace chaos in high-intensity levels. Pick one of three adorable characters equipped with spell cards, barriers and fashionable stat-boosting outfits then take on the onslaught of enemies.

Article by Pierre-Yves

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