Touhou Mecha [Mecha][Fantasy] (updated Jan 2013)

[Graph]

Chireiden and Parsia, two territories deep within Gensoukyo's underground, are at war. In order to turn the tide of the war, the hell raven Utsuho Reiuji travels to the Remains of Blazing Hell to attain the power of the sun god Yatagarasu. This power will allow her to use the AM Yatagarasu, a mecha with amazing power. However, the sun god isn't the only thing waiting at the Remains of Blazing Hell...

Touhou Mecha is a free-to-download fangame of Touhou Project by Team Shanghai Alice and ZUN. It's an alternate universe of the Touhou Project world with a pseudo-contemporary look, and the cast fights using mecha.

Touhou Mecha is a Kinetic Novel with short but visual-packed installments. It comes with some simple animation that is influenced by Muvluv Alternative, though I also take inspiration from Super Robot Taisen.

Comments and critiques on all game releases and preview material are welcome. Development progress is being announced in this topic.

Current version: 1.5, which includes Chapter 1, "The Fledgling Sun God". Since version 1.1, the first half of the Chapter has been rewritten and a new battle scene added, and some extra content is available after finishing the Chapter.
Filesize: 67.1 MB
Length: ~1 hour for main story

Downloads
Additional game info
Preview videos and screenshots





Staff

Story and Art……………………………….Graph
Music…………………………………………….OverCoat and FlameZero16
Programming……………………………….SleepKirby
Editing…………………………………………..Iced Fairy
Blog and forum webmaster………..Sigma

Ren'Py 6.14.1.366 lint report, generated at: Fri Jan 25 11:34:02 2013
Statistics:
The game contains 656 screens of dialogue.
These screens contain a total of 8,284 words,
for an average of 12.6 words per screen.
The game contains 0 menus.

The word count doesn't include the content of the TM Database.

[Dollywitch]

This looks surprisingly epic. Overcoat's kind of a cheesemeister, though, but I suppose I could give it a try.

[Crocosquirrel]

I'll give this a look when I get a chance.

[Nellie]

Please, please include Cirno in somehow? XD

[Samu-kun]

Please, please include Cirno in somehow? XD

...she's gonna be the suicide bomber mecha!

What this is, I don't even. But the animations certainly are very impressive.

[Samu-kun]

Came back from finishing it. It certainly was quite a great start!

No visual novel that I've ever played has captured the style of the battles in Muv-Luv Alternative better. The animations and CGs in the battle sequence were nothing short of a spectacle to watch. The collection of sound effects were quite impressive as well, except for the whining in the hangar, which I assume can't be anything else but an intentional troll.

The only issue I had with the numerous animations was that I was confused as to whether I had to press enter to continue during some of the sequences. A small "cinematic action" icon at the top corner of the screen might alleviate some confusion as to when an animation is playing and when you have to click to continue. Or maybe if I just play the game more, I might figure out how the system work.

The story was easy to follow, but I don't envy those who have no knowledge of the Tohou universe. This is a game made for Tohou fans, since many of the allusions to the mythos wouldn't have made sense for the uninitiated. The mecha tropes were quite seamlessly integrated into the Tohou universe, and was a real treat to Tohou fans who are also mecha fans. Fan service at its best!

The character art was quite impressive, but I would have to disagree with the overall muscular and well-endowed presentation of the young ladies of Gensoku. But whatever, the mechas were cool and it was fun to see everything in action.

This is a great fan game and the greatest reinterpretation of the Muv-Luv battle sequences I've ever seen in this community. I hope to see the next installment soon!

[Graph]

Samu-kun: Glad you liked it! About the clicking to advance, there shouldn't be any place that you have to click if the CTC icon isn't showing in the dialogue box (The animated three arrows). However, I can understand being unsure during some of the longer pauses in the animation.

I made it so that if you click when the Chapter Title shows up, you go to the "Aboard the Shimenawa" subtitle rather than straight to the next dialogue bit, since it's a fairly lengthy transition of at least 6 seconds. Perhaps this kind of thing can be done for other animations that have several scenes in sequence though (e.g. AM Yatagarasu fires it weapon, followed by enemy mechs blowing up, followed by other enemies coming in). It certainly doesn't help that later on the Shimenawa is moving while the dialogue box and CTC icon are displayed, though in that case nothing happens other than the Shimenawa moving off the screen.

For those of you with more experience with Really Visual Novels, does including an option to lock the skipping of animations usually work or is that generally more annoying? Keeping in mind that you don't really see Ren'py's rollback system in commercial games...

[Graph]

So, I'm planning to do a 1.1 release within the next few days, main reasons being:

-JCC Compression, which I discovered recently. If the data about it is true, it's possible that I can knock down the filesize from 83 MB to the 50-60 MB range. With any luck the performance will be at least as good as it was before, too.

-A more accessible README, an attempt to make the various conveniences of the control scheme known to people not that experienced with Ren'py. Then hopefully I can get more feedback on whether I should add something else to cut down on accidental transition skips. Mainly, I hope the people outside of Lemma Soft who're trying this game know about rollback. It's a great feature, especially for something that's more like an animated short than a game.

Any other quick suggestions from those who've had a run? Slow suggestions are alright too, though those will have to be implemented for the Chapter 2 release at least.

[Graph]

And here it is-- Touhou Mecha 1.1. Downloads and the changelist can be found on the Downloads page now.

Using JCC compression, the size of the Windows download was reduced from 83.8 MB to 43.3 MB! If you haven't tried this yet, now's a good time. Of course, there's traces of JPG artifacts if you look closely while playing the VN now, but I think it's barely noticable, especially when sprites start moving about. If this change goes over well enough, we'd like to make the compression technique the standard for the VN package. If the demand is high enough we may release an uncompressed version when the final Chapter is released.

We've also released another trailer, this time of the intro sequence (first 4 minutes or so). It should give a good idea of the VN's plot. As before, the framerate and picture quality of the videos aren’t as high as they are in-game, so be sure to pick up the VN itself as well!

[Applegate]

I don't envy those who have no knowledge of the Tohou universe. This is a game made for Tohou fans, since many of the allusions to the mythos wouldn't have made sense for the uninitiated.

I actually read this with no prior knowledge of Touhou, and I did not at all feel confused or intimidated by the allusions and references. There was some mystery element there such as the relation between youkai, humans and gods, but I have a small idea of what is going on there as well.

I'm just as richly informed of the world here as I am with the Legend of the Legendary Heroes or Aquarion at their starts - so long as these questions get answered in some capacity I imagine I'd recommend this even for non-Touhou fans.

[Daggett]

Graph, I finished playing through Touhou Mecha 1.1, and I was amazed at who much work you and your team must have put into it. I hope you intend to keep this game as a free game so I can play the whole thing when it comes out! When can I expect part 2?

[Graph]

Graph, I finished playing through Touhou Mecha 1.1, and I was amazed at who much work you and your team must have put into it. I hope you intend to keep this game as a free game so I can play the whole thing when it comes out! When can I expect part 2?

Hi Daggett. Yes, Touhou Mecha will remain a free game; it's basically doujin, and the DSD team makes VNs purely for fun.

Chapter 2... it's hard to say, since I've been working on getting stuff together so I can start doing art commissions. Suffice to say, since we have the GUI and a bunch of sprites in place, it shouldn't take 7 months like the first Chapter did. In fact I expect the pace to accelerate after Chapter 3, the time when I think most of the cast will be introduced.

We've been doing some work on Chapter 2 already, actually. When we've got something presentable I'll open a topic in the WIP section.

[Daggett]

Hi Daggett. Yes, Touhou Mecha will remain a free game; it's basically doujin, and the DSD team makes VNs purely for fun.

Chapter 2... it's hard to say, since I've been working on getting stuff together so I can start doing art commissions. Suffice to say, since we have the GUI and a bunch of sprites in place, it shouldn't take 7 months like the first Chapter did. In fact I expect the pace to accelerate after Chapter 3, the time when I think most of the cast will be introduced.

We've been doing some work on Chapter 2 already, actually. When we've got something presentable I'll open a topic in the WIP section.

Awesome.

Cool. I can't wait to see the types of alternative outfits you give them. I really liked the ones I've seen so far.

So you are the artist then? If so, you have a very impressive hand for art, Graph.

I'll be keeping an eye out for it. Is the DSD website going to be kept up to date as well?

[Graph]

So you are the artist then? If so, you have a very impressive hand for art, Graph.

Yep, I mentioned this in the first post, but it didn't stand out too much-- it should now though. I'm the artist and writer for Touhou Mecha.

Is the DSD website going to be kept up to date as well?

The blog is going to be updated whenever we've got something to report here, and then some. There's not much going on in the DSD forums right now though. Maybe we'll open up some discussion there when the game gets a larger following.

[Daggett]

Yep, I mentioned this in the first post, but it didn't stand out too much-- it should now though. I'm the artist and writer for Touhou Mecha.

The blog is going to be updated whenever we've got something to report here, and then some. There's not much going on in the DSD forums right now though. Maybe we'll open up some discussion there when the game gets a larger following.

Wow. You are doing a great job on both.

Alright, cool. I'm sure this game is going to great at a fairly good clip.