The latest game in the Touhou franchise Touhou 18.5: 100th Black Market will be available at Comiket 100 at Tokyo Big Sight next month.
The Touhou franchise is a series of “bullet hell” (danmaku) shooter games. Players control a character on a vertical screen and dodge bullets from enemies coming down the way. More familiar games in the genre include Ikaruga and even Undertale.
Touhou 18.5: 100th Black Market will be a direct sequel to Touhou 18: Unconnected Marketeers. Games ending in a “.5” are separate from the mainline series and don’t usually follow the typical bullet hell format. But this isn’t the case here and the gameplay will be largely similar to the main series.
Touhou 18.5: 100th Black Market appears to emphasize the card collecting mechanic in Touhou 18. With these cards the game’s heroine Marisa will be able to customize her attributes and powers and mess around in a more lighthearted way than a mainline game from the franchise.
Marisa Kirisame is one of two main characters who have been consistently playable ever since Touhou 3: Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream in 1997. The other, Reimu Hakurei has been playable from the very first game and together the two are largely considered the primary protagonists of the series. In the years since, the duo have been joined by former bosses from other games, namely Sakuya Izayoi and Sanae Kochiya.
Touhou 18.5: 100th Black Market is expected to release physically at Comiket 100 on August 14. However developer ZUN has plans for an eventual digital release on Steam.
