Touhou 13 – Ten Desires Demo

By: Derek Yu

On: April 17th, 2011

Touhou 13 - Ten Desires, by ZUN

Since 2004 ZUN has released trial versions of his games at the Touhou-themed annual conventions called Reitaisai. This year, however, due to the earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, Reitaisai was postponed and the three-stage demo for Touhou 13, called “Ten Desires”, was released online for free. Like all the major games in the Touhou series, Ten Desires is a vertical danmaku shoot ’em up set in the fictional world of Gensokyo. According to ZUN, it’s easier than his previous releases and is meant to be more accessible to beginners.

In TD, you have a Trance gauge that fills up as you collect spirits, up to a maximum of three bars. If you have at least one bar filled, you will automatically enter a “trance” upon getting hit, rendering you impervious to bullets until the gauge runs out and you die. If the gauge is maxed out, you can enter the trance voluntarily and you won’t die when it ends. Spirits are worth more points while in a trance and you also do more damage.

Aside from spirits, which come in four different colors and have various properties, enemies also drop the usual red and blue items. Red items increase your firepower and blue point items raise your score. If you head to the top of the screen you can suck all of these power-ups in (point items are also worth more up there). Finally, there are bombs that can be activated at any time.

For more information, check out the game’s manual, in English. You can download the demo either from the game’s homepage (it might be very slow) or from Mediafire.

Posted in Freeware, Shoot-em-ups, Windows | Tags: TeamShanghaiAlice

hahaer

Been waiting for this ever since the delays. Hopefully this will help me get into shmups because I'm absolutely terrible at them.
iffi

I was playing this yesterday – it does feel easier than usual (though I can't say for sure, this being just the first three stages), but that doesn't stop it from being a lot of fun.
Laserdracula

replace the flying lolita with a spaceship and maybe I would play it.
Anonymouse

step aside guys laserdracula is too cool for touhou
iffi

I've seen sprite replacements in Touhou games before, so it's certainly possible.
Repox

This is definitely much easier, more accessibility was stated as the goal or at least a driving point for this one, it's seen in the continues now putting you at where you died instead of the start of the stage like the previous games have done.
iffi

That could be true, though this system of continues was also used in Touhou 12.8 (which, at least in my opinion, is anything but more accessible) as well as in all the Touhou games prior to Mountain of Faith.

I eagerly welcome the reintroduction of Spell Practice mode. I hope ZUN puts in some Last Words like he did for Imperishable Night.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_LAAPB53LXMVDZGUI5M67MS6GKU qjavqfh svgmn

13 games and he decides to make one a little easier to be more accessible to beginners? You'd think at least one of the other 12 would serve this function..
first stage boss

Imperishable night.
http://awesometurtle.com Truly Wizard

This. Snack on IN until you can 1cc anything in Lunatic. Then venture out into the world.
iffi

Coincidentally (or maybe not?), Imperishable Night is the only other Touhou game to have a Spell Practice mode (Ten Desires seems to be reintroducing that), and the only other Touhou game besides the multiplayer ones to feature four playable characters (or rather eight, if you count both in each pair). Imperishable Night's one of my favorite Touhou games, too, so I hope Ten Desires ends up just as great.

Even though Imperishable Night is usually considered easy among Touhou games, I'm not sure if you could call it accessible, since the mechanics are still complex (with the different fire modes, time counter, etc). Imperishable Night's the first one I really got into, though, so maybe it really is more accessible.
Narvius

I actually prefer magical flying girls. And not just because they're girls. Spaceships are heavily overused (which doesn't stop me from enjoying stuff like Hydorah, but still).
http://profiles.google.com/negispringfieldczar Greg Morton

Lolita – a sexualized child, mostly pre-pubescent.
Gothic Lolita/Goth Loli – style of clothing with an absurdly frilly style mimicking the victorian era.
Know the difference. It may save your life.
Touhou != Lolita/Lolicon/Loli
Touhou = Gothic Lolita/Goth Loli
Blame the series' art style for making the characters look childlike. Many characters are way older(besides the childlike characters that are over hundreds of years old.) than you may assume.
Additionally, Touhou NEVER sexualizes their characters. Ever. If you ever see them showing skin, they're probably another artist.

Now. A more appropriate term would be 'moeblobs' or 'cute anthromorphic girls.'
http://profiles.google.com/negispringfieldczar Greg Morton

Before now, I had thought that Spell Card Practice was a given after Imperishable Night. Very disappointing…
bv728

Imperishable Night's difficulty is definitely lower than average, and practice modes help a lot, but it's got a bunch of systems that aren't well explained (and can result in some odd habits – avoiding focusing in IN is important, but it actively makes many games harder).
http://profiles.google.com/negispringfieldczar Greg Morton

More like not cool enough for Touhou. Or Touhou is just too cool for him. Whatever.
http://profiles.google.com/negispringfieldczar Greg Morton

The music for the most part doesn't really stand among ZUN's best. They're decent, but not remix-worthy. I do like Yoshika Miyako's theme though.