If you love the Touhou project franchise, a new side-scrolling 2D pixel art action game has been announced, and it's Koumajou Remilia 2: Stranger's Requiem.
The title may feel familiar to some, as it's the direct sequel to Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony. It's developed by Frontier Aja and published by CFK.
It's coming to Nintendo Switch and PC, albeit it doesn't have a release date just yet. Notably, it features a new playable character that fans of the franchise will be very familiar with, Remilia Scarlet's own chief maid Sakuya Izayoi.
You can check out the announcement trailer below.
Here's how the developer describes the game officially:
Koumajou Remilia II: Stranger's Requiem is a side-scrolling 2D action game featuring characters from the Touhou Project, popular franchise loved by fans around the world, and a direct sequel to Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony.
Building off of the previous game, Koumajou Remilia II: Stranger's Requiem is a substantial upgrade to the previous title in more ways than one, featuring better graphics and gameplay, an original story centered around a new protagonist, and a richer lineup of characters. Embark on an adventure with Chief Maid Sakuya Izayoi as she finds herself in search of spring, which has disappeared along with her friends from the castle.
If you're unfamiliar with the Touhou Project franchise, it was originally created by the doujin developer Team Shanghai Alice with a debut all the way back in 1997. Team Shanghai Alice was actually a solo developer, Junya "ZUN" Ota.
Since then, the popularity of the franchise has exploded in Japan into a full-fledged pop culture phenomenon, mostly due to the fact that, in true doujin fashion, pretty much everyone is authorized to use the IP and its characters.
This has sparked a metric ton of games and other kinds of media by all sorts of indie developers and semi-recently even established publishers like Marvelous have started to pay attention. The fact that the work of a single man managed to create a massive multimedia franchise is certainly one of the most interesting and unique aspects of Japanese gaming culture.
