Touhou Luna Nights

Every market we collect.

Matched by title — a reused name can pair the wrong games. * is a critic aggregate. Prices and positions are each store's United States storefront; Epic charts worldwide. Audience and Score too, except Steam's, which is worldwide.

Hours played at review time, across 876 reviews with recorded playtime.

positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up

Throughout my time with this game, I am amazed at just how many good things this game does as a smaller-scale fangame that’s derivative from the Touhou Series. This game blends the elements from the mainline games with the metroidvania formula so well it creates such an interesting and unique gameplay experience that you don’t really find anywhere else in the genre. [h3]The Gameplay[/h3] You play as Sakuya Izayoi, the head maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and with her ability to manipulate time with her pocket watch, she can turn the tides of combat into her favor. In this game, your basic attacks cost MP and she throws out her signature knives, and this meter slowly recovers over time, or you can opt to graze the enemy by standing close to them without touching or getting hit. This creates a sense of risk reward to where you might sometimes need to purposely get close to the enemy to be able to continue dealing damage. Where the combat and exploration gets pretty interesting is when you gain the ability to both slow down time, and stop time completely. Slowing down time gives you more opportune time to avoid attacks or navigate tricky sections easier, and stopping time allows you to pause everything for a brief moment and reposition and set up your attacks. Any attacks you use in your time-stop state consume the time gauge, and the attacks will stay on screen until the time becomes unstopped. The way it was implemented is super satisfying and the trick never gets old. While this sounds broken in concept, the game is pretty balanced around it, but this game won’t be the hardest thing you ever played probably, which is not a bad thing. [h3]The Story (or lack thereof)[/h3] As for the story, there basically is nothing substantial, just character interactions between Sakuya and the other [b]Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (EoSD)[/b] cast of girls from [u]Touhou 6[/u]. You’ll find familiar faces through characters like Meiling, Marisia, Patchouli, and Remilia for example along with some other cameos. Even if you have no knowledge of the characters from EoSD or what happens, you can honestly still fully enjoy it as besides the characters nothing really will confuse you without having the proper context for anything. [h3]The Music[/h3] As for the music, the soundtrack mainly features remixes of stage and boss themes from EoSD which sort of fit more inline with the locations they are used in and fit the metroidvania style. While the original Touhou tracks are iconic and hard to beat, these remixes are still really solid on their own, and highlight just how good Touhou music is just in general. [h3]Potential Downside & Final Thoughts[/h3] The only downside for this game is just how short it is. I wish it went on even for a little bit longer, but I guess the flipside is that nothing in this game truly overstays its welcome. However I do believe the game does a lot within this short game length to really stand out and offer a unique experience for something in the metroidvania genre with Sakuya’s timestop ability. Overall, just a solid game that even people who aren’t super into Touhou can enjoy. While short, it provides a lot of fun gameplay elements blending in Touhou mechanics from the mainline bullet hell games with a metroidvania, mainly the time manipulation being the main standout and highlight of this game.