Developer: Team Shanghai Alice/ZUN
Platform: PC
Release: 2004
Imperishable Night is the eighth game in the Touhou Project series which began in 1996. The Touhou Project series are vertical scrolling arcade shooters filled with characters that are created by the one man developer ZUN. The series is also known for its incredible difficulty.
What made Imperishable Night different from most other arcade shooters is the incredible level of focus required of the gamer while playing it. This game throws out the concept of learning curve almost entirely. The enemies in the game are unforgiving and will throw projectiles relentlessly at you in huge amount. It is not uncommon to see hundreds of moving projectiles all at once on the screen thereby requiring your utmost attention to dodge through them.
While the uncountable amount of projectiles might make the game seem impossible, that is not entirely the case. The designer is smart to have the hit area of your character small enough to make weaving through the projectiles possible only if you respond quickly. The numerous power-ups obtainable once the enemies are destroyed also power up your character enough to balance up the seemingly impossible to beat game. There are two types of power-ups in the game. The red power-up will increase the damage that your character unleash and also allow for more projectiles to be fired at once. The blue ones on the other hand are collectibles that will give you an extra life once a certain number are collected. Continues will set you back to the beginning of a level if you used up all the 3 lives. The game used an interesting way of representing the number of continues that are available for use. Every time a continue is used, the game clock will increased by 30 minutes. The game’s story starts at 11pm (game time) and you must complete the game before 5am (game time). The clock will also progress every time a level is complete.
The game has 4 difficulty levels and I found that only the first three are actually enjoyable while extremely challenging. The hardest difficulty is almost impossible to play through and even the developer states in game that it is a joke. The game is split into 3 levels and all 3 levels are staged in the same way. The story is told through dialogue sequence before the boss fight.
Controls are very responsive and simple. You use the arrow keys to navigate the character around the screen. The ‘z’ key is used for firing and the ‘x’ key is used for unleashing special ability.
The visuals in this game are a mixed bag. On one hand, the hundreds of projectiles flying across the screen are animated with beautiful mathematically calculated patterns. The patterns are very varied and fill the screen much like fireworks. The projectiles, varying in colours and sizes, also help to beautify the game. On the other hand, the low resolution sprites used in the game is a letdown. The low resolution sprites caused the characters in the game to have a slight blurry look with pronounce stair-stepping effect. A letdown especially since the character designs are done well. The background of the each level also looks similar throughout and does not help in breaking up the level’s appearance or making it interesting. The music and sounds are designed very nicely and gives a soothing feel to the game. They complement well with the frantic action happening on screen.
I enjoyed Imperishable Nights tremendously. The game has challenging enemies and bosses and pretty addictive gameplay if you like the challenge. Gameplay is great but not fantastic as I soon realized that the strategy to beat the game is simply to survive through the projectiles while holding down the fire key. This is the kind of game that may probably fail as a commercial game because of its ruthless difficulty and limited appeal to the masses. But as an indie game built for veteran shooter fans, this game excels.
Rating: 8/10
Weiwen
Weiwen
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