The Making of Touhou Meijinka

Touhou Meijinka ~ Song of Divine Tempest was a side project produced by Drillimation in collaboration with Studio Emiko. This was a way to get back into the traditional arcade danmaku genre after production on Touhou Kourinden ~ Mythos of Phantasmagoria finished. That was a monster project, and put me out of focus.

Before Meijinka began development…

One of my biggest focuses with Drillimation is releasing one or two games a year. I can’t mention how many other things I have to take into account: producing four State of the Prophet Driller videos at the beginning of each quarter, and a twice weekly upload schedule. We released the demo for Touhou Kourinden earlier this year. That game began development after Chuhou Joutai 3: Three Nights of Scarlet Abscess finished development, and that phase took an entire American academic year.

I spent so much time writing the script and localizing it all. It was then tons of sprite design and animation. It was a giant project and put me behind schedule. Studio Emiko was struggling to produce a title, so I had to intervene and assist with production. Still, I’m always going to do a big project every once in a while. This is the reason we need these smaller projects in order to get caught up. The next project after Meijinka will be another crazy one.

How did Touhou Meijinka come to be?

Drillimation and Studio Emiko conceived the idea for the game in February of 2023, during the second half of Touhou Kourinden‘s development. Studio Emiko had produced several failed prototypes, and even attempted to quit altogether to focus on a VTubing career. Touhou Meijinka was an opportunity for her to return to the game industry. Preproduction of the game began later the same month. The soundtrack was composed first, followed by the spritework.

How did development play out?

Development formally began a month after Touhou Kourinden finished production in July of 2023. The first month was spent putting the engine together, and the story didn’t begin development until the following month. The entire development phase lasted four months and one week. This was one of the most fun projects I ever worked on, but the toughest to develop.

This game marked the first time I didn’t take the director’s chair; Emiko Hosokawa was the director of the game, making this her directorial debut. What added to the challenge was Hosokawa’s busy personal and academic schedule. The stage that had the shortest development time was the fourth stage; the reason was I got to write most of the attack patterns while Hosokawa did everything else for all other stages. The extra stage took nearly a month; what added to that time was Hosokawa beginning to experiment with ZUN-style art.