https://store.steampowered.com/app/2097720/_100th_Black_Market/Steam black market page is up for Touhou 18.5
My main takeaways :
-The magic circle surrounding Marisa seems like it can be fired off to deal AOE damage. I believe the damage that magic circle deals is probably based of M. Atk, and the cooldown between its uses is what's affected by the M. Reload (unless M. Reload is about the active Card's CD)
-The magic circle thingy seems to stop (or massively slow down?) the clump of bullets that are inside of it, seems to interract pretty nicely with the Miracle Mallet for scoring and money grinding reasons
-The Marisa we have in the trailer seems to have the UM sprite, which means golden eye and a proper hair braid with a white ribbon, and non rainbow buttons, quite unlike the red eyed, braid lacking, rainbow buttons having Marisa in the title screen. Something suspicious is afoot, I daresay.
-Similarly, the Eternity featured in the Steam Black Market screenshot's eyes lack that red tinge, unlike the Eternity screenshot we see in the Touhou news site where we get to glean a hint of red, hmm.
On the scoring aspect of the game, aside from the dominance of the trifecta of UM's Mallet, bullet stacking, and potentially Miracle Mallet CD reduction (if any card reduce the mallet's CD like in UM), but the highlight this time's gotta be the small zone that's create whenever Marisa sends her magic circle : in the trailer, we get to see the player generate Bullet Money (which I assume the small purple collectibles are) spawn from the field created by the magic circle. To put it in an easy to relate example : all the bullets included in the space generated by the magic circle gets LoLK grazed and generate bullet money instead of graze items, so this promise to be interesting.
Anyway, going by Mike's nonspell and Eternity's spellcard's look, it seems pretty much certain to me that this game is sure to bear the Violet Detector Syndrome, by which I mean the reuse of patterns from previous titles, the relative simplicity of the design of the patterns (especially in the earlier stages).
Stage design this time seems more about pattern design, as in ZUN could have designed a number of patterns that belongs to a pool from which a limited number of those would get picked up and thrown at you during your playthroughs. Depending on whether these patterns have harder version of themselves or, better yet, could mix and mash with other patterns, the roguelike aspect of this game may prove quite wild, and scorerunning would require a much higher learning cap. The only question is to see whether some random cards are gonna be important for scoring, cuz that's gonna bring back RNG dependance from UM, which is quite no bueno
The wave's patterns are probably gonna be what's gonna devide whether this game is gonna flop or receive a warm welcome, since no matter how complicated a wave may be, once you learn it's pattern you won't have much issue with it going forward : what I'm most interesting in is whether the waves patterns are gonna have various level of difficulties and whether they are gonna get mixed and mashed with each other, somewhere down the line : Nightmare scenes from VD were not super popular because they were often dismissed as lazily and not creative, a bit understandable since there are only a few combinations of small kinds of patterns, but this game may manage to avoid that problem if it gives a lot, and I mean A LOT, of types of patterns that could randomly mix and mash with other ones : a randomly mixed and mashed pattern honestly seems to me like it could be a good fit for the roguelike approach the Man seems to be going for this time.
Also a few additionnal gameplay takeaways :
-The Aunn card most certainly reduces the M. Reload by 33%
-The Sutra Scroll card seems to increase the M. Size (which I presume is the size of the zone created by Marisa's magic circle) by 33% (it can stack), so it's functionnally different from how it was in UM but may still prove to be very useful scoring wise
-Waves functions like some sort of mini-stage sections ; and you seem to have about 30 second per wave and a little over 1 minute for bosses, so no UM grindfest this time
-Mike didn't have any stars under her name, but her, uhhh, life circle seems to have the blue marker for spellcards
All in all, this game's got potential, but should lean heavily towardds Violet Detector, design philosophy wise. Scoring system seems to be straighforward enough for a bozo like me to deduct from the trailer, while random patterns are justied by the approach towards a more roguelike genre. Unless ZUN decides to make the magic circle system to be as clunky as VD's teleport, this game should turn alright.
Just please don't make us double tap shift, I get that the C button is probably already reserved for the active, but use D or even B or something else please just not double tap shift
