东方华心传Touhou Blooming Soul
Introduction
A fast-paced side-scrolling action game with roguelite elements. Follow Hata no Kokoro as she explores and defeats enemies on the stage of Gensokyo. The game provides many different gameplay options, players can play in a variety of different styles making each run uniquely different from the last.
Setting
This is a game about loneliness, self-discovery, and peering into others’ intense emotions.
Kokoro is a mask tsukumogami with many bottled up emotions, but she cannot express them on her own face. All living creatures experience joy, sorrow, anger and happiness. At the advice of a friend, Kokoro reflects on her life’s journey.
Relive the battles she once fought, her opponents’ intense and passionate emotions, and take a peek into the mystery known as her “feelings”…
What are tsukumogami? —— tsukumogami are youkai born out of objects created or used by humans. Over many years, these objects gain sentience and gradually take on a human form.
Core Gameplay
An infinitely replayable exploration-based roguelite action game!
- Fixed maps, but with enough exploration, experience and practice, more areas will become available for exploration, along with faster clear times and more visual flair, similar to the exploration of Dead Cells.
- Roguelike items and skills. Items and skills obtained during exploration are randomized, players can freely choose their own path, giving them a natural feeling of progression every playthrough. Skilled players can also choose to ignore items and skills altogether, relying solely on their own skill to beat the game.
- The game offers several stages to explore, each filled with secrets to discover. Players can uncover these secrets to strengthen their character, or they can choose to ignore them entirely.
- At the end of each stage you’ll face a powerful boss! Time to show off your skills!
Key Feature- The Four Emotions
Kokoro has four basic emotions: Joy, Anger, Sorrow, and Happiness, swap between them at any time during combat! Each emotion offers different attributes, abilties, and combat styles.
- Joy: Good for beginners. Use your skills to bomb enemies away in style!
- Anger: The more you attack, the more damage you deal! Becoming a raging storm!
- Sorrow: Comes with a shield that converts blocked attacks into damage! The best offense is a good defense!
- Happiness: Great for knocking back enemies! Blow them all away!
During exploration, players will also receive random items that boost basic attributes or emotions, making each choice a tactical decision that impacts how their character grows.
Create your own style, whether it’s brute forcing, outmaneuvering, or gracefully avoiding enemies.
Roguelite
Players have plenty of opportunities to gain new items and skills while exploring each stage.
Items mostly strengthen your character, players can plan which skills to develop in advance or decide based on the items they get at the beginning. Multiple items of the same type will also form a more powerful set!
Skills can directly affect combat ability. Proper and extensive use of skills can change the tide of battle!
A roguelite based on these two elements, giving players a unique experience each time they explore.
Plenty of enemies and bosses!
Challenge 63 different regular enemies and more than 15 bosses!
Whether you’re doing a normal run or a no-hit run, there’s plenty of foes to overcome and many opportunities to explore!
We’ve carefully polished our spectacular boss battles not just for casual players who want to enjoy the game. Challenge runners, speedrunners and even hardcore players who want to experience breathtaking battles will also be able to enjoy them as well!
Roadmap
We’ll be releasing a demo at Steam Next Fest on June 13, 2022. In the demo, you’ll be able to experience a boss battle against Fujiwara no Mokou. In this battle, we’ve implemented three of Mokou’s spell cards, one secret spell card as well as the basic abilities of Kokoro’s four emotions. Since this is the first time we’re making an action game, we hope to use the feedback from players to better polish the game and make improvements.
An early access version with the complete first chapter and 4 bosses is expected to release at around October. This will also come with plenty of items, 20 regular enemies, 5 elite enemies, as well as several platforming and running mechanics. The 4 bosses are based on the four emotions, including Mokou, who represents anger. Additionally, three new bosses representing joy, sorrow and happiness will be revealed. Naturally, our art and music will maintain the same level of quality, bringing you an experience that won’t pale in comparison to our previous works.
The full game is expected to have 4 main chapters, which will be gradually released with updates in the future. Please look forward to our first demo on June 13!
Thanks everyone!
Game Discussion
Steam User 17
Playing the game even though there isnt any EN translation yet. Since Hata no Kokoro is my favorite touhou character, playing this game is a blessing.
For combat, it's a struggle since Im just picking out random items, equipments, and skills and hope it goes well, but other than that, very traditional metroidvania game. I havent gotten far yet as to unlocking Mokou, but so far from just playing Hata no Kokoro, its fun. Some skills are kinda jank with targeting or its just skill issue on my end. As for difficulty, I've been playing normal difficulty and it's about right for balancing. Nothing too hard, but also nothing too easy. In fact, by exploring the entire map, makes bosses in the next area much easier though its still possible to lose.
Can't give any review for story since its all in CN, but I do like the CGs.
All in all, I'm personally having fun playing it. My favorite touhou character is the main character, and there is plenty more coming. A lot of potential for the game.
Steam User 9
while still in early access the game offers more than enough content for its price. since its a roguelite, unless you know how to read simplified chinese you'll have a hard time playing this in any other language you know.
(didn't stop me, i'm using this game as an excuse to learn)
gameplay shows great potential, early game can feel a bit sluggish but once you invest your time into skills and learn how to utilize items properly it can be very fun.
phenomenal artwork and soundtracks which are very inspiring for me, thank you for including jukebox and art gallery in-game!!
i wish nothing but the best for the developers in finishing the game
Steam User 7
It's Dead Cells + Devil May Cry mixed with Touhou flavour in a nutshell.
It works really well and the 4 emotion stances are not as scary as they seem at first (granted I'd like to get good at juggling all of them eventually) even though there's only 2 chapters so far, the idea is definitely there and it works really well + it's a very very pretty game. The backstory segments are also really cool and I think they make this game the best to get into the world of Touhou as a whole.
To top it all off it's dirt cheap so I highly recommend it and it's nice to see the devs improve so much over all their games (the artist or artists? in particular)
Steam User 5
mokou my goat is in this game as a playable character, instant 10/10.
doesnt have english supported yet but i think the devs are working on that and you can figure out how things work without being able to read anything since theres images for the abilities and you can sort of guess what they do,
gameplay is good and a bit difficult at times, but thats what id want in a game like this.
Steam User 4
At the time of writing this review, the game is currently version v0.7.3b and I have achieved 100% achievements, some things I say might not apply in later versions.
This game is good artistically, like really good. The art is beautiful, the music is nice, and the actual core moment to moment gameplay is fun. The boss arena backgrounds especially are beyond gorgeous and make use of some simple shader or animation additions to bring them to life. They are easily the biggest artistic highlight in the game, and are also the most memorable. Everything about the game feels constructed around a main aesthetic and almost everything is locked to a pixel grid or palette locked in some way. It all feels cohesive.
The actual combat flows nicely, and the emotions mechanic feels intended to make Kokoro play like a stance character. However, that part doesn't exactly work out due to some other game mechanics that tend to make you play runs with primarily only one emotion. Since stacking all your items into one emotion is heavily encouraged in a run, since it buffs that emotion up.
The items themselves you find in runs can range from very impactful or very synergistic, to ones that feel worthless beyond the first few minutes of a run. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can lead to some situations where getting presented with two items that do basically nothing can be annoying.
If you are coming into this game expecting a more difficult experience, you likely won't find it here. The game is, at the time of writing this, really easy. The hardest difficulty the game offers, being normal, is easy to beat. Even looping through the two current chapters in their NG+ portal in the game right now doesn't scale or really feel hard enough. A lot of enemies deal chip damage, and the game is insanely forgiving, especially after maxing the rougelite skill tree, almost to a fault.
The unfortunately weakest aspect of this game though, is the actual environments and stages themselves. They feel like they blend together, and you will quickly notice the repetitive patterns of the room pieces they put together to make the overall stage. You will quickly come to recognize pretty much every room and where to go and find things in them, and they don't have the same strong aesthetics as many of the boss arenas.
By the devs own admission, this game is heavily inspired by Dead Cells. Currently however, it seems like they missed something crucial about that game. Dead cells lets you select and go through multiple routes and stages, as well as has multiple small discoveries and secrets in their own stages. The aesthetics between stages are clearer, and the designs from their generator tend to feel more like actual locations. Things like small hidden blueprint locations help form Dead Cells' continuous feeling of discovery, and the game feels like it opens things up to you constantly, with small secrets or new stages. That doesn't happen here. You will run the same two stages in order all the time.
Overall, despite some of the flaws of the game, I do really recommend it, even if this review might come off as negative in a lot of regards. This game is very much worth the price. Just keep in mind that for a Rougelite experience designed to be played repeatedly, the stages, secrets, and their variations is way on the weaker side.
Steam User 3
As a completely 100% unbiased Kokoro fan, this game is phenomenal and scratches an itch I've had for my favorite character for over a decade now. Loving how it's shaping up so far. From the music, art, gameplay, it's just so good. I am immensely looking forward to more. Kokoro IS cute!
Steam User 3
solid 8, somethin bout the music doesn't speak to me but its nearly there.
Hope theres better optimization but its currently still early access so its alright.
movement is NICE, and the sprite work is just as i expected, amazing.