2025 was a golden year for Touhou Project fangames with heavy hitters such as Fantasy Maiden Wars and the breakout success of Touhou Dystopian. When there is a light, there will always be a shadow. In the world of fangames, that shadow is often filled with broken hitboxes, uninspired asset flips, and ridiculous prices.
While Team Shanghai Alice released Touhou 20: Fossilized Wonders that year, the fan community was busy churning out hundreds of titles. Not all of them landed on their feed. From games that ran at a framerate lower than a PowerPoint presentation to those that leaned so hard into fanon memes, they forgot to include actual gameplay. Here are ten of the titles that made us wish Reimu Hakurei would seal and/or exterminate at the Hakurei Shrine.
10. Touhou: Heartful Threads
This game started off as a game jam entry, but it suffers from the curse of unbalanced gameplay. It features some of the most frustratingly inconsistent hitboxes. The difficulty spikes aren’t based on pattern recognition but on pixel-perfect gaps that the engine isn’t precise enough to handle, making the later stages a chore of trial and error rather than a test of skill. What about the rating? It holds an average of 4.75 stars out of 5 based on four reviews, so it may have some good redeeming qualities.
This product belongs to the “Debatably Bad” category of the AVGN Scale because it grew too big for its own good. While it does have some fans, the frustratingly inconsistent hitboxes make it a trial of patience rather than skill. It does have the heart, but the programming is a mess.
9. Touhou Chouhatsuyou ~ Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity
Oh boy. I’ve already mentioned this a million times now, but this was a game I made and it was my biggest mistake that year. Despite the gameplay being mostly fine, some critics have pointed out the graphics appear to look like they were assembled from multiple asset packs, in addition to the Super Nintendo and Sega Master System-inspired graphics, causing things to look like an unpolished asset dump. I deny this wrongdoing; both E. Enthusiasm and I were responsible for penning the graphics, even though some asset packs were used for reference to ensure it fits the world. The plot, centered around growing hair, is as thin as the textures it uses. Critical reception of this game is mixed, with most of the criticism coming from major fans of the series and the flaws I just mentioned.
This product belongs to the “High Contamination” category of the AVGN Scale because it is a bizarre, unpolished asset dump. The mixed art styles of clashing SNES and Master System aesthetics make it look like a Frankenstein’s monster of asset packs. A plot about growing hair? It’s as thin as the textures it uses.
8. Minoriko’s Homestead Harvest
This farming simulator is the definition of minimal effort. It features super basic mechanics and environments that look like they were pulled directly from a generic cozy farm asset kit without any Touhou-specific flair. It’s a game in the most technical sense, but with zero balance in its economy and no actual depth, and it feels like a hollow shell designed to catch a few quick bucks from the farming sim craze. Bizarrely, the game holds a 100% rating on Steam based on 48 reviews.
This product belongs to the “Very High” category of the AVGN Scale because it’s a cozy game without a soul. It’s a generic farming asset kit with a Touhou skin slapped on top. There is zero balance in the economy and zero depth. It’s a hollow shell designed for a quick buck.
7. Cross the Boundaries
While technically a 2D adventure horror game, this title was panned for its heavy reliance on stock RPG Maker assets with very little original art to bridge the gap. In a year where the use of AI-generated assets became a major controversy, this game felt like the tipping point for itch.io – a project that spent all its time on a deep story but forgot to provide a visual experience that wasn’t just Standard Asset Pack #4. Like the previous one, it appears to have a 100% rating based on 57 reviews.
This product belongs to the “Severe Zone” category of the AVGN Scale because it neglects visuals in favor of a story that most players won’t stick around to read because the world looks so incredibly generic and uninspired.
6. Touhou: Lensed Night Sky
Currently in early access, this game got called out for its uncomfortable off-model art style and unbalanced mechanics. Players describe the gameplay as Touhou 18: Unconnected Marketeers on steroids, with an experience that is forgiving and monotonous, relying on luck rather than skill-based balance. On Steam, it holds a 93% rating based on 66 reviews.
This product belongs to the “Very High” category of the AVGN Scale because it’s an asset flip of Unconnected Marketeers that replaces skill with pure, dumb lock. The art looks like a rejected fever dream and the gameplay is as stimulating as watching paint dry in a vacuum. It’s a glorified screensaver that forgot to be fun.
5. Touhou Fractured Transience
This was a game that was eventually canceled. It was a Super Smash Bros. style game that was criticized for its poor quality and lack of functional content. It featured a barebones experience with only a couple of playable courses and characters, often cited as a cautionary tale of a developer taking on a project without the assets or technical skill to finish it. On itch.io, it holds a rating of 4.33 stars out of 5 based on three reviews.
This product belongs to the “Major Code Red” category of the AVGN Scale because it’s a broken premise in a box – a Smash Bros. clone that was so poorly optimized and unfinished that it had a couple of characters before being abandoned. It’s a cautionary tale of a dev biting off more than they could chew.
4. Touhou: Reimu’s Infinite Debt Collector
While the premise of debt collection had potential, this title was panned for being a clunky physics-based platformer in a franchise built on precision. Players were tasked with shaking down other characters for donations, and the collision detection is so broken that Reimu would frequently phase through the floor or get launched into the stratosphere upon touching a wall. Common flaws included the use of a five-second loop of a distorted remix of the famous song “Bad Apple!!” that is unmutable in the settings, Reimu falling asleep every thirty seconds unless you clicked a “Coffee” button in a separate menu, and the GUI covers 40% of the screen’s real estate, making it impossible to see incoming hazards or platforms. Unfortunately, I could not find images relating to this game.
This product belongs to the “Major Code Red” category of the AVGN Scale because it’s the absolute bottom – physics that launch you into an orbit, an unmutable 5-second audio loop from hell, and a coffee button that stops you from playing every 30 seconds. It is the purest form of digital torture ever released in 2025.
3. Touhou: Forlorn Souls of Wicked Past
This game definitely lived up to the definition of asset flipping, or asset thieving in this case. While many fangames use remixes of themes to fit the environment of the game being made, it reused official game assets and actual recordings of official music, all in violation of Team Shanghai Alice’s guidelines. It was cited by watchdogs as an asset flipper’s dream, where the developer simply flipped the official spirits and audio into a generic engine and then sold the product for a quick profit. Not to mention, it didn’t sit well with Fumio Oyamada, who was the same guy who sent mass takedowns for videos related to Fossilized Wonders that same year. To date, no players have reviewed the game, and has yet to be taken down.
This product belongs to the “Severe Zone” category of the AVGN Scale because it’s a legal disaster. This game doesn’t just borrow ideas; it plagiarizes official sprites and recordings. It’s a total asset flipper’s dream that spits in the face of Team Shanghai Alice’s fanwork guidelines.
2. Touhou: The Destruction of the Moon
This game became a hall of shame favorite for its extremely unquestionable art quality, which many players suspected of being traced. Despite being a functional danmaku title, critics slammed the blindingly bright backgrounds and inconsistent hitboxes that made high-level play nearly impossible. One reviewer noted that even the difficulty bonus math seemed broken, awarding millions of points on the easiest difficulty for no apparent reason.
This product belongs to the “Very High” category of the AVGN Scale because it’s an assault on the eyes. Between the traced artwork and the backgrounds that are so bright to the point of giving you a migraine, it’s practically unplayable. The broken scoring math makes the entire danmaku experience feel pointless.
1. Touhou Possession Incident
To top off the list and even though a demo released in 2025, this title became a lightning rod for criticism due to heavy reliance on AI-generated content. The game attempts to pull images in real time from external galleries such as Gelbooru to illustrate its narrative, leading to frequent game freezes of up to several minutes during gameplay. Common issues included not being completely able to move between locations, essentially soft-locking the game within minutes, images often failing to load entirely resulting in error messages instead of art, and unless you have a powerful GPU, the in-browser model often chugs, causing complex menu systems to feel sluggish and unresponsive. Again, I couldn’t find screenshots from this title.
This product belongs to the “Debatably Bad” category of the AVGN Scale because it is a technical experiment gone wrong. Relying on AI-generated assets that pull from external galleries in real time is a recipe for disaster, causing the game to soft-lock and freeze your browser constantly.
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