Touhou Multi Scroll Shooting is a lazy 2D retro shoot 'em up made by using someone else's IP and slapping some assets onto a basic Unreal shmup engine. Unsurprisingly, a game made in such a lazy, derivative way is of extremely poor quality, and has no value or merit as a serious PC game.
This is an unabashed, lazy ripoff of Touhou Project (Copyright ZUN, 1997). Many lazy "amateur" developers don't pay attention to their obligations under copyright law, and often steal the ideas of actual, real game developers without credit, such as the "developer" here has done. At this stage no legal action has been taken by ZUN against the "developer" here, but it's never off the table, as previous copyright law cases have shown. Now, it's true that ZUN has in the past permitted some limited derivative use of his copyrighted work, but [i]only for non-commercial use.[/i] While this game is currently without any price, the developer [i]was violating ZUNs copyright by using Touhou Project for commercial purposes without permission.[/i] This is not okay!
Putting aside the unethical intellectual bankruptcy of stealing someone else's copyright works for profit, this is also breaking that unwritten law of stealing other people's game ideas... you should at least try to do better than the game you're ripping off. Touhou Multi Scroll Shooting is considerably worse than Touhou Project.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The developers didn't design the game for modern gaming PCs, as such the display resolution caps out at 1080p, a very low resolution that became mainstream back in 2006 and became obsolete when 4K entered the mainstream in 2014. The game simply won't look right on modern gaming displays due to this failure on the part of the developers.
Touhou Multi Scroll Shooting didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the game, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for finishing the first level, trivial to get, but less than 32 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the game.
The poor quality of this game is also reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 3 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
The game is currently free, but the developers were charging money for it. Nothing speaks more to a developers belief in themselves and their product than making their game available for everyone without remuneration, but this is also in some ways an acknowledgement that the game failed to achieve any commercial success (unsurprising due to the quality issues). It's a shame in this case that the implementation is below the minimum standards a dedicated PC game should offer to enthusiasts. The quality here is simply too low for me to recommend, even for free.
[b][quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/quote][/b]Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
The developer insists they're not breaching this copyright license agreement:
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki:Copyrights
You know, the license terms that ZUN placed on his wholly owned Touhou Project intellectual property. The license that specifically states you can't sell derivative works based on his IP for profit, you absolutely cannot sell such works on app stores and other marketplaces, as the developer was doing... deliberately breaching a copyright agreement and using someone else's IP for profit! The license is very plain in this regard, and the "developer" of this crap bit of IP infringement decided laws don't matter and breached the license. For money. Unacceptable.
The developers only excuse? Other people committed copyright infringement for profit, in breach of many laws in many regions, so therefore it's okay if I do it.
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the important facts of my review. The impetus of my review is unchanged. I cannot recommend this game to anyone. Absolutely don't reward copyright thieves.
