Metroidvanias continue to be one of the most consistently amazing and commercially successful game genres out there, and as such it’s no surprise that the anime-themed Touhou Luna Nights found such success following the release of its final update on June 15.
Publisher Playism announced this on the Steam community pages, noting that Touhou Luna Nights, in its time on the storefront since February, reached 100,000 downloads. This is an amazing sales figure which can be attributed to the success of other Playism 2D side-scroller titles, like La Mulana and its sequel La Mulana 2.
In the post, Playism stated that, “it’s thanks to the invaluable support and reviews of players like you that we were able to pass this significant milestone less than four months after the Ver. 1.0 release on February 26th.”
Touhou Luna Nights is a Touhou Metroidvania, played on a 2D plane. Touhou, of course, refers to the series of bullet hell titles from Japan developed by the single-person Team Shanghai Alice. While not specifically set in the canon of the Touhou Project universe, Touhou Luna Nights takes a lot of inspiration from it, including yokai and a parallel universe highly similar to Gensokyo.
It’s also a relatively short, yet action-packed title, one which I was lucky enough to play after the release of its final update. It takes many aspects from past Touhou games and applies it to the slick gameplay, accompanied by an incredibly amazing track list remixed from Touhou tracks. The aesthetic might make it or break it for some people, as I think that’s very subjective, but the gameplay more than makes up for it with tight, intuitive and incredibly responsive controls atop content that is all meat and no filler.
In fact, the only reason why you’re hearing me praise this game over this piece and not over a long review is that it’s a pretty simple concept: if you like Metroidvanias, Touhou as a series, and short, but incredibly fulfilling experiences, then Touhou Luna Nights is for you. Check it out on it Steam page here, along with the hundreds of overwhelmingly positive reviews for Touhou Luna Nights.
