So I've been out of the Touhou loop for like... 10 years? I guess?

[Ghaleon]

Way back in the day when I was new to this community (about when SA was out and UFO had a demo), I asked about promising fan games, and people  pointed me towards a fun little tower defense game, labyrinth of Touhou, a Touhou Soccer game, and a non touhou game shmup. I forget the name. le  flower de souer or something. it doesn't matter, it was a non-touhou game. In any case I liked them all, though labyrinth of touhou was my fave of course, and shortly after,  Genius of Sappheiros came out, and I love that game too.

JRPGs are one of my fave genres (not really in current gen, I only like Falcom JRPGs pretty much), so any Touhou fangame in THAT catagory I should know about (unless it's decidedly not good), but have there been any other big-credit touhou fan games since? I know about Touhou pocket wars, they looked fun, and they actually were for awhile, but long-term, they just don't do it for me. Shmups I generally do n't want, but I'll take them if they really a re exceptional. My fave Touhou shmup is Phantasm Romance. But I also liked this 1 stage play-as Rumia one where the final boss was some  goofy hong-meiling cow-fest or something. I can't remember. I didn't like the final boss but the rest of it was good. There was some sad drama one where everyone dies and the final boss was white dead reimu or something. I forget the name. That one was ALMOST as good, but not quite up to snuff for me. I th i nk it tried to ride on its drama rather than shmup  quality imo, which wasn't bad, but just not as good.

Sorry for the ramble. I miss loving Touhou fan-games, and just want to know if I missed any, and kinda expect to have since I haven't been around for so long.

[Gesh86]

Welcome back to Touhou, first of all!

JRPGs are one of my fave genres (not really in current gen, I only like Falcom JRPGs pretty much), so any Touhou fangame in THAT catagory I should know about (unless it's decidedly not good), but have there been any other big-credit touhou fan games since?

The fangame that most people would call "Touhou-Ys" is Touhou Scarlet Curiosity on PC (Steam) and PS4. I loved it, and despite a not too stellar metacritic score, it's generally well regarded among the fans.

Pretty much all the official games from 10 to 18 are on Steam, of course. When that happened with 16 for the first time, a lot of gates opened for fangames as well.
Now that Touhou has come to several digital platforms, it's generally not as hard anymore to find out what's even available. If we're talking about more impactful titles of recent years, some examples are Touhou Genso Wanderer (Steam, PSN, Switch), The Disappearing of Gensokyo (Steam), Touhou Luna Nights (Steam, Windows?, Switch) and Touhou Spell Bubble (Switch)

[Ghaleon]

Thanks. So no big name high profile to the community fangames that are melonbooks only or whatever that I may m iss out on?

[deice]

off the top of my head for jrpg's released in the last 10 years there's:

- tale of beautiful memories, a clone of super mario rpg with touhou characters
- devil of decline (there's several expansions and different versions so here's just the circle's site), a jrpg that the touhou wiki compares with sappheiros. i believe there's a partial english patch out somewhere? though i'm not too sure where you'd go about finding it, and even so there's a comprehensive english walkthrough on the wiki
- mugen nise sato - first disaster, a game similar to valkyrie profile. sadly, there isn't too much info on this game in english, but i believe someone from old motk was working on a translation

also, i'm fairly certain that

some sad drama one where everyone dies and the final boss was white dead reimu or something

refers to concealed the conclusion.

you'd actually be correct that the shmup quality was a bit lacking, because most of the good stuff in that game was packed into a postgame that took the shape of 30+ last word spell cards

[Suspicious person]

Heya

When it comes to big boy touhou fangame of recent-ish years, imo it's gotta be Touhou Puppet Dance Performance (and its expansion : Shard of Dreams). In a nutshell, it's basically a pokemon game, but with proper Touhou settings, and it comes with animated touhou girl sprites, an unique artstyle, a possibility for you to start the game with the 2hu of your choice, postgame content, and PvP ! If you're into pokemon games, this will not disappoint you

Dunno about melonbook (can't browse that for this plebeian life of me), but you can try to get it at DLSite :
https://www.dlsite.com/home/work/=/product_id/RJ179146.html (for the OG game)
https://www.dlsite.com/home/work/=/product_id/RJ179149.html (for the expanded, more stacked up game)

And while it's japanese, people worked hard over the years to create a translation and a guide for the game, in case you feel it might overwhelm you (it might be pokemon-like touhou, but types and something you can consider to be more or less "evolution" do not quite match the good old pokemon games) : here's a thread with links towards a translation patch and a guide for this game :

http://thpp.supersanctuary.net/forum/index.php?topic=4364.0
(Apologies to the almighty mods if linking to other forums is ill mannered, but credits go to where they're due)



And aside from this game and the ones previously mentionned by Gesh86, another one that was quite popular too back in the days AND is CURRENTLY AVAILABLE ON STEAM would be [Touhou Shoujo Tale of Beautiful Memories], which in a nutshell is basically Supermario RPG. While the artstyle for this game can be generally, uh, spicy, it's not an erotic game nor something you wouldn't wanna get caught dead playing. Various ingame locations and dialogues also respect the series lore too.
EDIT : Sniped by deice. Eh, I'll still leave it here

Find it in Steam here :
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1124060/Touhou_Shoujo_Tale_of_Beautiful_Memories/



Another one that, while not so much talked about nowadays, was uncontestably THE Touhou Fangame of 2013 or 2014, and is also AVAILABLE ON STEAM NOWADAYS, would be Tenjou no tempest. An in-a-nutshell description wouldn't exactly do this masterpiece justice, but it's an action-platforming game with a bunch of Touhou weather puzzles, a progression system, a graze-ish kind of system, absolutely EPIC BOSS BATTLES, bunch of challenges, a proper and respectable storyline, and best girl Tenshi Winanawin as the protagonist.

Find it in Steam here :
https://store.steampowered.com/app/994020/Tempest_of_the_Heavens_and_Earth/



Another pretty cool one, if you're into MegamanX kind-of games, would be Takkoman : Kouzatsu World
It's a fairly old game, but if you're THAT out of loop, you might probably have not heard about this (a surprising amount of people do not know)
It's got some of the most bizarre, uh,  "things" whose chara designs may be inspired by very obscure and mostly arcane memes from a bygone era and a certain community / forum (don't really want to research it right now, sry), but if you're able to get past the ... weirdness, you'll find a pretty fun and fast paced MegamanX style game. Also some of its soundtrack is far too epic than it should be, considering some of this game's content
Unfortunately, it is not on steam, and the Playism store, where it used to be available, closed pretty recently ...

Here's what I found for Melonbooks, although I have no idea how things work there :
https://www.melonbooks.co.jp/detail/detail.php?product_id=32271



Another one from Steam is a fangame (duh) by the name of Nitorinc. It's a cool Warioware style fangame (with a voice actress that capture the vibe for the transition comments between minigames), moreover it's also FREE

Find it in Steam here :
https://store.steampowered.com/app/772260/NitorInc_Touhou_Microgames/
Also, since it's more or less a kind of a community project, you can follow the circle's twitter :
https://twitter.com/nitorinc (haven't been active for a while, but still)



Another cool one that is also on Steam but still in early access and in the middle of development would be Gensokyo Night Festival. It's a pretty Suika fangame that's got gorgeous spritemanship and pretty visuals

Find it in Steam here :
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1122050/Gensokyo_Night_Festival/
Also the dev's twitter, where you can see nice stuff including but not limited to the game development's progress :
https://twitter.com/tea_basira

[Gesh86]

Touhou Shoujo Tale of Beautiful Memories, which in a nutshell is basically Supermario RPG. While the artstyle for this game can be generally, uh, spicy, it's not an erotic game nor something you wouldn't wanna get caught dead playing.

That's certainly a title that needs more attention than it gets. I might even start a Screenshot Let's Play of it in the near or not-so-near future. Most likely that aggressive thiccness of its cast is still keeping a lot of folks at bay, thinking it can't possibly be the genuinely great RPG that it is.

Something that hasn't yet been mentioned is Ephemeral Unnatural Balance (https://store.steampowered.com/app/834580/__Ephemeral_Unnatural_Balance/). It isn't too widely known among the many Touhou shmups that exist. Yet it's special not only in that it turned out exceptionally well (imo), but that it had a feedback thread on MotK V2 many years before it came out. You could say that at least to a very small part, our community had a hand in it.

[Gobbles]

I really should pick up Puppet Dance Performance sometimes. Since DL-site is region-free nowadays it should be easy to get for me.
Gensokyo Night Festival looks real nice, but development seems to go pretty slow. So it may take a while. Also pretty excited about Touhou Blooming Chaos 2. Also still early access but it looks like it will have a full version soon.

As for game suggestions. There are some some nice ones already, but I still managed to dig up a good list.

Fantastic Danmaku Festival Part II
Gesh had a video about this recently. Despite me not actually being that much into danmaku games. This game is carried by eye candy and ear candy alone.
Available on Steam.

Double Focus
Metroidvenia. Not as good as Luna Nights, but enemy design is adorable.
Also on Steam.

MarisaLand Legacy
Mario clone. Pretty fun. Its also on Steam. Too bad New Super Marisa Land is not.

Trap tower:
Puzzle game by Desunoya, available here:
https://desunoya.booth.pm/items/1361406

Satori Komeiji's Mental Education
Puzzle game where Satori has to help Koishi get to the present. Also really adorable. Don't think there is a translation but there is a lot of description on touhou wiki, the game itself is virtually textless.
It can be downloaded from DLSite.

Remyadry
Dungeon crawling RPG. It is pretty amusing and has nice character design. Sadly it does get repetitive after a while.
Available on Steam.

A few more RPG's.
Touhou Mother and Return of Touhou Mother. Guess what game they are based on... Second game was a bit too dramatic but I still enjoyed it, and it certainly has its moments.
Touhou-A-Live is a combination of touhou and  Live A Live, a games for the Super Nintendo only realeased in Japan. I liked it quite a lot.
All three games can be downloaded for free (legally) here: https://vgperson.com/games/. On that same site you can find a guide for those games should you get stuck.

Oh yeah, there was also this Aya Ace attorney series which I think has now 2 and a half games translated. https://www.shrinemaiden.com/index.php?topic=244.0;topicseen

[easy_breezy]

There's Touhou: Luna Nights. Good game

[WitheringFlowerCrown]

A couple of recently made games that have had mostly positive reception:

東方潮聖書　～ Sapphire Panlogism.
Touhou Sapphire Panlogism (Or SP) is a fan-made Touhou Shmup made by Team Urban Magic.
It has 6 Stages, an Extra Stage, 11 Last Words and a Carrefour Stage (Concept similar to the Phantasm stage of PCB)
The main gimmick is that some enemies radiate colour, when defeated they drop Raindrops of said colour. When you collect 10 Raindrops of one colour you activate a mode where each item collected grants bonus items when the mode ends, modes of different colours can mix and stack.
It features Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame as protagonists, as per norm. But also Shou Toramaru and Hecatia Lapislazuli as protagonists. Shou has been long awaited and Hecatia is an odd choice, but fits considering the story.
I've played it. The Shmup content is pretty good, competently made, the music is all original and sounds great in my opinion. Though watch out for Stage 5, that Stage and its Boss are a very big run-killer and a jump in difficulty
The game is currently available on Bulletforge, for free.

東方夢旧市 ～ Glory of Deep Skies.
Touhou Glory of Deep Skies (Or GoDS) is a fan-made Touhou Shmup made by Τeam αlternative Σnding
It has 6 Stages, an Extra Stage, and 11 Impact Spells (Similar to Overdrive Spells from TD).
The main gimmick is that all enemies have an element associated with them and you can choose an elemental burst during Character selection. These boosts can allow you to eitherr shoot more bullets, protect you from damage once, or make you faster while increasing item-value.
It features only Reimu Hakurei and Marisa Kirisame as Protagonists. But Reimu and Marisa each have 2 shots, one that's regular for their appearances and a strange, unusual shot.
I've played it. Never completed it because I'm only semi-decent at Shmups. The patterns are interesting, the music part original/part rearranges.
The game is currently available on Bulletforge, for free.

[nintendonut888]

I have heard high praises for Blue Devil In The Belvedere, a recently released Chinese fangame. It is on Steam and even comes with an English option:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1365750/__Blue_devil_in_theBelvedere/

Aside from that, probably my favorite fangame series is Fantasy Maiden Wars, a four game Super Robot Wars x Touhou epic with great animations and writing. I've only played the first game so far, but I've heard the others are just as good, and have functional English patches. They can be bought on DLsite.

[Suspicious person]

Not sure if a new thread would be more appropriate for this or not, but on the topic of big boi fangames, just today, Ankake Spa, the Circle behind some well appreciated title such as Dat Youmu game (Youyou Kengeki Musou) and Touhou Koukishin (Scarlet Curiosity) uploaded an announcement of sorts for their new fangame, Touhou Choushinsei (?)

Announcement vid / trailer(?) here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neK1qyAZgTE

Game has been in the works for quite some time, with only a tweet featuring a Reimu model doing some attacks in Scarlet Curiosity (can't find where that tweet is ...) showing that the circle was working on something, but this confirms that they've been going at it for real. Game is slated for release in 2022, and aside from having Reimu and Marisa as confirmed playables, it's gonna be similar in style to their previous games (just see the trailer)

Game is quite pretty as we have quite a few scenic views, just like in Scarlet Curiosity, and the fact that there are new enemies and new characters (with a few returning locations too) is gonna make things interesting.

So yeah, since Scarlet Curiosity was quite the fangame, so I'm absolutely looking forward to what this game's got in store. Definitely something to look forward to as far as new 2hu fangames go in.

Circle's twitter here
https://twitter.com/annkakespa