Touhou: Hollow Hearts

Touhou metroidvania in the style of Hollow Knight. · By Yal

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Touhou: Hollow Hearts community

This game being free is a crime.

A topic by Valonad created 35 days ago Views: 35 Replies: 3

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Valonad35 days ago(+1)

It's so GOOD. Completed its first ending today with about 3 hours of playtime and 41% of secrets discovered. I somehow fumbled my way into beating most bosses on my first or second try but the last boss really forced me to learn the combat properly. Learning it was pretty fun though.

The amount of secret rooms is pretty insane. I thought i cleared everything when i found all the ? rooms on the map but then i found out the pause menu gives you a percentage on the amount of secrets discovered, and it was only 19% at the time. I did also discover the big secret place which I'm excited to explore after getting the first ending, since I assume there is a second ending behind that.

The one criticism i have though, is that kokoro's wall climbing is painful to use, especially when trying to jump on the opposite side of the wall, since letting go of the movement button immediately makes her fall down, which means a jump from the wall to the opposite side is practically impossible, unless it is intentional for that? Atleast Kokoro does have an infinite amount of dashes while in the air. Flying through rooms like that is pretty fun. Also, some spells have a really big discrepancy in the amount of damage they do. Patchouli's side magic is a nuke compared to everything else. while kokoro's down magic does so little damage for the amount of set up it needs. Patchouli's up magic is also pretty limited due to doing such a low amount of damage that kokoro's up is just better by virtue of giving you some breathing room due to how long it lasts, and potentially outputting more damage if you position yourself right compared to the boss.

Finally, the music is really funky. I like it. Especially the soundfont used on the bosses' themes. They are pretty nice.

This game is a very solid tribute to both hollow knight and touhou, and it really quenched the thirst for some fresh hollow knight-like experience while waiting for silksong.

Valonad34 days ago

Finished doing the second half of the game for the second ending. I really loved exploring that area and it's wild how all that stuff is just missable. Does make it more special when you do discover it. There were some nice lore tidbits but i wasn't really paying attention much to the diaries scattered around. The final boss of the second ending was much easier though, since she stays on the ground most of the time you can easily abuse patchouli's side magic on her. Though it is still easy to die if you're not careful. The extra dungeon giving me 2 more hearts definitely helped.

SPOILERS AHEAD

From what i can remember of the journals, the story is that yukari yakumo made the hakurei barrier by sealing Sakura, the "first" daughter of hakurei, but then for some reason ww2 made sakura feel a lot of pain so yukari tried some experiments to ease it but it failed horribly and her comrades died on the way. And i guess.. she just left her there? And in the ending cutscene, did we just destroy the hakurei barrier? Pretty wild if that's the ending. It will be a hell of an incident for Reimu to solve if so. Though i don't know how the mask of emotions connects to all of this.

YalDeveloper34 days ago

When I started work on this project was when we thought Silksong was gonna release for sure in 3 months (after that XBox Direct thing which claimed everything shown off would release "in this year" and Team Cherry commented on it with "that's what they said" when people asked if that implied a release date), I figured I needed to rush it out before that date or nobody would play it because everybody would go for the real deal... well, with the benefit of hindsight you can tell I didn't need to worry :P

I'm kinda unhappy with the end result due to all the corners I cut first for the jam deadline, then for the Silksong release date: areas are basically 1:1 references to Hollow Knight, every unlock giving you TWO new abilities means they're spread super thin, spells were a last second addition that's a nightmare to balance because there's a lot of damage variation depending on how iframes and hitboxes line up, and the map system also was an afterthought that makes it really annoying to add new rooms. (The map on the pause screen is a photo of my planning papers with a free parchment texture slapped on and originally it didn't show your position, I've manually added pixel coordinates for every room to allow that lol)

I've always been a fan of adding secrets, it was fun hiding basically half the game just to blow people's minds! (The cutoff point is where the original jam scope ended so when I realized I had some time to wrap the game up and improve it before Silksong was set to release, I basically added the second half in a vacuum and stapled it onto the original endpoint). I can't decide if my favorite secret is the five recursively more hidden treasure chests or the super-secret peek into Lake Suwa.

You've pretty much figured the story out, the last thing you missed is that the Mask of Lost Emotion was used to "turn off" Sakura's emotions (to stabilize her) but it worked too well and basically removed her entire personality as well so she's just a hollow shell. ~~Or "hollow heart" for a title drop, I guess~~

The soundfonts I'm using is like 90% the default stuff that comes with Mixcraft 9, so mostly the Acoustica Instruments General MIDI VST. Retro samples are mostly my own hand-drawn waveforms from the YaruChipFont (which is a free itchio asset I've uploaded here as well, btw). Most of the magic is due to slapping on the right effects (compared to LMMS and Synthfont this is like 100 times easier in Mixcraft so I have like 5 reverbs and delays on everything just because I can :P)

Valonad34 days ago

Silksong release date in 2021 :trolldespair:

Is there not a way in gamemaker to have collision occur once between 2 game objects? Or was the intended behaviour for the cross and kokoro's up to keep dealing damage so long as enemies are within the radius? If so, then yeah that's tough to balance. I do think most spells do serve a purpose at the very least. The only underwhelming ones are kokoro's down (which deals so little damage compared to the amount of set up it needs), and patchouli's up (which has niche use cases but its radius surprisingly hits stuff less often than you'd think, it also does a miniscule amount of damage). I initially thought kokoro's side was useless until i found out that it aims at the closest enemy which made it extremely helpful while exploring dungeons, and also as some free damage while dodging bosses if i had full magic.

I do love how the map looks though. Its makes it feel more diegetic. But i also do wish it also included the locations for the kisumes in it as well (fun fact i didn't realize there was a kisume in the village until i asked a friend who played this game before about it d;). Though i wish there were a way to zoom in on the map to see the details since it has a fairly low quality even with the later upgrade to it (most of the text is really ineligible).

I found 60% of secrets by the end, but i dont think i found lake suwa? Either that or i didnt notice it. I did find a secret room with chests that had a secret roof with more chests. If that room has even more secret chests then that'd be pretty funny.

I wonder what happens in the first ending if the mask is what made her lose her emotions. Unless it's a one time use per person thing and yukari hid the mask so no one else would use it.

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Touhou: Hollow Hearts

This game being free is a crime.