RAIN Project - a touhou fangame Reviews

Let me start by saying I cannot recommend this game enough. The visuals are beautiful, the music is perpetually wonderful, and the controls are tighter than vinyl pants on a hot day. Never once did I feel like it was the game's fault I died. And you will die. A lot. But it tosses you right back in to try again with almost no wait. So its mostly painless. The bosses are very hard but all of them feel fair. All of them have a means where they're able to partially be cheesed (such as dodging nitori's stage one strikes with a jump instead of stutter stepping back) which makes the fights not easy but winnable. And they're set up in such a way where every new try you feel like you get it a little bit more and can press forward. Nothing is overwhelming. Of course there's no such thing as perfection. I have a couple small nitpicks and one slightly less small nitpick. Firstly, if an enemy starts an attack and you kill it before it finishes the sound effect of the attack will still play. It can be startling with some enemies. Secondly, when some bosses begin a projectile based attack and die before they get a chance to "finish" said attack then the attack will still happen as they transition into the next phase of their boss battle. Even if they had just started the attack and no visible projectiles spawned. The last nitpick is a bit bigger but I imagine will be patched in at some point. The controls, as far as I've been able to tell, cannot be remapped. This isn't *too* big of an issue as the game is absolutely playable as is but I would have really liked to change the jump button or create a redundant jump button on my mouse for finer control while my left hand is occupied with other buttons. But, again, these are nitpicks. The game is an absolute joy to play. A must-buy for platformer fans. EDIT: Alright. After getting significantly further in the game I gotta say I agree with the reviews calling Aya's boss fight unfair. It's difficult to do consistantly due to RNG low platform density and the fact I could never accurately predict what angle the crows were coming from and would occasionally get caught in a place where the crows were covering every single platform I could reach. Which significantly raised the difficulty of the fight to where my feeling of progressing and improving basically ground to a halt. Especially since the nature of the fight made it difficult to get to the fourth and final phase with the camera. It would only take a very small tweak to improve the fight though. Give the player an extra .25 - .5 seconds from the alert for the crows appearing to them actually moving across the screen. Secondly, Aya's body shouldn't do contact damage during the picture taking portion of the fight. This is just my opinion, however, and I'm unable to test the potential balance with these changes. Currently, however, I'm on the Kanako fight which others have also said is unfair. The first three attacks are difficult but the rules are easily understood and I feel like when I get hit its my fault and not because the game was unfair. I've yet to attempt the stylish running section enough to talk about it but its not bad imo so far yet. (also the fight right before the kanako fight was amazing and perfect Jussayen)

The developers of that game deserve more attention. Well done. While by any means that's not a major game, it's solid enough in gameplay and have just the right feeling of balancing multiple elements, like storying telling and visual/audio presentation. It'll be lying to say the game's pixel art is stunning or music breath-taking. And the gameplay cannot win an award at some indie event. But, there's too many cases when other developers had much better game mechanic designers, artist and composers, yet just failed to make a game that gives a "complete" feeling. This game, as the opposite case, managed it. That's a unique, precious talent, reminding me of famous Japanese doujin titles, like Touhou itself. Keep up the good work. And find you some good artists! On steam, fine graphic is best marketing! You know, like Touhou Night Festival. Besides, the free roam part feels lackluster. It's neither fun enough to make the game gameplay-oriented, nor presentative enough to blend into boss fights.

-06/10- As much as i'd like this game to be great, it just isn't all that good. Level design is decent for the most, and bad ocasionally. Gameplay (outside of bossfights) is pretty good for the most part Now the bossfights... Are pretty shit. Some of the ealier bosses in the game has a few mistakes, but are generaly pretty good. However in the later parts of the game, even the final boss, it's just infuriatingly unfair. There's unconsistent hitboxes, attacks that you litteraly have no way of dodgeing and game mechanics that shoudn't even be there. Those unfair bosses really makes the whole experience with the game worse, and in my opinion the game really isn't worth it unless you're a huge Touhou fan. Also just as a sidenote: If this game didn't have the Touhou theme, it'd have way lower rateings as the most people writeing reviews are subjective Touhou fans. Edit- I forgot to mention that when you do finaly beat one of those bosses, it is really satisfying.

If I was going to reduce RAIN Project to its gameplay, I could not give it a thumbs-up by any means. Ideas and patterns for the boss encounters are very clever, but the shoddy programing holds the experience back severely. Touhou fangames usually give you generous hitboxes for your character. Here, they are noticably in the enemy's favour and you'll often get hit when it feels like you shouldn't have. Sanae's glitchy interaction with platforms that can be jumped through from below is also a big issue: In the boss fight of the Tengu Caves, randomly falling through these platforms is no rare occurence. This makes an already tricky encounter artificially challenging. A shame, since it is a thematically very impressive one. It'd be worse if the game were so easy you wouldn't care what you did, but like I said: Not always hard for the right reasons. The strong point of this title is its presentation. Very few Touhou games are this atmospheric and melancholic in the mood of the world that's painted to you. Most of them settle for a more light-hearted approach and that makes RAIN project memorable. The writing hits a good balance: It's delightful where it aims to be, but stays brief enough to work as an action game. In the end, the "soft factors" are the reasons I'd still carefully recommend it in combination with the fairly low price.

Yet another game that made me wish Steam had a more ambivalent recommendation option. There are a lot of issues with this game that just compound and bring the whole thing down. There's so much lost potential, and I hate seeing that sort of thing in a game I really want to like. I could make a list of all the individual things I have issues with, but I'll spare going through a huge list- it all just comes down to there being an overall lack of polish. I'll start with the controls. As far as I know, there was no controller support at all, and I would figure that any sensible platforming action game would have controller support, but that's not the case with this game. You can't remap the controls on the keyboard, either, unless I'm missing something with a config file or something. You swing Sanae's umbrella and dash using the mouse and control with WAD, which works fine, at least. It's a great undertaking to attempt making and fleshing out Gensokyo as a game world in a side scrolling adventure, but that's really not where the game's strengths lie at all. The most fun I had with the game was with the boss fights, not traversing through somewhat uninspired enviroments fighting nonsensical enemies (the bland caves you go through come to mind, especially the ones with the gorillas (???) in them, and golems with really lazy shading for their sprites). Doing unimaginative fetch quests for no-name NPCs that amount to nothing but an achievement wasn't much fun, either, so I gave up on that really quick too. Some of these areas just feel cobbled together to pad things out between boss fights, rather than having thought put into them in regards to your mobility moveset, which comes down to just a double jump and a dash. There are exceptions, of course- The area where you fight Tenshi is the only place where I feel like your mobility was put to good use, and of course it's an optional area and boss fight, which were fun to find, I'll admit. That doesn't really make up for the rest of it, though. I found myself just running past enemies because trying to fight them, unless they were blocking your way, was just pointless. There were several areas where you can get stuck, too- I got stuck under an elevator and fell off the map in the Kappa valley. Some of the boss fights, notably Aya's and Kanako's, are frustrating for all the wrong reasons. They decided on having the platforms you have to jump on completely randomized, and though it's a nice idea that makes the fights a bit more dynamic, you can end up getting hit because of shoddy platform placement or just end up falling because for some reason the game just decides the platform you're trying to jump on doesn't exist. These two bosses are in the air most of the time, too, and they have a hurtbox as well as a hitbox. This means you have to jump constantly to be able to hit them, but if you accidently end up touching them, you'll get damaged. It's hard to avoid this when your jump height isn't particularly precise and your main method of attack is a melee weapon. It's a lot of unneeded frustration. The music is one of the saving graces of this game, and I feel like I should mention that, but even so, there's a lot of forgettable tracks. The main menu theme and the first track you hear once you start the game in Gensokyo proper are really not that good. It gets a lot better as the game goes on, and the arranges of the already existing character themes are really great. Hina's, Nitori's, and Aya's stood out to me the most. The game comes with a jukebox, but even that feature is not exempt from the overall lack of polish- Nitori's theme is repeated twice in the jukebox. Lastly, there are shitty memes shoehorned into the game, too, and that's one way for me to take your game less seriously. I know I'm being really scathing- after all, it's just an Indie game endeavour. I don't know much about this game dev studio, how much people were working on it, how long it took to create, but at the end of the day what you'll be getting out of this game is not worth the price asking point at all. I will say the art style of the game and boss art was very distinct, and I really did want to see the areas and characters of Mountain of Faith recreated, seeing as it's my favorite Touhou game. I really just wish this game was a more straightforward boss rush, because I'd be damned if I were to say that finally beating them after learning their patterns wasn't satisfying at all. If you're absolutely deadset on getting anything and everything Touhou related on Steam, this might be worth a purchase. I can't really recommend it myself.

----+Recommended+---- A good touhou fangame and its platformer,also the remake of the soundtrack is very catchy and very good especially in boss battle 10/10 for become the first touhou fangame platformer in Steam

A very nice platformer that is good for people who are new to Touhou and people who already love Touhou. The music is nice and not overwhelming and the pixel graphics are easy on the eyes while still being pretty. It stays true to the Touhou lore too, which is always a really important thing to do when creating games like this. You promised Touhou imagined as a platforming boss-bash, and that's what you served. Well done. Sanae is my wife and nobody can convince me otherwise >:(

Absolutely beautiful little game. took me about 5.9 hr. to beat it. The music was incredible and the boss fights were fun and well designed. My only gripe comes that some of the areas looked a little bland, otherwise it was a solid experience. If you are a fan of the Touhou series or like games such as Hollow Knight, this game is a must play for you! 8.75/10

Pros: A touhou game in a form of a platformer Excellent artwork for spellcards Battles are intense and challenging A lot of timing and precision to dodge and parkour around areas Optional boss fights A LOT of platforming Good music Cons: No emojis for us to use on steam :( Overall: Excellent game with good music,art,platforming, and a good backstory of how this game 1st inspired

Definitely a game that makes me want to play the team's next game, but I probably wouldn't grab this one if I knew what it'd be like. The gameplay has a lot of little problems which eventually compound on each other to make the game incredibly frustrating. The controls are fairly coarse, with your character moving and falling really quickly, with a dash that gives iframes that occasionally can't clear attacks. Your hitbox is pretty big, and your attack range is short, so you have to get really close to enemies, but not too close because they do contact damage, and that becomes even more difficult with twitchy controls and enemies that move really fast. You have a very short invincibility window after taking hits, so your four hit points can get drained in seconds. Implementation flaws occasionally cause you to take damage through no fault of your own when terrain doesn't spawn in ways you can move to it. This all comes to a head with the final boss fight, which combines these issues with pure RNG attacks that regularly wall you completely in and force you to take damage, and a survival section that wastes 75 seconds of your time every attempt you make. The jank was too much: I've spent 14 hours with this game, at least nine of those were just trying to beat the final boss, and I think I've given up. The pixel art and soundtrack are both good and set a calm and melancholy sort of atmosphere for a story that uses one of the many vague areas of Touhou's canon to good effect. Unfortunately other decisions undercut the mood of the game (ah yes, everyone's favorite Touhou characters, the cave gorillas?) and the times the gameplay takes front seat the beautiful animation just ends up getting lost amid the other issues. Additionally the use of a Sanae portrait from Ten Desires and the iconic 'Pichuun' death sound is probably a violation of Touhou's fan work policy.