For the past two years, Erie Anime Fest was synonymous with the Quality Inn south of Interstate 90, serving as a vital home for Drillimation’s early convention appearances, though it was often a tight squeeze. The organizer cited an increase in interest in the event, and the small space wouldn’t be enough to handle all those visitors. From this point onwards, Anime Fest will move to the Ambassador Banquet and Conference Center, which is located north of Interstate 90, and will provide more space for vendors to sell their artwork.

This experience will move away from the cramped quarters of the Quality Inn to a layout more similar to the Anime Fests in Pittsburgh and Niagara Falls. The new venue will handle a larger influx of fans without the bottleneck issues experienced at the Quality Inn.

This return to Erie is particularly significant given the current landscape of regional conventions. As noted in the March 2026 Monthly Digest released a few weeks back, Pokékon has been aggressively expanding and shoving Anime Fest out of its traditional slots. Now, it has taken over the two cities mentioned. The Erie event will stand as a vital stronghold for the original Anime Fest. This will be Drillimation’s first show in the city in over a year and a half, making it the primary venue for the company to reconnect with its hometown’s community.

As a result of the long hiatus since their last appearance in March of last year, Drillimation will bring their most significant updates yet, including their latest projects, and interactivity via the Steam Deck. With both the Cleveland and Erie Anime Fests taking place in back-to-back weekends, it will be the first time Drillimation will exhibit at two Anime Fests in a single calendar month.

Parental meddling is the real life equivalent where your parents intervene in your development, career, or relationships to steer them toward their vision. Your parents are the original creators of your soul, and they love to alter the trajectory of your own life choices. This often involves overriding your personal autonomy, interests, or career paths to better align with their social standing, unfulfilled dreams, or financial interests. The result is resentment from you and being burned out.

Why This Often Happens

• Parents often view you as a reboot or sequel of their own lives, attempting to fix their own past mistakes through your own effort.
• Similar to executives focusing on profit, parents may force you into a high-paying field such as medicine or law while cancelling out your interest in the arts.
• The parents fear your edgy or unconventional choices will damage their reputation in their social circle.
• Parents who have invested significant time and money into your upbringing may feel they have bought the right to dictate the outcome. They treat your life like a project they’ve funded and demand a specific return on that investment.
• Much like a studio wanting to keep a franchise alive forever, parents often see you as a vessel for the family name or business. They meddle because they fear their legacy will end if you choose a path they don’t recognize.
• They often rely on outdated market research – the job market as it existed thirty years before you. They steer you toward safe bets because they are terrified of the indie path, even if the modern economy actually rewards the niche skills you’re interested in.
• They meddle because they feel a loss of control in their own lives. By micromanaging yours, they get to feel like the director of a high-stakes film or game, even if they’re actually ruining the actor’s performance.

Redeeming Qualities

• Meddling can sometimes prevent you from making dangerous or life-altering mistakes.
• Parents may provide the funding to you that you wouldn’t have otherwise, even if it comes with strings attached.
• Meddling can sometimes function as a high-level quality assurance check. While overbearing, a parent’s intervention might prevent you from making a financial or legal mistake that could permanently corrupt your life before you are ready to handle the consequences.
• They act as the primary investors of your early life, providing the funding, housing, or network connections that you wouldn’t have access to otherwise. Even if this capital comes with heavy creative differences, it provides a level of stability that independent peers might struggle to find.
• While their market research is often outdated, parents sometimes possess knowledge about human nature, resilience, or discipline that remains relevant regardless of the industry. Their meddling might be a clumsy attempt to pass down a struggle they know is coming.
• Dealing with this can inadvertently act as a tutorial for high-pressure environments. Navigating their demands requires you to develop advanced negotiation skills, emotional intelligence, and stealth mechanics that can actually make you a more formidable player in the professional world later on.

Examples

• The most common example of parental meddling is the forced career pivot. You spend four years in an undergraduate program for Graphic Design and build a portfolio in hopes of securing an internship at that video game company you want to work for as your career. The parents, who are paying for your tuition, declare that path is unsustainable and threaten to pull funding unless you switch to a pre-med track. You end up being successfully retooled into a doctor, but your internal mind is broken. You suffer from high levels of stress and a lack of passion for your life ahead, leading to a mid-life reboot years later.
• Another one is when they sabotage your romantic relationship with someone because the partner doesn’t fit their target demographic such as social class, religion, or background they envisioned.
• The biggest one is when they push you into competitive sports or acting at a young age, leading to your development being rushed and burned out before you reach adulthood.
• Some parents choose to block a specific hairstyle, tattoo, or clothing style because it doesn’t fit within their family values. Even as an adult, they could treat your physical appearance as promotional material for their standing. If you show up to an event, such as a wedding, wearing a look they don’t approve of, you’ll be rolled back to a previous version of yourself.
• If you get married and have kids, your parents may treat them as a highly anticipated sequel. They may meddle in your parenting style or even your decision to have children at all, viewing your offspring as bugs they encountered while raising you.
• Sometimes before you come of age, you may get pushed into the adult world far too early, such as forcing you to handle your financial burdens, family secrets, or emotional labor. Once you actually cross that line on your eighteenth birthday, your durability has run out and you end up in a crashed state where you lack the energy to pursue your own interests.
• If you choose to move to a new city or country, they may guilt-trip you or create artificial crises to keep you on their local map. They would rather you be a low-level player in their vicinity than a high-level player in a region they can’t monitor

Conclusion

I am genuinely tired of people blaming the idea of “parents suck” when they witness parental meddling, blatant censorship in adulthood, arbitrary time constraints, and other behind-the-scenes foolery. The two biggest quotes I hate hearing are “that’s objectively a bad choice” or “I personally don’t like this.”

Even if your life is genuinely bad or something, you can just move on to something else. There are plenty of other paths where you can connect with more. Living in a world full of bad parents who don’t care about your life is ignorant as heck.

I’m not here to talk about that today. Back on Wednesday, I did a remix of the song The 1,110th Year’s Legend of Tobiume from Touhou Doumeiju ~ Mystical Power Plant using traditional Chinese instruments. The only difference is I made it sound like something you hear out of Chinese opera, with a few other instruments added for color and to make it sound fuller. Given that I’m a composer from the Western Hemisphere, I don’t have much familiarity with that medium, and a lot of research went into composing this remix. The only familiarity that Western players would have with Chinese opera would be the song “The Divine Damsel of Devastation” sung by Genshin Impact‘s Yun Jin. It made sense to do so since miHoYo is headquartered in China and their home country’s culture is represented in the game.

If you want to know how to replicate the feel of Chinese opera via the JV-880 Asia expansion, you will need to focus on the specific string, wind, and percussion instruments traditionally used in ensembles like Beijing Opera. The following instruments from the expansion board are ideal for this purpose:

Core String Instruments

In Chinese opera, the high-pitched huqin family is essential for accompanying vocals. Do note that the lead string instruments play more notes than the performer sings.

• Er Hu VSw, Er Hu Solo, and St.ErHu: The erhu is the primary Chinese violin used for soulful, expressive melodies. The VSw and Solo patches can emulate the characteristic slides and vibrato of opera performance. I recommend using it as a lead instrument.
• Chung Ruan and Bright Ruan: The ruan is a moon-shaped lute used frequently in Beijing opera music to provide a rhythmic and melodic foundation. You can use it as a secondary instrument.
• St.Pipa and Pi Pa 1: The pipa (Chinese lute) is often used for dramatic scenes, capable of expressing everything from sorrow to intense battle sequences. I recommend using it as a secondary instrument.

Wind Instruments

The wind family is primarily used as secondary instruments for specific atmospheric or dramatic effects.

• Qu Di: This bamboo flute is a staple of many opera forms, known for its airy and expressive tone.
• Bang Di: This higher-pitched flute is particularly associated with northern Chinese opera styles, particularly Beijing Opera.
• Suona VSw and Suona: This double reed instrument, often compared to a trumpet, is used for celebratory or military scenes due to its piercing, loud sound.
• Sheng: This mouth organ is commonly used as a harmonic accompaniment to the flute and suona in opera performances.

Essential Percussion

Percussion instruments conduct the orchestra accompanying opera, signaling movement and dialogue.

• ChinaPrcMenu: This menu contains the vital gongs and percussion needed for opera.
• St.Shou Bo and China Cymbal: The bo is frequently played in operas to highlight action or festive gatherings.
• St.HuYinLuo: Luo are used to punctuate spoken passages and stage action.
• China Gong and Velo Gong: Larger gongs are used to signal character entrances or intense emotions like anger.
• China Ph1 and China Ph2: These phrase loops contain authentic rhythmic patterns that can help set the correct operatic timing.

Like what happened with Pittsburgh, we again drove two hours to Niagara Falls, NY from Erie, PA, stayed the night, and did the Anime Fest the following day. It took place at the Sheraton and not near the falls, which is why I don’t have any photos of the actual falls to share. I originally wanted to leave for the area in the afternoon but we didn’t get out until 8:30PM because my teammates decided to sign up for some crappy trivia event that took place the day before. I didn’t go to sleep until 11:00PM. What was even worse was Daylight Saving Time started on the day of the convention, meaning I lost the usual hour of sleep that I won’t get back until November. In most other years, that hour was lost at home, and this year, it was at the hotel where I slept.

My day began the same as the Pittsburgh Anime Fest – going downstairs, eating breakfast at Starbucks, a place I never usually eat at because the food selection isn’t in my favor, and then walking to the convention. The only difference was no perfume was used to trigger the fire alarms like what happened in Pittsburgh. On the night after that morning’s incident, I asked the organizers for stricter security measures such as metal detector wands and bag checks, but I never saw any of those at the event.

I changed my game by stacking the signs on metal shelves. This meant that I had to change my setup so there would be enough room for players to flip through the binder, make donations, and play the game. It was the same usual crowd, and despite the people playing being different, it was from people who hadn’t even heard of Touhou Project nor played one game! One difference though was there was a guy wearing a shirt with a character who looked a lot like Yumemi Okazaki. It wasn’t the actual character, but the similarities were interesting. Yumemi lookalikes can be achieved with red classic lolita outfits.

Development on Touhou Meishuugeki ~ Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel has been going smoothly and great so far. I hope to get the third stage done by the end of this week and a playable demo of the game by the end of this month.

On the way home, we stopped by the Angola service area to get some dinner. We often stopped at that service area on our trips between Buffalo and Erie. One of the biggest hallmarks and traditions was placing a smiley face made of actual pavement on the highway! It was a fun sight to look at, but they don’t do this tradition anymore. I don’t even have photos of it because I was about ready to enter kindergarten when I saw it for the first time, and this was in the early-to-mid 2000s. I hadn’t been inside the building in three years, but last year, they completely rebuilt it. Two restaurants that were a staple of that service area were McDonald’s and Denny’s. They have been completely taken off the list when it was reopened last year around this time. It’s like going to Disney World frequently – you go one year and then return a few years later, only to find that attraction you liked gone and replaced.

The First Game

Gameplay

These games are marketed as a precision platformer. When you hear those words together, you know you’re about to be served a giant, steaming bowl of frustration with a side of broken controllers. They also marketed it as a rage game because the developers apparently knew that video games wouldn’t be fun anymore and instead psychological warfare.

The game is entirely click-based. You’re playing a platformer with a computer mouse. It’s like trying to eat soup with a fork. You click to jump, and no matter where you aim, you plummet into a pit of despair while the same low-budget explosion effect and death sound play over and over. It’s like the game is laughing at you. If you wanted to land on that ledge, too bad. You’ll just be greeted with an explosion for your trouble. I couldn’t even get past the first room of the third stage because some crudely drawn Cirno boss just crushes you instantly. What were they thinking!?

It’s got jump counters to track your failure, difficulty settings that mean absolutely nothing when the physics are janky, and graphics that look like they were made in Microsoft Paint during a power outage. I’d rather jump off a cliff and land on my ear than try to make one more pixel-perfect jump in this digital torture chamber.

It’s a game about a bunny jumping off a mountain and dying. And after five minutes of playing, I want to join her. What a load of goat vomit.

Graphics

Now, let me talk about the graphics. I use that term loosely because calling this art is like calling a pile of doggy doo-doo a gourmet meal. Look at it, and as I said, it looks like it was made in Microsoft Paint during a thunderstorm by someone wearing a blindfold.

The protagonist, Tewi Inaba, is just a blob of sidewalk chalk art. She looks like a marshmallow that fell into a gutter. The backgrounds are flat and the platforms are just lifeless blocks that look like they were drawn by a kindergartener who just discovered the fill tool. There’s little detail in everything you see.

And then you have the boss. It’s a crudely drawn Cirno that looks like a doodle on a restaurant napkin. When you die, which you eventually will, you get hit with this stock explosion sprite that looks like it was ripped out of a 1993 shareware game. It’s so jarring that it’s like someone threw a brick at your eyeballs!

It’s got that retro aesthetic, but not the good kind of retro like Castlevania or Contra. It doesn’t emulate the kind of retro that makes you want to go back in time and prevent the invention of the computer. It’s a digital eyesore – I’ve seen more detailed graphics on a piece of burnt toast.

Audio

The soundtrack is actually not bad. It has a decent vibe that almost makes you think you’re having a good time, but when you press a button, bam. That death sound effect will hit your ears like a freight train loaded with chalkboard scrapings. It’s like being at a symphony where the conductor occasionally just screams into a megaphone directly at your face.

You will hear that same death sound effect every three seconds. It’s a psychological trigger – I’ve heard more soothing sounds coming from a wood chipper filled with alarm clocks. It’s the kind of repetitive auditory torture used to break spies in underground bunkers. I’d rather listen to a dial-up modem having a seizure while a cat plays a slide whistle.

And where did the sound effects come from? It sounds like they were ripped from a 1990s sound effects CD found in a bargain bin at a defunct RadioShack. There’s no variety or nuance – jump, die, explode. Over and over until your brain turns into a pumpkin puree. It’s like the developers found one WAV file on a floppy disk and decided, “Yeah, that’s the one. Let’s make the player regret having ears.”

Other Problems

You think the graphics and the click-to-die gameplay are the only problems, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are other problems that make me want to strap this game into a rocket and fire it into the sun.

First of all, the hitboxes. You’ll be one meter away from a spike or a pile of dynamite, and boom. Stock explosion takes place and it’s like Tewi has a magnetic attraction to death. It’s not precision if the game can’t even tell where the character ends and the floor begins. It’s like trying to play Operation with a pair of electrified pliers.

Redeeming Qualities

If you have the patience of a Buddhist monk or the twitchy reflexes of a squirrel on a meth bender, you can beat this thing fast due to it being mercifully short. That’s the best part – the sooner it’s over, the sooner the nightmares stop. In an era where big-budget games at least have the decency to crash and save you from playing them, this one actually works. It opens, runs, and stays that way. It’s like a car that’s on fire but the engine won’t quit.

You can find and play this game on itch.io, which means it costs exactly zero dollars. The only thing you’ll lose is your sanity, hearing, and maybe a few years off your life expectancy. The deaths can be unintentionally hilarious in seeing and hearing the same explosion and death sound effect, but only if you like watching things suffer.

My Verdict

This game doesn’t just fail; it traumatizes. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wish the computer had never been invented. Do you ever look at a piece of technology and wonder how many brilliant minds worked for decades to perfect the silicon chip, the liquid crystal display, and the fiber optic cable, only for it to display this!? It’s like using a NASA supercomputer to play Tic-Tac-Toe against a rock.

On a scale of 10, I give it a 2. It lands squarely in the Very High category of the scale not because it’s radioactive; it’s a pure, concentrated filth. It’s a digital eyesore that makes me want to strap the source code to a rocket and fire it directly at the sun, and then blow up once it reaches the surface.

I’d rather take a bath in a tub of lemon juice and razor blades than make one more pixel-perfect jump in this rabbit-themed hellscape. If you want to see a bunny die, go watch a nature documentary narrated by a guy with a heavy cold. It will be more entertaining and significantly less painful than this.

If you dare to try the game for yourself, you can play it here:
https://fumorin.itch.io/tewi-jumps-off-a-mountain-and-dies

The Sequel

Gameplay

Now, let’s talk about the sequel. You’d think after the first disaster, they’d learn their lesson, but no. They decided to double down on the suffering. It’s marketed as a spiritual sequel, which is just a fancy way of saying “same nightmare, different coat of paint”.

The gameplay is still that precision platformer rage bait, but this time, they added deadly traps that Tewi placed herself. What kind of rabbit is this!? She’s like Jigsaw with floppy ears! You’re still jumping through stages that feel like they were designed by a sadist who hates joy. The good news is you can now move left or right with the A and D keys, but the controls are still stiff, even if you jump.

There’s no continuity between the games, but there’s definitely a continuity of frustration. You’re still struggling with the same janky physics trying to reach the top of Youkai Mountain, while the game practically begs you to lose your mind. It’s got an Easy mode, but even with checkpoints, it’s still a mountain of torture. I’ve seen more fairness in a rigged carnival game. It’s like the developers watched someone play the first one and said, “How can we make this even more of a middle finger to the player?”

Graphics

You’d hope that a sequel would mean an actual budget, or at least someone learning how to use a paintbrush. They took the Microsoft Paint scribbles from the first game and completely revamped them. The art direction looks way better than the first, but not as good as the first Chuhou Joutai game.

The opening cutscene art actually looks like someone tried and does look interesting, but then you get into the game, and it’s back to the same lifeless platforms. It’s supposed to be Youkai Mountain, but it looks more like a grid of geometric nightmares designed to make your eyes bleed.

Tewi still plays like a sentient marshmallow, and the deadly traps she apparently set for herself look like they were drawn during a bumpy bus ride. It’s got that same retro look, but again, it’s not the good kind of retro and makes you wonder if your graphics card is having a stroke.

Audio

You’d think that with a new composer like PetarS on board, your ears would finally get a break from the auditory equivalent of a cheese grater. And to be fair, the music is an improvement. It’s got energy and rhythm, but it serves as a rhythmic backdrop to the sound of your own soul being crushed. They even brought back the first game’s creator, Fumorin, to compose the ending track, just to remind you of the hell you just crawled out of.

But here’s the kicker: it doesn’t matter how good the music is when it’s constantly interrupted by the sound of Tewi exploding into a million digital pieces! It’s like trying to listen to a Mozart symphony while someone stands next to you popping bubble wrap directly into your ear canal. Every time you miss a jump, which is all the time and every five seconds, the music gets drowned out by that same death sound.

The sound effects are almost exactly the same as the original! It’s an auditory nightmare that makes me want to deafen myself with a pair of rusty screwdrivers. It’s like putting a silk ribbon on a pile of garbage – the ribbon is nice but you’re still looking at and hearing garbage.

Other Problems

If you thought the first game was a mess, this one takes the cake, bakery, and the entire wheat field.

First off, the difficulty isn’t even difficulty. It’s just pure unadulterated torture. The developer literally calls it “torture” on the page! At least they’re honest about hating their audience. You’ve got people in the comments saying “I hate this game” and “never again”, and I don’t blame them. It’s the kind of game that makes you want to bite your controller in half just to feel something other than emotional pain.

It still has those circular colliders from the first game that provide artificial difficulty. You can be clear of a hazard, but because the game thinks you’re a giant invisible marble, you explode anyway.

Even Jun’ya Ohta (or ZUN), the creator of Touhou Project himself, apparently played this on stream! Can you imagine? The man who created this character had to witness this digital abomination! It’s like showing Leonardo da Vinci a finger painting made of garbage. It’s a mountain of madness, a summit of suffering, and quite frankly, a giant pile of torture that will pull you down the rabbit hole.

Redeeming Qualities

Unlike the first game’s assault of explosive jumpscares, we actually have a better soundtrack here. Thanks to a composer who knows what they’re doing, your ears get a break while your soul is being crushed. They did include an easy mode with checkpoints while still being a mountain of torture, but at least you don’t have to restart the entire nightmare every time you hit a pixel-sized spike. It’s the difference between being thrown into a pit of spikes and a small pillow.

There’s something strangely therapeutic about knowing the father of the series had to suffer through this digital abomination just like me and the rest of us. If he could survive seeing his characters treated like this, I guess I can survive one more jump. The opening cutscene and graphics actually look like someone picked up a paintbrush instead of a half-eaten crayon. It’s still a platforming mess once the gameplay starts, but progress is progress. It’s like putting a tuxedo on a trash can.

My Verdict

Who asked for a sequel? Who played the first one and said, “Gee, I really wish I could be tortured by a digital rabbit some more?” It is a summit of suffering and madness that makes me want to bite my controller and half just to feel a different kind of pain.

It’s better than the first one in the way that a kick in the sign is better than a kick in the teeth. On a scale of 10, I give it a 4. The music is great, but it’s just the soundtrack to your own funeral. It lands squarely in the High Contamination category because it’s a more polished piece of trash, but at the end of the day, you’re still standing in a dumpster.

Both of these games are a testament of humanoid endurance. Specifically, how much garbage we’re putting up with for a few pixels of a rabbit. I’m going to stare at a blank wall for three hours to recover. It will be more visually stimulating than this mountain of misery.

If you dare to try the game for yourself, you can play it here:
https://tim-m.itch.io/tewi-jumps-off-a-mountain-and-dies-2

From our roots in Erie, Pennsylvania, our mission is to spread the joy of the Drillimation Danmaku Universe and our Touhou Project fangames across a world without borders. We will be thrilled to show both sides of the border exactly what a dedicated doujin circle can bring to the table. In our hometown, Pokékon coincides that same weekend, but we won’t be there.

If you visited us in either Erie or Pittsburgh, you know we’ve leveled up our booth experience. We are bringing back our revolutionary 2026 exhibition setup featuring a hands-on experience with Touhou Meishuugeki ~ Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel, a comprehensive binder showcasing over a decade of Drillimation history, a glimpse of our entire library on a big screen, and the Prophet Driller in person to answer your questions, take feedback, and chat about the future of our games.

Event Details

Whether you’re a seasoned cosplayer, a first-time attendee of a convention, or looking for rare collectibles related to your favorite games or anime, here’s everything to make sure your day can be a blast.

• Date: Sunday, March 8, 2026 | 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
• Location: Sheraton Niagara Falls Hotel (300 3rd Street, Niagara Falls, NY 14303)
• Admission Fee: $20 (children under 11 are free)
• Parking: Free on-site

What You’ll See At Our Booth

When you arrive at our booth, the front row (from left to right) will consist of the binder where you can explore all things Drillimation, a Steam Deck where you can play our in-development games, a donation box where you can donate to Drillimation to keep us thriving, and the monitor playing our demo reel on loop.

The back row will consist of four signs. The bottom tier includes our selection of proprietary games that you can purchase, and we also take commissions. The other sign advertises our Patreon subscriptions, which you can purchase to gain early access to new Drillimation videos on their channel and additional support. The top row includes QR codes to access Drillimation’s website and a digital version of the binder.

Whether or not you’ve heard of Touhou Project or anything Drillimation, we are proud to create new fans and cherish existing ones.

Safety, Accessibility, and Guest Policies

We want everyone to have a legendary time at the booth, but please remember to keep the danmaku in our booth from the aisles. For more information on safety and policies, please see our Visit page.

General Safety and Conduct

• All other convention rules and hotel policies apply.
• Please be mindful of other players waiting to play. To avoid overcrowding, we implement a one-stage limit to ensure all players waiting get a turn. If you’re not sure whether or not you want to play, see how other players play the game first before you play.
• No food or drink is allowed in the booth area. Please finish any snacks or beverages before entering the booth area, and make sure they are clean before you play. If any of our equipment or items are damaged because of a liquid spill or food crumbs, you are responsible for damages.

Accessibility

• Our booth has an open space to ensure those with mobility issues can reach the Steam Deck and the archive binder.
• Our demo reel plays high-energy gameplay. The same applies for the Steam Deck. If you have light or sound sensitivities, please let us know and we can adjust the volume or screen brightness for you.

Guest Policies

• Respect the Prophet. Always ask for permission before taking a photo and it must conform to the Game Content and Brand Usage Rules, especially if you are posting selfies of yourself and the Prophet on social media.
• Supervise children. Anyone under the age of 13 must be accompanied by an adult, though this requirement may vary based on the convention’s policies. Parents or guardians assume all responsibility for their behavior.
• Any shoplifting or unauthorized removal of property from the booth will be reported to convention security and law enforcement upon discovery. Violators will be prosecuted.

Key Developments

Second Stage of Touhou Meishuugeki ~ Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel Complete

As of today, the second stage of our new Touhou Project fangame has been finished. Marisa Kirisame is now playable, and this new version of the game will be playable at the Niagara Falls Anime Fest, which is scheduled to take place next weekend. This will be my most ambitious Anime Fest yet. Being close to the Canadian border will allow me to reel in more international fans, further extending my reach.

Some of the features we would like to explain in this new game include the removal of the coin mechanic used in Touhou Meijinka ~ Song of Divine Tempest and Touhou Chouhatsuyou ~ Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity. Starting a game in this new title will be easier than ever. Classic and Breezy modes have been redesigned, and both lives and health are tied. Lives are now lost whenever your health is drained.

This game focuses on the mysterious substance of “glohm”, a corruptive substance that causes anyone infected to seek isolation from society and trust the Gensokyo Socialite Order. There’s a reason the time mechanic from Touhou 8: Imperishable Night is here – the longer a disease is around, the farther it will spread.

This title is a standalone entry to the Drillimation Danmaku Universe, and is not an entry to the Emiverse saga. It takes place between the first and second Mythos of Phantasmagoria games and nine months after the events of the first game, as a way to bridge the gap between the postgame of the first and the introductory cutscene in the second.

Security Reminder

With the recent growth of our community and excitement surrounding Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel, we want to take a moment to remind everyone to stay vigilant regarding online security, and a few weeks ago we addressed a specific concern that impacted a collaborator in our circle. As many of you have seen, the owner of Yumiko Manga unfortunately fell victim to a sophisticated zombification attack.

In this instance, the account was compromised via token theft, allowing a hacker to impersonate them and blast out unauthorized images promoting cryptocurrency scams. This serves as a dark reminder that even big-name figures in our community and the world are targets for these malicious actors. To protect your Discord account, we highly recommend taking these precautions:

• If you see any odd messages or crypto-related posts coming from reputable accounts (including ours), do not click any links.
• Never scan QR codes or authorized third-party verification apps on Discord that you don’t 100% trust, as these are the primary methods used in these hijacks.

We stood with Yumiko Manga as they recovered, and we ask our community to remain extra vigilant. Let’s keep our focus on the games and the art, not the scammers.

Our Commitment to Accurate Reviews

Last week, we intended to launch a new series exploring some of the more infamous entries in the world of Touhou Project fangames. However, fans quickly realized that the content of two now-deleted articles contained inaccuracies regarding games that are, in fact, well-received by the community.

Because we value integrity and respect for fellow developers, we removed the affected articles. We are still refining our editorial process to ensure that future reviews of games, both good and bad, are fair and factually sound. We apologize for the oversight and we thank you all for holding us to a higher standard.

Quality and accuracy are the pillars of Drillimation Systems. When the flags were raised, we hit the pause button on the series to overhaul our research methods. Our goal is to promote good games and help developers draw the crowds they deserve, while at the same time protecting consumers from terrible choices. Our goal is to celebrate the Touhou Project community and not misrepresent it. We look forward to bringing you more accurate, high-quality deep dives in the future.

Moving forward, our fellow server members will implement a more rigorous fact-checking phase to ensure our insights and news remain a trusted source for our fans. It’s hard to get things right and rushing won’t place it in the top spot. We’ve already drafted a few examples with these proper measures implemented below:

• Good game example: Touhou Lensed Night Sky, Kaseigai Review – A Roguelite Rebirth
• Bad game example: PacMan Survivors Review – A Wasted Potential

The good game example was actually drafted after a representative for the developer of Touhou Lensed Night Sky, Kaseigai, Fire Land LLC, contacted me over Discord one night and was quite alarmed over the inaccurate information about their game in the now-deleted article. In response, I drafted a new review of said game with the tables turned right side up. They didn’t matter if the review was positive or negative (I gave it a 7.5 out of 10, which counts as generally favorable).

We created a new scale on how we judge games. Initially, it consisted of six tiers based on the AVGN Scale, which ranks games based on how poor they are in terms of quality. The number of categories in that scale has doubled to twelve, with four good, average, and poor categories respectively. The gallery below shows all of the tags for each.

If you’re curious on the definition over these games, look at the table below:

The lessons learned from this situation helped fundamentally reshape how we approach games media. By expanding this rating system to twelve, ranging from Greatest of all Time to Major Code Red, we are now equipped to provide more nuanced critiques that reflect the actual effort and quality of the titles we cover. We aren’t just looking for good or bad anymore; we are looking for the truth of the player experience. As we move into the spring season, you can expect our reviews to be more rigorous, our data to be more verified, and our commitment to the Touhou Project community to be stronger than ever. We’re excited to share these deeper dives with you, ensuring that every recommendation we make is one you can trust. If there’s a Touhou Project fangame you want us to cover, drop your suggestions in the comments.

Statistics

The website’s subscribers increased by 55 for a total of 2,438 today.

Twitter

The follower count increased by 98 for a total of 7,460 today. Can we get to 7,500 by the end of this month?

Bluesky

We hit a milestone last month as our follower count on Bluesky increased by 86 for a total of 2,530 today.

Instagram/Threads

YouTube

• Content was viewed over 5,500 times, generating over 118 watch hours.
• Subscriber growth continued to slow, only increasing by eight.

Future Goals

Our biggest commitment is getting a playable demo of Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel out by the end of this month. This includes completing the third stage. The music for both the stage and boss are complete, in addition to the character portraits. After it’s completed, we will focus on revamping the menu.

That said, we hope you look forward to seeing us at the Niagara Falls Anime Fest next weekend. Attendees visiting the Drillimation booth will get the chance to try out Marisa Kirisame. Your feedback will be used to fine-tune the difficulty of the game in addition to fixing issues you find.

Gameplay

What happens if you take the bullet-strewn and pattern-heavy gameplay of a Touhou Project game and shove it into a blender with a roguelike? It’s like putting hot sauce on a milkshake. That won’t work, and you’ll be sweating like a pig in a slaughterhouse trying to make it to the final stage.

The gameplay is a chaotic curriculum of modular destruction. You don’t just dodge danmaku, you’re managing a shop like some kind of supernatural accountant. You can sell your own shotypes and trade away your bombs, and even turn your character into a mere starter for a wacky loadout that either makes you a god or a complete mess. It’s like building a house out of toothpicks while someone throws hammers at your head.

And the difficulty? Easy mode in this game feels like Hard in anything else. They give you a health bar and healing items. Sure, they use that as an excuse to fill the screen with more danmaku than a broken popcorn machine. It’s a mess of colors and pixels where the backgrounds, bullets, and own attacks blend into one giant, disorienting soup. I’ve seen clearer images in a bowl of alphabet cereal.

You’ve got macro-doding, persistent unlocks, and enough items to crash a mainframe, but you can’t even remap the controls mid-run? I have to use the X button to shoot on an Xbox controller? Who decided that? It’s like trying to play a piano with boxing gloves. It’s addictive but frustrating, and it makes me want to barf. I’d rather eat danmaku than deal with that final stage visibility again, but I probably won’t because I have to go back for one more run. I’m a glutton for punishment.

Graphics

What were they thinking with the graphics!? You look at the character portraits and everyone is so expressive and bouncy that it feels like they’re caffeinated beyond belief. They gave Reimu rock-hard six-pack abs. Since when does a shrine maiden spend her time doing a thousand crunches a day between exorcisms!? It’s absurd – some people call the art derpy, but I call it a fever dream in a pixel factory.

And don’t even get me started on the visibility – this game is a mess of colors and pixels. It’s like someone threw a bucket of neon paint into a leaf blower and pointed it directly at your eyeballs. The backgrounds, danmaku, and your own attacks all blend together into one giant, disorienting soup. I’ve seen clearer images in a bowl of alphabet cereal, and trying to find a tiny item drop in the middle of this chaos is trying to find a pair of contact lenses in a pite of glitter during a hurricane.

The items are so minimalist you can barely see them, and the enemy radar at the bottom uses these tiny little sprites that are supposed to be helpful, but you’re too busy having a seizure from the background animations to even notice. They added drop shadows to the bullets to help you see them, but it’s like putting a wet floor sign in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean – it’s a nice gesture, but you’re still drowning in a sea of projectiles.

It’s got that retro aesthetic, which is just a fancy way of saying I can count the pixels on my fingers. The title screen animations are charming, but once the game starts, it’s a non-stop assault on your optic nerves. I’d rather stare at a broken television set for three hours than try to parse what’s happening on the final stage again. It’s a beautifully written love letter to Touhou Project, but the handwriting is so messy that I need a magnifying glass and a bottle of aspirin just to read it.

Audio

Usually, in a Touhou Project game, you expect the music to be good, but this is a total banger. It’s like ZUN and a heavy metal band had a baby, and that baby grew up to be a rock star! The soundtrack is so good it makes you want to headbang while you’re getting annihilated by a purple wall of death!

The music is amazing and stellar – I’m talking everything from soft, jazzy tracks that make you feel like you’re in a high-end lounge to hard rock and electronic beats that make your ears bleed in the best way possible. One player said they’d buy the soundtrack on vinyl! For a game where you play as a shrine maiden with abs, the stage 5 boss and final boss themes are so fantastic that they almost make you forget you’re about to lose your last life to a stray pixel!

But then you get to the sound effects. The music is screaming at you like a banshee, but the actual gameplay sounds are like a wet noodle hitting a sponge. The grazing sound, which is the most important in a Touhou Project game, is so quiet you can barely hear it in the middle of a stage. It’s like trying to hear a mouse fart in the middle of a hurricane. They need to make the sound effects punchier. I want to hear the bullet scraping past my hitbox, not guess if I’m still alive based on whether the game over screen has popped up yet. It’s a captivating presentation, but when the music is a 10 and the sound effects are a 2, it’s like eating a gourmet steak with a plastic spork.

Other

What else is there to say about this game? You’ve got a story that’s actually captivating and very interesting with different endings for every single character on every single stage. It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but instead of turning pages, you’re turning into a pile of ash because some annoying as heck bunnies decided to teach themselves how to shoot guns.

The writing is full of that modern tint of humor. You know, that kind that makes you chuckle while you’re questioning your life choices. And they’ve got characters like Yumemi Okazaki and Chiyuri Kitashirakawa showing up like sketchy outsiders while Reimu looks like she wants to punch a hole through the screen! It’s got charm, personality, and it’s clearly a work of love from a bunch of absolute madmen.

But then you have the technical side with optimization issues and slowdown. Performance issues that some players call intended and based, but I call a reason to buy a new graphics card. It can make your computer lag pretty badly, especially on the final stage where the game is trying to calculate ten billion things at once. I even heard about someone drinking a Hourai Elixir in the shop and outliving the entire universe just because the game couldn’t figure out how to kill them!

It’s in Early Access, so yeah, there are bugs. I’ve heard of people losing runs to crashes or having their web browsers randomly opened by an item. Imagine you’re one hit away from victory and suddenly your computer is trying to sell you car insurance.

Overall, Touhou Lensed Night Sky, Kaseigai is a beautifully pixelated mess that I can’t stop playing. It’s hard, disorienting, and it’s got muscular shrine maidens. It’s absolute madness. I’m going back in for one more run and if I see another bouncing bullet, I’m gonna lose it.

Bad Qualities

I love this game, but it’s got more issues than a stack of comic books in a typhoon. Here are some things that make me want to throw my controller into the sun.

• The visibility can be a total nightmare. Between the busy backgrounds, neon danmaku, and your own chaotic attacks, the game becomes a disorienting soup of colors and pixels.
• Don’t let the names of the difficulty levels fool you. Even on easy, your healthbar will give the enemies an excuse to throw five times as much danmaku at you. It’s like being told you’re going for a light jog and then getting chased by a pack of wolves.
• The optimization is a joke. When the screen fills with danmaku, which happens regularly, the game will slow down and lag like an old PC trying to run a modern blockbuster.
• The sound effects are not nearly as good as the music, such as the grazing sound being near-silent as explained above.
• You can’t remap the controls halfway through a game. If you realize your thumbs are cramping because of the weird default layout, you’re just out of luck.
• I’ve already explained that item that opens up your web browser in the middle of a fight. Imagine being one hit away from total victory…

My Verdict

This game is a total paradox and a hidden gem and a Must Have on the scale. Based on the information above, I give it a 7.5 out of 10. The soundtrack is a masterpiece, the gameplay is addictive as heck, and it’s got more heart than a room full of Hallmark cards. But then you’ve got visibility issues that turn the screen into a bowl of neon vomit and a difficulty curve that feels like climbing a mountain made of greased glass. It’s a work of love from a bunch of absolute madmen and I can’t hate it, even if it makes me scream until my lungs turn inside out. It’s better than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for sure. I’m going back in for one more run.

To compare how it would rank on the different parts of the scale:

Anyway, why did I have to review this game? Because the devs made me. I ended up reversing course for my original review after I treated it like the pilot episode of The Angry Video Game Nerd where you write a negative review for an otherwise good game, and I wrote this entire review in the style of Rolfe’s voice.

If you want to check out the game, it is currently on Steam Early Access. My only complaint though is there isn’t a version on itch.io.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1825250/Touhou_Lensed_Night_Sky_Kaseigai/

Gameplay

They called this title PacMan Survivors, but it’s got as much to do with Pac-Man as a bologna sandwich has to do with space travel. It’s a clone of Asteroids with no mechanics from the actual Pac-Man game. That’s it. You move around in a void, shooting at ghosts that don’t have the decency to flicker. They don’t chase you – they just drive toward you like they’re bored out of their minds.

You’re supposed to kill golden ghosts to get upgrades, but the upgrades just make you shoot in a different direction. It lacks essential genre features such as auto-firing, an experience system, and a healthbar. When you lose a life, you just remain in that same position. You can beat the entire game in five minutes, and your reward is a textbox in French telling you the boss is dead. If you don’t understand the language, you won’t be able to read the surrender note!

Not to mention the bugs too. If you die, the game doesn’t reset – it just gets faster and harder until Pac-Man is vibrating off the screen and becomes a blur of yellow and ghosts. You have to physically reach out and mash the F5 key just to make the game playable again. Additionally, if you hold the shift key, it can cause your character to move perpetually in one direction until the page is refreshed. It’s a broken and lazy nightmare that belongs in a landfill next to E.T.

Graphics

The graphics look like someone threw some paint on a Commodore 64 and called it “art.” It looks basic and unpolished – Pac-Man himself is just his classic yellow circle with a mouth. If you even call it that, the ghosts look like they were drawn by a toddler with a grudge. It’s supposed to be a survival game, but the background is just a black void. It’s like they forgot to put the actual game in the game! Forget about the GUI. If you aren’t playing on a screen the size of a movie theatre, the text just overlaps and smashes together into an unreadable mess of French garbage. It’s lazy, ugly, and it makes my eyes feel like they’ve been scrubbed with steel wool. I’ve seen more visual fidelity in a bowl of alphabet soup.

Audio

The soundtrack is an insult to every eardrum on the planet. There is only one song in the entire game, and it doesn’t even loop properly. It’s like Hong Kong ’97 – a game with only a single song that loops nonstop. As with said game, there are no sound effects either. This means no waka-waka, be-oop-be-oop when you die, not even a pathetic pop when you shoot a ghost. It’s like playing a game in a sensory deprivation tank, except instead of relaxing, you’ll end up getting more and more angered. It’s a near-silent and totally broken auditory disaster. I’d rather record the audio onto a mini vinyl record and throw it in a paper shredder.

Other Problems

First of all, the game never tells you what to do, and the lack of tutorials makes it difficult to learn how to play. Second, the localization is a tactical joke. It’s only in French, and why? Are they trying to surrender to quality? And lastly, one of the tags is misleading – they slapped ‘Touhou’ onto this pile of garbage just to trick people into clicking it. While it does have part of the gameplay for the boss, none of the characters, locations, or music appear in-game. In short, it’s a five-minute tech demo that was abandoned before it was even finished. I’d rather eat a raw cactus while sitting in a bathtub of vinegar than deal with the bugs for one more second.

Redeeming Qualities

A Pac-Man-themed survivor title may be a brilliant idea on paper, with the core gameplay loop fitting the Vampire Survivors formula perfectly. The tragedy isn’t that the idea is bad, but this specific execution missed an open goal. The bugs and interface text can be unintentionally hilarious. The fact the game only speaks French at the beginning and very end can be a humorous punchline about the player’s struggle.

The best thing I can say about this game is that, given it’s a browser game, it didn’t cost me a cent to play, though I still feel like I’m owed a refund for the electricity my monitor wasted displaying it. It serves as a perfect what not to do manual for independent developers, including basic feedback, hit markers, input handling (particularly to prevent the perpetual motion shift key bug), and resolution scaling so the GUI elements don’t overlap onto the playing field.

My Verdict

Based on the absolute technical wreckage I just described above, this game lands firmly in the Major Code Red Category. On a scale of 10, I give it a 1.5. Some of the factors that would be in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde territory are this game’s fundamental breakdown in basic playability. The game-breaking speed bug that requires a manual browser refresh just to reset the game is the sort of broken code that landed the game in this category.

A game that can be finished in five minutes with a single song in its soundtrack and zero sound effects doesn’t make it just bad; it’s unfinished garbage. And using the ‘Touhou’ tag to lure in fans for a generic Asteroids clone is just false advertising in its own right. With overlapping GUI text and a total lack of localization (being only in French), it fails the most basic tests of game design. In short, it’s not enough to be in the Debatably Bad category – it’s an unlocalized, near-silent, glitchy, and five-minute disaster enough to make you pour an entire bottle of water on your keyboard.

Not that you’d want to, but if you’d like to try it for yourself, you can play it here:
https://moustiquefou.itch.io/pacman-survivors

How Did the Community Know Something Was Wrong?

At midnight UTC on Thursday, February 19, 2026, Drillimation published their second article on a series of the worst Touhou Project fangames in history. Within three hours of the article’s publication, one user on Drillimation’s Discord server noticed something was not right about it and decided to discuss it with Ciel Chandelleur (controlled by Emiko Hosokawa).

The discussion mostly centered on Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity and the fanservice that led to the game’s reception hitting rock bottom. This lasted for nearly four hours. In the same conversation, the user began to question why Homestead Harvest, one of the other games on the list, was present. The article began to garner criticism over the potentially confusing and misleading content that placed it in poor taste. Several players, including on another server, noted that the game was unfairly labeled as an asset flip, which was thrown around offensively.

The term “asset flip” is used to refer to games that appear to have unethically used premade assets for the purpose of being a cash grab. Despite Homestead Harvest being a farming sim with a good reception, most of the assets used appear to be entirely original, and no accusations of this were found on the store page reviews or related discussions.

Another fangame that was brought up was Touhou Seisen’ei ~ Forlorn Souls of Wicked Past. The initial article claimed the game was the same thing but used the soundtrack recordings from the official Touhou Project games, and several players disputed. One player who took a look at the game for five seconds became extremely obvious that none of the official assets were there. Composer Ocha worked hard on the game’s soundtrack, which is entirely original. The critique also promoted a false conspiracy theory about Team Shanghai Alice legal representative Fumio Oyamada throwing a fit over the game. In short, many claimed that Drillimation viewed other creators as their competitors in the field, rather than community members.

According to Ciel, she and Hosokawa have the evidence that Drillimation had been viewing every other fan creator as their competitors – including excessive promotion of their works, which they deem to be lacking in quality and containing numerous artistic/graphical and storyline potholes that they refuse to fix, through means such as pressuring gaming news outlets to write articles about them as well as forcing Touhou Project fan music creators such as FanTouhouMusic to make remixes of their music. This practice is attributed by them to choke out other creators’ chance to build a name for themselves, and they have been urging Drillimation to admit to this malpractice, to little avail. Hosokawa has learned that the Prophet often doesn’t understand the concept of constructive criticism and calls it “frustrating”, and has admitted this to be the worst mistake since the beginning of their partnership in late 2021.

Upon discovery of these controversies, Drillimation pulled the articles from viewing and issued a statement on their social media platforms, as well as apologizing to their fans who may have been confused. Drillimation had plans for a series of these articles, but they have been pulled from the schedule as a result.

New Pipeline for Touhou Project Fangame Critiques

According to this Reddit thread, one user commented that creating a game requires a significant amount of time and effort (roughly a year and a half, on average). Even free games are subject to the same thing. If a developer puts out a free game, and that player doesn’t like it, they’ll simply move on to something else.

Even the lowest-rated itch.io projects are hard to find. This is because itch.io’s search and filter settings generally hide low-rated content to prioritize active and high-quality projects. Browser extensions don’t help as all they do is sort the games based on the number of ratings they have. Most users who enjoy fangames usually rate them five stars, and those who don’t often leave no rating. Very rarely do they leave a one-star review or leave the game itself simply unrated. Instead of searching through, the Prophet will play the newest ones without researching them as a sort of first impression. The critiques will be similar to the Spray n’ Play (formerly known as Squirty Plays and Jimpressions) videos produced by Stephanie Sterling.

The Prophet won’t be the only one playing them. Drillimation will invite other players on their server to try the fangame and provide additional information about it. To avoid the hassle of downloading stuff which could lead to malware, only the browser-based games will be the focus of the critiques. The ratings could all vary – they could be extremely good in most cases, but it will be hard for a game to fall at the bottom of the scale. Some of these developers could end up becoming very sensitive to criticism, and we just need to pray they don’t turn into another Digital Homicide.

Conclusion

While the article did not land in the Major Code Red category which would spell a legal meltdown and career-ending disaster, this mistake landed in the Severe Zone category of the AVGN Scale, though it borders on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde category. This was not just an article that people disliked; it accidentally spread misleading and factually incorrect information. This would be like a game being an unplayable mess, only for the fans to point out they don’t realize there was a run button.

For the Jekyll and Hyde factor, the specific mention of the false conspiracy theory regarding Fumio Oyamada moved the article from a simple mistake to a bipolar disaster. One day, you’ll be writing a critique, and the next day, you’ll accidentally fuel a community witch hunt. To compare the various aspects of the article:

This whole thing serves as a wake-up call. The Touhou Project playerbase is built upon a foundation of passion and mutual respect, and as a platform with critiques that work, we have a responsibility to be fans first and critics second.

As a way to move forward, we have three key changes. The first is no more five-second glances. When a game is on a list, we must play it thoroughly to verify the assets and mechanics. Second, we will lean on the expertise of players on Discord and Reddit to ensure our impressions align with reality. Lastly, legal representatives and developer histories will be verified through official channels before a single word is published.

We have traded the top ten lists for more thoughtful, browser-based impressions. It’s hard to rank the worst because, at the end of the day, someone will put their heart into those pixels. From now on, we’ll make sure our heart is in the right place too. As someone once said, delaying a game to fix mistakes will make it good, but rushing it will forever make it bad.

The next article will be an example of a review of one game that follows the above procedure.