Author Topic: 変愚蛮怒勝手版 - Touhou-themed Angband variant (traditional roguelike)  (Read 5517 times)

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Didn't see this game mentioned anywhere else in western Touhou community, thought I'd post this here because it looks very interesting.

For people unfamiliar with roguelikes: Angband is a major roguelike based on Tolkien's works and is known for spawning many variants (it's open source so anyone proficient enough can make their own version of the game), several of which ended up spawning variants of their own. Hengband is one of its variants that adds many new races, classes and quests; it is one of most popular *band variants in Japan. The game I've found is built further upon Hengband, changing the theme to Touhou Project.

Several features of Angband as a traditional roguelike:

-Minimal graphics (map terrain, monsters, items represented by letters/symbols)
-Strictly turn based
-Permadeath (you die, you have to start over from the beginning)
-Runs take a considerable amount of time (the main dungeon is 100 levels deep, and being too careless can result in death)
-Not that friendly to newcomers (doesn't have a built in tutorial to get familiar with game mechanics, it will be rough early on until you get used to it)

Now, for the features of this particular variant:

The world map is changed to more or less resemble Gensoukyou; locations like Human Village and Roads of Former Hell are 'towns' where you can receive quests and buy supplies, and there are Touhou dungeons like Forest of Magic or the Scarlet Devil Mansion. The main dungeon you'll be exploring is still the traditional 100-level deep Angband. In Hengband, you had to kill Oberon on level 99 and Serpent of Chaos on level 100 to complete the game (those are characters from Chronicles of Amber). In this variant, you have to defeat Yukari Yakumo on level 50 and Oberon on level 100 to win the game. Serpent of Chaos is now on level 127 of a bonus dungeon that you can unlock when you defeat Oberon. Defeating the Serpent marks your character as a 'True Winner'.

Many of the monsters from Hengband still remain - there will be orcs, trolls, demons, dragons. There are some new monsters - for example, fairies are trash mobs at earlier levels and are a legitimate threat at later ones. Most, if not all of the Windows era Touhou characters make appearance as boss monsters.

Most of the quests from Hengband are still in the game, and there are some new ones - like fighting Flandre on a rampage or taking part in a conflict between kitsune and tanuki youkai.

The races and classes are changed as well - you can play as a youkai, kappa, tengu, lunarian and so on.

One of most notable features is the ability to play as one of Touhou Project characters - you can pick one of the characters instead of choosing race and class. Some of them are melee specialists, some are magic users, some can do both. Those classes have their own special abilities, mainly based on the Spell Cards they have in the games. Some of those characters are very strong and easy to win with (mainly final/extra stage bosses), some are very weak and are intended to be a challenge (mainly early stage bosses). Some characters have unique gameplay features - for example, Clownpiece starts with 30000 HP but cannot heal at all, Hina can absorb curses, Shion cannot buy items from stores, Sagume gets opposite effects when reading scrolls (scrolls of light create darkness instead, and so on).

Another feature is the ability to choose a difficulty level - Easy significantly tones down the difficulty and the game ends when you defeat Yukari (and you cannot progress below dungeon level 50), Normal is somewhat easier than usual and you win the game when you defeat Yukari (but you can go further without restrictions), Hard is standard difficulty, Lunatic is nightmare mode from Hengband (stronger monsters tend to appear often, monsters have double HP, bad things happen at midnight).

The 'Extra' difficulty level is a separate gameplay mode based on Ironman (a gameplay mode in Angband where you cannot go upstairs to previous levels or back to town). You start in the main 100-level dungeon, each tenth level is a quest from the main game that can give you rewards. You can find 'spellcard' items in this mode which allow you to use the special abilities of the Touhou Project characters.

There's no PC-98 content present.

Now, for some bad news: The variant is in Japanese, and as far as I know, there is no English patch. The source code is available for download, though (albeit for slightly earlier versions of the game), and it should already have option for making a build in English or Japanese, so ideally a translation would involve not much beyond adding translated strings. The game is still being worked on and is frequently updated, and any new source code version will still have untranslated strings. I don't think the author left a way to contact them regarding the game, so working with them to create the English version might not be an option.

Links:

http://www.miyamasa.net/heng_th_katte.html - Author's webpage, has links to game download, source code and score servers
https://w.atwiki.jp/hengtouhou/ - Unofficial wiki (has detailed guides, both for newcomers and more experienced players; in Japanese)

deice

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just a heads up to any gaijin that might be interested, the site provided in the thread seems to reject certain ip ranges, so if you can't access it, try a japanese vpn.

Are you talking about the main page or the wiki? I know atwiki blocks several IP ranges, but the official page should be available

deice

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Are you talking about the main page or the wiki? I know atwiki blocks several IP ranges, but the official page should be available

yes i did mean the main page for the game. i'd get timed out whenever i tried to access it without a vpn. i tested a japanese and british one and they both worked, but without one the site won't let me in.