What’s the Yao Queen and Okiku Princess Doing Now?

Yesterday marked one year since the release of the infamous Touhou Chouhatsuyou ~ Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity. What was intended to be a unique exploration in the world of Touhou Project fangames quickly evolved into a journey and lightning rod of debate we never quite expected. Looking back at the initial launch with the beta to the official release, it was anything but smooth. A year later, it was time to pull back the curtain on what happened, how it became the most divisive title in our library, and how we’ve made a recovery in our next venture.

Frankly, this isn’t the first time we’ve made a bad or mediocre step in our games, but this one felt different. While Touhou Meijinka ~ Song of Divine Tempest had its fair share of hurdles we had to learn from, Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity hit a specific one. The concept of a bad hair day where your hair overgrows to the floor became a lightning rod for absurdity. It was a wake-up call that some ideas, no matter how unique we think they are at the moment, don’t simply land.

The game’s short development of two and a half months and heavy executive meddling left the final product feeling like a train wreck to many. This is why the feud between Drillimation Systems and Studio Emiko exists – it was a hard lesson in how creative differences and strange concepts can dismantle years of partnership. The visual of evading danmaku while dragging a massive head of hair ended up being unintentionally hilarious, and you never got to see the gothic horror the latter studio originally envisioned. It became a franchise-altering mistake that forced us to completely rethink how we design characters.

When we began work on Shining Shattering Sky ~ Reverie of Breaking Unreality, the shift in character design was both a creative necessity and a direct response to the feud. Moving away from super long hair that defined the previous title to much shorter hairstyles was only the beginning. Both Tomohiro Uchida and Hikari Aogami had shorter hair from the start, and they fit their roles as university students and religious clergy. Our aim was to return to the form of storytelling from our previous games, including Chuhou Joutai and Mythos of Phantasmagoria.

Beyond these shifts, the characters from that game were designed to be the antithesis of Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity. Instead of the over-the-top concepts like what you may have seen with Yuugiku and Mabayu Kanbe, we focused on a more relatable narrative that told the love story of Tomohiro and Hikari. By establishing them as the eventual parents of Kumiko Uchida, we were able to return to more traditional character-driven forms of storytelling, proving that a strong hairstyle for a girl doesn’t need to be as feminine as the others.

Building on this design shift, when we started work on Touhou Meishuugeki ~ Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel, this game represents the next stage of this evolution. While it returns to the manic shooter genre, it carries forward the lessons learned from the feud by abandoning hair-growing scents entirely, and neither the keratin vitamins mentioned in the two Mythos of Phantasmagoria games are present. Instead, we leaned into a more detailed, polished aesthetic with revamped graphics that far surpass our previous efforts. Gone are the arcade-style coin mechanics for a more traditional health and life system. Our focus now is remaining on the previous game’s form of storytelling.

This game will serve as the ultimate technical and mechanical palate cleanser for us. As we went back to the drawing board to build an entirely new engine inspired by Danmakufu, we were able to implement more authentic features like deathbombing that prioritize the player’s experience. It happens to be working great as of this moment, and a high-performance step will help feel like a true homecoming for the Drillimation Danmaku Universe. If we keep pushing further, we will get out of this dark age.

If the Emiverse franchise has plans for a new title, it will be clear that I will no longer serve as lead programmer or producer. If you look at the latest streams of Ciel Chandelleur, she has been streaming a lot of Stardew Valley and Fields of Mistria. One day, she envisioned an idea for a game that would be a cross in gameplay between Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. The concept of neighbors moving in and gaining the opportunity to romance them would be a really brilliant idea on paper.

The creative gap between our philosophies, specifically Drillimation’s insistence on emulating the games of the 1980s and 1990s, versus Studio Emiko’s preference for modern, polished aesthetics, makes the opportunities for a future collaboration very difficult. I will allow the Emiverse franchise to grow up into a franchise separate from the Drillimation Danmaku Universe. If Studio Emiko releases the first screenshot of such title, I could always envision what tunes the player would hear, all in the signature Touhou Project style from Touhou 6: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, though they don’t have to be used in-game.

A lot has changed in that year since. Ba Youju married a Japanese man she met when she arrived in Gensokyo, and her marriage to Ichimatsu Kanbe made her Yuugiku Kanbe. If you’ve read in Touhou Mihomu ~ Mythos of Phantasmagoria After Years, their daughter Mabayu had long since dreamt of marrying a Chinese man, and she has since become Shen Xuan. While these stories have reached their end, they served as the catalyst for the evolution that we’ve been seeing. By leaving the dark age behind in the rearview mirror, the lessons of the past have been learned, and I’m excited for the next chapter in the Drillimation Danmaku Universe.