State of Drillimation: Summer 2025

I’ve begun every one of my on-screen appearances with the word “greetings”, but things are different this time around. We’re about ready to hit eleven years of Drillimation existing next month. Ever since August 20, 2014 when I created my very first GoAnimate video and after transitioning to fanon wikis and game development a few years later, I’m still making games. However, it’s been a very bizarre past three months, and things have been nuts.

Touhou Chouhatsuyou ~ Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity

Both my own and Hosokawa’s lives have been turned upside down when I released Touhou Chouhatsuyou ~ Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity, and the latter’s Discord account was hacked. I mentioned that a number of times on this website, and Hosokawa-san is still locked out of Discord as of this posting. This is a big deal that really wrecked Studio Emiko. In fact, Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity can explain that it’s tough to make what you want while balancing what your players want. The vast majority of this stuff is done all by me, and it’s unexplainable to describe what happened after the beta came out.

Ever since Hosokawa’s hacking and forcing us to communicate with each other on Reddit, things on my Discord server have fallen silent and has sent me back to the basics before the release of the Touhou 3: The Phantasmagoria of Dimensional Dreams NES Demake. In response to the critical failure of Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity, Hosokawa backed away from designing for Drillimation games to focus on her Ciel Chandelleur VTuber project full time, while still keeping up with her university stuff.

Ever since I got upended, I decided to create an entirely new world for my next game. I will be breaking old trends by stating it won’t be a Touhou Project fangame, but rather a prequel to the Chuhou Joutai trilogy by starring the parents of Kumiko Uchida, who in case you don’t know, is a non-player character in the first two games and is actually playable in the third game. That change is giving me an opportunity to try new things. I had initially planned to do a Chuhou Joutai prequel set in the 1980s as early as 2022 when Three Nights of Scarlet Abscess released, but pressure from Studio Emiko led me to put it off and focus on the Mythos of Phantasmagoria duology. At last, I have gotten the opportunity to do it, while still releasing new YouTube videos every Wednesday and Saturday.

It’s unpredictable on what you want to make, and this change could result in a better game than what I’ve done in the past. I don’t know about you, but one day you may take the chance to reanalyze a lesser-received Drillimation game and make it into a cult classic. I’ve already explained a lot, but my main focus is explaining how things have been and going, as well as the future of Drillimation Systems. I had to make some adjustments to the company and my own life. It is understandable that things have to change. First off, let’s talk about the status of the company as a whole.

The Start of the Drillimation-Studio Emiko Feud

Over the past seven years, I have produced twelve titles with a thirteenth one in development, and the majority of them are freeware. The rest are proprietary games, with such examples being the Chuhou Joutai trilogy, the Mythos of Phantasmagoria games, and my in-development project. On average, I’ve been releasing between one and two games a year. 2020 and 2022 saw the most number of releases at three. It is understandable that great games require a significant amount of time and effort, and you’ll need at least a year and a half to make a good game.

The Touhou Project NES Demakes remain the most popular series from Drillimation, partly because they are adaptations of the PC-98 games. On the other side, my YouTube channel seems to get more love out of the music I compose and/or arrange. Either way, I thank all of you for your support and viewership. The only way I can keep you glued to my channel is by releasing two videos a week, regardless of what goes through the algorithm. I did these videos for fun, and never did I think it would evolve into something that would be popular on this channel, other than trailers for my games. In terms of the future, I am planning to join a multi-channel network to help fund Drillimation’s development as well as future videos.

Things had been going well until the release of Touhou Chouhatsuyou ~ Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity. Little did I know it would end up tying my own and your hair in a million knots, and things ended up turning this way once the beta released. Not to mention in the weekend before the game officially released, Hosokawa was reportedly logged out of Discord and when she tried to log back in, her email and password were changed, and her account was sending spam DMs to other users. It was confirmed she was hacked. It devastated both of us and we still have a lot to go through before she can get back on the site.

The past two and a half months have been utterly painful. A lot of you are probably asking if she’s doing okay. She may be doing well at the surface level, but not really deep down. I’ve already explained this, but she’s still locked out. Neither one of us are grateful to be in that position, and things could’ve been way worse. It’s possible for things to still be rebuilt, and I still have Reddit for communication. We’re also struggling to figure out what to do, and after seeing everything we’ve been through, it could all go away in an instant. We ended up facing the reality of everything changing, and we had to seriously think about what the heck we could do from this point on.

I had to fast-track the next stage of Drillimation after Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity. While I’m working on that new project, I’ve been forced to sit and wait while things are happening on Hosokawa’s side. I’m still worried that things may fall apart and she would be unable to return to Discord. For me, you’re still downloading and playing the demakes. My other games might not be that popular, but it’s a positive side effect to see one series still getting traction. Anyway, we’re just hoping she returns to Discord by the end of this month, but that is subject to change depending on circumstances. She is currently making progress at the moment. Things can’t pay for everything; it’s just how life goes. I will surely keep you updated on social media on when she may be returning.

The Next Project and the Future

And now, the moment you have all been waiting for is the future. I have two big goals. Once Hosokawa finally returns to Discord, I have plans to redevelop my engine to be more in line with Danmakufu, which in case you don’t know, is a popular danmaku engine for making your own Touhou-style games. A lot of you are asking why I didn’t use the engine for my previous games. Well, this was to avoid engine licensing costs as well as present everything in my pixelated style. Hosokawa has plans to direct another title and I want to avoid the mistakes I made with Touhou Meijinka ~ Song of Divine Tempest as well as Touhou Chouhatsuyou ~ Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity which I’ve mentioned countless times now.

The other thing I want to do is more traveling for graphics research and conventions. I’m always there to welcome new players and greet existing ones. What about my ambitions outside my hometown? I may have invites to attend other gaming and anime conventions across the country, as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Australia, you name it. It may be tough to wait around, and you can only go if your health and finances permit. I was not surprised to have one guy who was a featured artist at Touhou Fest in Torrance, California stop by my booth. He happened to be a Touhou player as well and recommended I go there.

I’ve attended every Anime Fest since its inauguration last year, but the next one in August is not Anime Fest. It got replaced with a new convention named Pokékon, which as the name suggests is dedicated to all things Pokémon. I don’t really have anything related to present even though I’m a huge fan of the games, so I decided to skip it. I’m still looking forward to Legends Z-A this October. Speaking of which, I got my Nintendo Switch 2 and Mario Kart World on launch day. I was unable to preorder the console and also couldn’t sleep the night before as I was so worried I wouldn’t be able to pick one up, but I accomplished my mission that morning.

There was one other thing I forgot to mention, and that was Touhou Kichouden ~ Mythos of Phantasmagoria 2. The game is still releasing on Steam on September 26, 2025. For the past five years, we have been releasing one game on Steam, and 2025 will mark the first time that I’ll be releasing two games on the platform. Three years ago, we marked the end of an era with the conclusion of the Chuhou Joutai trilogy and Touhou Project NES Demakes. This year will also mark the end of another era for us with the conclusion of the Chuhou Joutai origin story. That doesn’t mean that Mythos of Phantasmagoria is going away, though we may develop another one sometime in the future, if time allows.

Afterword

Anyway, after everything that has happened this year, I’m just praying I can do what I must. My next responsibility is reshaping my reputation in a way the fans want. This also includes my future game projects. There are a lot of things that prevent me from making things happen. I need to have my adventures funded, not just in the real world, but in the virtual worlds I’ve created as well.

After eleven years of Drillimation, I don’t really have anything else to say for now. Nevertheless, you have all kept things going especially since Hosokawa’s hacking. Your comments, emails, and criticism have helped us find solutions and workarounds to these problems as well as improve the overall experience. I put all of my energy into everything I’ve released over those eleven years. We’re happy to still be here for the years to come, whether or not accounts get hacked or any other unexpected events.

We hope you had fun seeing this retrospective on ourselves. We’re still in a weird situation but it will all be better within the coming months. Again, I really appreciate your support and understanding throughout all of this. If you want to stick around for the future, don’t forget to subscribe as we have other Drillimation projects in the works. They’ll all be coming out pretty soon. Thank you very much for watching and have a good day.