It's probably no understatement to say that this community as a whole likes Castlevania. If it wasn't evident just from the general air and precedent of the forum, Symphony of the Night was just voted as the most popular game of its entire generation by the people around these parts. It's not an uncommon position to take, as the series is held in esteem worldwide and influences subsequent works tirelessly; one of those derivative works was the Touhou search action Luna Nights, a game I've certainly made my case for, and which I hope has reached more people now that it's available on consoles too. But in the gargantuan scope of indie games, fan games, and even Touhou-specific doujinsoft, Luna Nights wasn't the first to wear its influences and love for what shaped it on its sleeves. It's time to wind back the stopwatch a decade.
Koumajou Densetsu: Scarlet Symphony (evidently now replacing "Densetsu" with the titular antagonist's name to cover another point of Castlevania referentiality) is a game that made its rounds in 2009 and in the years after when it originally came out, because how could it go unnoticed? It recreates and adapts the Symphony-informed, Ayami Kojima-adorned Castlevania aesthetic and framework painstakingly to the most appropriate set of Touhou iconography available, as subsequent works like Luna Nights have. Yes, it is about the perennial residents of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and as much as the fanbase's single-minded focus on the sixth series game's setting and cast may frustrate someone who's more entrenched in the entirety of the source material, it must be remembered that this is a vintage game from the midst of the Touhou boom years, when the oldest works weren't quite so old yet, and as must be acknowledged: it is the one with the vampire and her if not literal then symbolic castle. When two loves such as Castlevania and Touhou combine, it's often that these games write themselves around the thematics present.
What can be expected from Scarlet Symphony, then? It's a game out of time upon this upcoming return; before indie development had really become codified in the way it's understood now; more localized and relegated to smaller, less globalized audiences. Like Luna Nights, it doesn't attempt to map the expected mold of the Symphony-patterned games to itself exactingly--what you get with it is a linear stage-based structure like Castlevanias of old, expressed with the control style and physics of those more modern works, and mixed with dashes of influences from the shooter mechanics that define Touhou. The symbioses of these elements may not reach the ingenuity found in the interactions in a game like Luna Nights, but they don't really need to. They speak to a different era of development, a different time in fandom--some of it fond nostalgia, some of it things glad to have grown out of--but they're part of the foundation for what's been accomplished since. The largest obstacle in marking that significance has always been sheer inaccessibility, which is one of the unquestionable benefits of this modern age, when every contemporary Touhou gets a timely Steam release, when the past catalogue is gradually filled in through those same services, and fan works old and new get introduced to new audiences on console platforms they never would have even broached before. The coolest thing about Scarlet Symphony's unlikely return is that it doesn't even have to stop there: the game has a sequel--just as unabashedly vampire killing as this first game--ready to be shown off to players who might not have known either even existed.
Koumajou Densetsu: Scarlet Symphony (evidently now replacing "Densetsu" with the titular antagonist's name to cover another point of Castlevania referentiality) is a game that made its rounds in 2009 and in the years after when it originally came out, because how could it go unnoticed? It recreates and adapts the Symphony-informed, Ayami Kojima-adorned Castlevania aesthetic and framework painstakingly to the most appropriate set of Touhou iconography available, as subsequent works like Luna Nights have. Yes, it is about the perennial residents of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, and as much as the fanbase's single-minded focus on the sixth series game's setting and cast may frustrate someone who's more entrenched in the entirety of the source material, it must be remembered that this is a vintage game from the midst of the Touhou boom years, when the oldest works weren't quite so old yet, and as must be acknowledged: it is the one with the vampire and her if not literal then symbolic castle. When two loves such as Castlevania and Touhou combine, it's often that these games write themselves around the thematics present.
What can be expected from Scarlet Symphony, then? It's a game out of time upon this upcoming return; before indie development had really become codified in the way it's understood now; more localized and relegated to smaller, less globalized audiences. Like Luna Nights, it doesn't attempt to map the expected mold of the Symphony-patterned games to itself exactingly--what you get with it is a linear stage-based structure like Castlevanias of old, expressed with the control style and physics of those more modern works, and mixed with dashes of influences from the shooter mechanics that define Touhou. The symbioses of these elements may not reach the ingenuity found in the interactions in a game like Luna Nights, but they don't really need to. They speak to a different era of development, a different time in fandom--some of it fond nostalgia, some of it things glad to have grown out of--but they're part of the foundation for what's been accomplished since. The largest obstacle in marking that significance has always been sheer inaccessibility, which is one of the unquestionable benefits of this modern age, when every contemporary Touhou gets a timely Steam release, when the past catalogue is gradually filled in through those same services, and fan works old and new get introduced to new audiences on console platforms they never would have even broached before. The coolest thing about Scarlet Symphony's unlikely return is that it doesn't even have to stop there: the game has a sequel--just as unabashedly vampire killing as this first game--ready to be shown off to players who might not have known either even existed.
