What am I Thinking of When I Foreshadow My Future?

I associate most of my earliest childhood memories playing video games. I had no idea that several years from the very game I played, I would end up creating what many people know it now as Drillimation. My legion of players eagerly await my next move when something we created gets launched.

What a lot of players don’t actually know is I am a game director and producer. This is very similar to the director and producer roles in a film. My website’s name can mislead people to think I only do animations. Not just that. While I am a big anime fan, I make all kinds of things inspired by anime, including music, artwork for games and non-games, and comedy skits. The name of Drillimation refers to the style of game development where I create games with plots that resemble that of film. I always go crazy making games and try to make the experience feel like a big blockbuster Hollywood movie. All I do is make games because I like to entertain people.

Because I make games at such a fast pace, a lot of these games have a rushed production quality. Rushing is never a good thing to do, but there have been plenty of rushed games that have been good or even great. The games usually take a couple of months from a one-man team, but a few projects I have worked on, particularly, the first Chuhou Joutai game and Mythos of Phantasmagoria, have taken a few years. The short-term projects always leaves me left with many spontaneous ideas.

The original Chuhou Joutai is basically part of a sentimental retrospective of what I’ve experienced during my youth. Little did I know that one side project I made after Chuhou Joutai would end up becoming part of what would become a shared universe called the Drillimation Danmaku Universe. When the side project got popular, I decided to continue by making another Chuhou Joutai game. That game ended up becoming Chuhou Joutai 2: Paraided!. It definitely explained my huge interest in Japanese culture and mythology.

I went a step further on that project by increasing the difficulty similar to that of the original Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2 (or The Lost Levels). How over-the-top and mad the character known as Susumu Takajima would be? His rage would go way out of control in terms of strength in the game. Chuhou Joutai’s inspirational franchise, Touhou Project, would sort of parallel the same path in terms of the playable character by having him wear red.

After Paraided!‘s release in 2021 and due to popular demand, I decided to continue with that side project series I was working on where I ported the first five Touhou Project games to modern PCs in the form of NES games. I’ve already finished that series, and a lot of people came to like them, as well as ask for more. It’s a ton of ideas, but I only have a few to focus on. Since the pandemic, my focus has been on the Drillimation Danmaku Universe. They require less skills than making a AAA 3D game. Whatever themes I go with will bring in new fans as some may have struck with the whole Touhou Project community.

The first game that I made with a smaller studio named Studio Emiko was Touhou Meijinka ~ Song of Divine Tempest. I started putting more effort into these project and brought in a man named E. Enthusiasm to do the game’s graphics. I asked him to do them in the style of a Super Nintendo game, and he ended up cranking out sprites of that game’s cast and objects that fit the console’s hardware limitations.

Since I had a lot of players playing the demakes and the engagement on my other projects is lower, I wanted to create a danmaku game in another genre, but have it not be a scrolling shooter. The first game that utilizes this would go on to be Mythos of Phantasmagoria. This game would feature an epic story spanning six acts, and would follow the life story of a person from childhood to marriage.

Dialogue is enough to tell these game’s stories, but the more special effects I input in these games, the longer they take to complete. Mythos of Phantasmagoria took a lot of time to do and is considered one of my most elaborate. There will be future titles of this scale and some that are not. They’re all different. When I make a Touhou Project fangame, creating the classic scrolling shooter is much easier than a role-playing game. I always try to come up with what would be good for the game, and it is hit or miss. I don’t know what people will think and I always try to change up what I’m doing.

Sometimes it can be difficult to know if things will be humorous. The whole fate of the game is determined based on my mood at the time of preproduction. I appreciate what the fans have done to help improve the games, and I read every comment on my YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram pages. I can’t respond to every single one though and it is tough to do it on the side.

My hope is to get back into the smaller games someday. I have tons of ideas, tons of scripts, and all kinds of stuff on my backlog. By purchasing or donating to Drillimation, you are definitely helping keep the company run. I thank all of you for playing because they would’ve never existed without my involvement.