State of Drillimation: Summer 2024

Summer vacation is already in full swing. Even though today is Canada Day, I’m actually recording this in late June, and we have already gotten our first heat wave of the year. In the three months prior to this video, I got to witness a spectacular total solar eclipse, officially release Touhou Kourinden, and put out the brand new Hifuu album that was just released last Friday. There haven’t been any major developments in April besides the eclipse, but May is the biggest one.

Touhou Kourinden ~ Mythos of Phantasmagoria

Two months ago, Touhou Kourinden ~ Mythos of Phantasmagoria officially released on Steam. It was the most difficult project I ever worked on. Anybody else who worked on this game, particularly Studio Emiko, could attest to it. What added to the difficulty was the complexity of creating an RPG engine in GameMaker, plus all of the resources needed to tell this one long story that can take twelve hours to finish. The opening sequence is always the hardest part.

As with every previous game I’ve worked on, it was important that I playtest the whole thing to check for bugs that will always show up. Anybody who’s played the game, saved their progress, and reloaded the game will know how temperamental it is. During development, I didn’t want to risk losing all of my save data halfway through the game’s plot. That happened to Mother creator Shigesato Itoi once during the original game’s creation. I did not experience it thankfully.

Creating a role-playing epic is essentially the equivalent of writing an epic fantasy novel. Although you could save anywhere in the game just like when you’re done with a specific chapter, there were several stretches where that wasn’t possible. If I screwed up at any point, whether it would be due to a game-breaking bug or another issue, I would have to start that segment all over again. Sometimes, it was other factors like my graphics card crashing which I ended up fighting for a few years and explained in the previous video like this. Other times, it was a power cut. I can’t count how many times that happened on one hand.

Mythos of Phantasmagoria was influenced by several other role-playing franchises that I’ve played including Undertale, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Pokémon, the lattermost two of which had the biggest influence on me. Although I got my start in the industry with danmaku shooters, I’ve been wanting to create an RPG for a long time, and telling the life story of King Kourin and Queen Marisa was a good fit. How many games did I make before Mythos of Phantasmagoria? Eight, to be exact.

I invested over $25,000 into this project. The first 5,000 of which came from my personal savings when I was working at that tech support job and the other 20,000 came to me from my family during the 2022 holiday season.

When I was writing the plot, I wanted to make sure the timeline was connected with Chuhou Joutai’s timeline, as evidenced by the enemies, soundtrack, and characters. Speaking of the soundtrack, I composed and/or arranged every single song you hear in the game. This was my first time truly creating music on the AdLib/SoundBlaster card after a failed attempt in the original Chuhou Joutai.

Long story short, this was a different kind of game I created which also meant a much different creative process. Overall, this entire game was a ton of hard work and I’m really proud of what I’ve accomplished. It was something I really wanted to do, and I was happy to finish it.

Bringing Touhou Meijinka Into the Web Browser?

The game that came after was Touhou Meijinka. Speaking of which, we may plan to put the game online as an HTML file in the future. This will allow our players who might not be able to download and play the game to try it on the web. GameMaker has the ability to export games into HTML5. The game’s backbone would run on some form of JavaScript. I don’t think doing something like that would be simple. If you’re an experienced programmer like I am, most Windows, MacOS, and Linux applications usually require dependencies in order to run. Some of the other challenges include having to get the graphics and audio to function properly and fix lag issues. The game is open-source, so you’re welcome to port the game to other platforms. You can view the GitHub repository here.

Sequel to Touhou Kourinden

If you’ve been following my Twitter and Instagram pages, you may have noticed I’m working on a sequel to Touhou Kourinden. After being impressed with E. Enthusiasm’s work on Touhou Meijinka, I was convinced he could help do the graphics for our next project. Well, I didn’t think it would be as simple as I thought. I pretty much ran into the same issues with Emiko Hosokawa during the development of Touhou Meijinka. You know that SpongeBob episode Procrastination? He was tasked with writing an 800-word essay on what not to do at a stoplight but all he just did was procrastinate. This was essentially the same thing. I ended up creating a private Google Docs file about the things he would need to do. Sometimes, it would take weeks for him to put out a single set of completed sprites. Eventually, it got so bad that I decided to step in and pen whatever graphics he couldn’t.

If you’re interested in working with us on this project, we have set up a dedicated Careers page on our website. We’re always looking for aspiring artists to contribute their wisdom to our projects. This new game might not release for more than a year, but we hope to get it done as soon as possible.

Drillimation’s Tenth Anniversary, Plus Another Appearance at Erie Anime Fest

Now that I have the past out of the way, we need to talk about the future. Next month in August will be the biggest month for us. It’s been ten years since I founded Drillimation. Around that time in 2014, I had just entered my freshman year of high school. I founded it to create GoAnimate videos. I quit making them in early 2016 and decided to transition to full game development. Our first title ended up becoming the original Chuhou Joutai. It spent two years in preproduction before it officially entered development after I finished high school. Its release wouldn’t happen until early in the pandemic.

What was the world doing at the time in 2014? Firstly, Discord didn’t exist yet, and I wasn’t on any major social media platform besides Instagram. This channel is actually the second incarnation. The original was banished into oblivion after I entered the game industry. I was in the process of restructuring at the time. There was no face until I formally unveiled myself to the public in October of 2019. Despite my troubled start, I am still able to look back and appreciate on how I kickstarted the Drillimation you know today. If it weren’t for Chuhou Joutai, the Touhou Project NES Demakes, or Mythos of Phantasmagoria, you would’ve never known a thing about me, and I wouldn’t have known a thing about you. Those ten years have created a wild ride and all those memories created since have gone far beyond what I have done.

Even though I will still be working on Mythos of Phantasmagoria’s sequel at that time, we have a bunch of originals and arranges planned. On Wednesdays, I will do PC-98 originals, while Saturdays will be EoSD-style arranges of songs I have composed in the past, kind of like what I did for that Hifuu album. And remember the Erie Anime Fest convention I attended back in March? I’m going to be there again on the first weekend of August, so if you’re attending, don’t forget to stop by my booth.

Outro

That said, we’ve reached the halfway point of this year. Let’s give it all we have this summer or winter.