A new Touhou Project inspired game has launched on Steam’s Early Access program. Valkyrie of Phantasm is billed as a “high-speed air versus combat game” featuring characters from the Touhou Project games.
Check out the game’s Early Access launch trailer below.
Touhou characters such as Patchouli Knowledge, Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, and Youmu Konpaku all appear in the Valkyrie of Phantasm trailer. The premise of the game is that the inhabitants of Gensokyo acquire special weapons called “Valkyrie Arms” – powerful sets of mecha equipment that allow for intense air strikes. Brought to Gensokyo by a mysterious meteor, the Valkyrie Arms bond with the area’s most powerful inhabitants, including shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei.
Each character has a unique set of Valkyrie Arms to match her abilities. In the gameplay, two players fly and boost around an arena, firing projectiles and beams at each other. Similar to games like Gundam VS and Virtual On, players can snap together to make it easier to aim weapons. Online play is supported and four player battles are planned for addition.
Developers Areazero expect Valkyrie of Phantasm to remain in Steam Early Access for about another year as testing, feedback, and tweaking are needed to ensure all planned playable characters are properly balanced and tuned. The Early Access version of the game offers about half of the planned story content. Upon completion, the full story mode will feature multiple endings across more than 30 stages. The initial roster is limited to four playable characters, but updates will expand the roster to eight in total.
Valkyrie of Phantasm is available on PC through Steam Early Access. 100th Black Market, the latest official title of the Touhou project, recently released on Steam in Japanese.