~~~~~~HAPPY CIRNO DAY 9/9!!!!!~~~~~~
First of all, go to your nearest Cirno, and give her all the headpats. This is her special day and she deserves all the love around the world!
It's been a long time coming and we're finally ready to push our first update for our game. We've been working quite hard the last month to make this Cirno Day update amazing and hope you all can join us in celebrating the best day of the year. But before we get to it...
PAX Results
Thank you all for visiting our amazing tiny booth at PAX West 2025!
Overall, the reception of the game was very solid. We also found tons of bugs and efficiencies that needed to be made thanks to you all. We gave away T-Shirts, Postcards for Daiyousei, and even saw a Cirno cosplayer stop by. What a WIN!
We want to do PAX again but due to the cost, we'll have to wait and see if we can secure more funding first.
Regardless, I believe we are the first ever "Touhou exclusive" booth at PAXWest and I think we did a great job representing!
Change Log
Here is what you've been waiting for. This is the change log for Touhou Danmaku Maze!!! This change log won't contain every change made. This update is almost a re-overhaul of the game and we hope you enjoy. Here are the main changes to expect:
Stage 2 is fully animated and SFXd
As you may have saw in the last update, the art was still in the beta pixel art format. We use this as a general guide to determine what the art should look like but it's easily a placeholder. Now the level feels fully fleshed out with some amazing GFX to illustrate the story.
Overworld is now a hub world
The original vision of this game was similar to an arcade game where levels are played back to back. We realized in testing that this game is stupid difficult and longer than most arcade games. Restarting a run due to some "gimmick" attacks made the experience impossible to enjoy. Now there is a hub world where you can choose any level you want! (Obviously stages 4-6 are not available yet)
In addition, we added some flavor text and the ability to easily see what trophy you got in the stage. It's a general game philosophy we want to push. Collecting trophies is the name of the game!
Records screen placeholder implemented
This screen will soon become the core experience for most players. We really want to incentivize players to collect all the gold trophies. Now there is an easy place to see all your results in each difficulty. Can you collect all the golds?
Japanese translations in progress
Adding translations was a fail on our part. With the drastic amount of changes to the game constantly, it wasn't viable for us to add the translations. Most of the translations end up incorrect due to the constant changes in level design, story, etc. For now, we put some of the translations on but note that this is a work in progress. You should be able to enjoy the 1st and 2nd stage in Japanese.
Stage 3 is fully playable with scary shrine lady
Stage 3 is finally available for playing! There may be some animation/story issues but the gameplay is what we focused on first. You're going to find that this stage is danmaku heavy and you may see alot of "tributes" to older games. I would say that this stage isn't as "puzzle" heavy but there will be some clever routing.
We are aware of some cutscene failures that didn't make it in time...we really tried to make all the changes happen but Cirno said the game had to be updated on Cirno day. We'll hopefully get that fixed in the future.
If you're worried that Stage 3 is too danmaku, don't worry. Stage 4 will be VERY puzzle heavy.
Stage 1 Snowball Flurry is changed
We hear you, machine gun daiyousei was boring and repetitive on easy and normal. It's just more of the same. We get it. It's now an actual flurry attack now! To be honest, since it's the first stage, we can't push the player too much. If we go off the rails at the start of the game, the poor player is going to get destroyed and demotivated.
This new attack will force the player to learn to stop, read ahead and it's MUCH harder to keep your score combo up. We'll keep an eye on this and see if we need to lower the score requirements due to this change but I don't think it'll change.
Continue System Added
In our previous build, we didn't want to punish the player but now that we have level select, we can turn on the burners and make the game harder. Each difficulty has a different amount of continues you can use.
Easy - Unlimited Continues
We want easy to be completely accessible. You can continue as much as you want so you can enjoy the story
Normal - 9 Continues
We also want normal to be accessible by everyone. Most people will never use 9 continues but if you're an easy mode player who wants to try something slightly harder, we want you to give it a shot.
Hard - 3 Continues
This is the core Touhou Danmaku Maze experience. Not only is this difficulty the original standard of the game, we also want this to be a completion of skill. 3 continues will be enough for you to learn the patterns but you won't be able to brute force through everything.
Lunatic - No Continues
We want Lunatic to feel "Lunatic". This 1cc challenge is very difficult and is the ultimate challenge of the game. This is for the hardcore and we use this brutal continue system to ensure it stays that way.
and more quality of life features!
Once again, we can't list every thing that we've added. (We also are scared of the amount of bugs people will find...) Regardless, we really wanted wanted to clean up the core experience. We can't even remember EVERY change but here are just some extra things we've added for the player.
1up Effect
Cut-scene Dialog won't skip if you press button, instead, it'll finish the line first.
Normal Stage 2-2 & 2-3 Nerf
Empty medal circle appears if you get no medal
Added "How To Play" cards at menu. (Great for expos and conventions for us)
Cut-scene Dialog can be skipped now
All medal thresholds have been re-balanced and now consistent
Abilities are hidden until we've properly balanced them
Settings got a slight slight cleanup
Vibration beta in progress! Play with a controller and feel the game!
Damage Quips are back? (May have issues still)
and a flood of bugs that got squashed!
Sales And Bundle
Unfortunately, we can't run a sale within 30 days of a previous sale. We had our sale with PAX West so we can't promote Cirno Day with a sale...sorry.
For future reference as well, we have no intentions of selling the game with a sale over 19% unless contractually obligated. In addition, please remember that we intend to raise all the prices once the game is complete.
Closing Thoughts
Everyone on our team from Ice Fall Creative have been working tirelessly to make this Cirno game a reality. Yes, we get burned out, and yes, we have no funding so this is a passion project currently. It happens but here's proof that we can make progress.
All hail our adorable ice fairy.