[Gensou Skydrift] Racers and What I'd Like to See

Touhou Mario Kart.

There've been a lot of Touhou dojin games making it to the English-speaking world lately, and on proper game consoles, no less. Most recent one I've played is Gensou Skydrift, which is at its core Mario Kart but with Touhou girls replacing the characters as well as the vehicles.

It's cute and pretty great-looking for a game made by fans. Music is largely by SOUND HOLIC and StarDrops and they're fun arranges of mostly girls' themes from the games, occasionally stage themes. But you expect fun music in a Touhou dojin game.

I'm mostly writing this because an idea for a game that's been bouncing around my head as little more than a transient thought is a bit racing-related. It's not inspired by this, but I think I learned a bit about what I do and don't enjoy in a racing game that I want to take note of for future reference.

First off: Object collision is way off, and the paths of the tracks are extremely unforgiving, not allowing for flying off one end to cruise onto a different part of the level. If you fall off, you'll careen into space, regardless of how close the road is. That can be frustrating and it becomes an obstacle in how you play the game rather than an enhancement, feature, or challenge. If you run into the track's edge, you're likely to be repelled right off, meaning you have to aim to be ABOVE the track if you want to stay in the running. When your "vehicle" is a girl, it feels like she should be able to grab the edge and pull you up on it rather than get hit in the face and fall into the abyss. I mean, at least some of them would be that tenacious.

Though that's my wanting something more from a game made by fans. In terms of racing games in general, it made me realise that losing control, flying off an edge, and having to wait for a respawn to recover kinda really sucks. Especially if they're not even going to treat me to a unique animation whenever my characters fall into lava or water or space! It's like they didn't account for people being BAD at the game.

One level is extremely interesting, however: Former Hell. Unlike most of the others, there isn't really one set path, and there are several side streets you can take to varying degrees of success or ease of navigation. I love the variation in plowing through the streets, skirting through the sewers, and rocketing off of rooftops when it comes to surroundings. When it's almost all just… earth, such as in the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, I think it becomes too grounded (heh) to really take advantage of the medium. The medium being video game. Fantasy. Not real. Have fun! Y'know?

Another interesting level was the Outside World, modeled after how it's seen in Urban Legend in Limbo. This means tall skyscrapers dotted with fluorescent and blinding blue lights, but now with Sonic Adventure or R-esque raised rollercoastery pavement crawling between them and the occasional ramp or ethereal blue path to drift on. It's quite fun to look at and not nearly as dark as the Scarlet Devil Mansion, with less tight turns and un-fun routes.

That's another thing: This may be a symptom of many racing games, however I haven't played many as of recent, so I can't be sure, but I'm really not a fan of tight corners. This cropped up quite a bit in Gensou Skydrift, as a lot of locations in Gensokyo are man-made (such as the aforementioned mansion, the nuclear reactor core, or Former Hell) and I've just found that edges and corners are not conducive to slippery, slidey, imprecise drifting. They have their place in racing games, of course! With how this one plays, though, I don't think it's it. Those corners call for intense drifting, which brings down the momentum significantly, especially when the wall's visibility is low and you end up colliding with it.

In my ideal racing game, there wouldn't be a complete lack of corners. There'd be a snappier, efficient way to quickly switch directions. Perhaps a bumper would be used to that end? It wouldn't make sense for some vehicles, such as cars, but I think it could work with a bike. Or with a girl, if you're flying on one of those. Touhous are required to be rather nimble, after all.

Another thing I value in racing games is certainly versatility of the paths you take. Nonlinear progression, I guess? There were times where I'd fly off the track and that'd be the end of that. Sometimes, though, by some fluke, I'd accidentally fall on an earlier part of the level, pushing me back without forcing the long respawn period. That sort of manoeuvre isn't new to racing games (or games in general, really, it was even in Mario 64's penguin race), but it rarely worked out quite that well in Gensou Skydrift. The path would sometimes overlap and loop over itself, but it's like they didn't account for anyone taking advantage of that. And, I mean, they already created something pretty incredible for a dojin game! So once again, I don't mean to shit on Skydrift, I merely mean to muse on what jives with me. Taking shortcuts and creating your own way are both elements I value in driving-oriented titles.

Drifting is a fun technique that I, admittedly, haven't really used that much. I'm a very SPEED ALL THE TIME person, so my technique in any game of this sort was to only ever accelerate. Gensou Skydrift's penalty for playing like that was steep enough that I HAD to adapt my playstyle if I wanted to beat the main campaign. I'm not sure how I feel about that, either. My original playstyle had very little in the way of technique, but it presented its own challenges and made movement fun to me. Completely quashing that sort of gameplay is a bit discouraging -- I feel like I get more hours out of a game playing how I want to rather than how I have to.

Drifting just slows you down, you know?! Sometimes you'd have to slow close to a stop to make the turns necessary around Gensokyo! When I think "racing," I think "competing speeds," so anything that impedes the speed is an obstacle to me. I'm not a fan of having to activate my own obstacle in order to effectively navigate.

One thing this game did have was "spellcards", which are effectively the items you'd pick up in any other kart racing game. Some (like the ribbon-maybe-gap and the tengu fan) seemed to have similar boosting effects, others functioning instead as means to inconvenience your opponents on the track. I don't have much of a feeling toward them one way or the other. One thing I DO prefer in racing games, however, is when there's an ability to collide/punch/otherwise interact with competing racers to throw them off and to gain the advantage. It's a double-edged sword, though, of course, as they're freely able to attack you in the same manner.

That's a level of violence that could easily work with Touhou, but isn't really present in Skydrift. I kinda get it -- some people prefer to put the focus of Touhou on the flight and danmaku rather than the brutal melee combat of the Twilight Frontier titles. It might have also been a bit unsettling, since the girls are already riding each other as vehicles.

So I guess my ideal racing title:

• Allows for a quick snap turn for hard corners, not contingent on braking and losing momentum
• Allows you to play recklessly without braking or very technically and effectively, with both having different pros and cons, but not one more represented than the other
• Allows for shortcuts or hopping around from certain parts of the track to others, requiring a different way of analysing maps that isn't just entirely linear "start here, end here"
• Has less of a penalty for falling off the road, merely putting you in a different place that you need to work your way out of. Slow respawns aren't only discouraging, but they're rather tedious, too
• Allows for simple, close-range melee combat with other vehicles

I dunno. It's a fun game! And I think it made me understand a lot of what I appreciate in what I play, so I value it for that.