very cool game. vaguely "anime fighter" movement with lots of cancel-able options to quickly direct your character. aesthetics that evoke Kirby and level structures that evoke Donkey Kong Country. theres clearly a lot of love put into this game. its also hard as hell. the hitboxes feel a lot less forgiving than most games which sometimes made me a bit frustrated but seeing yourself progress from awful at the game to the first areas feeling trivial is wonderful. absolutely recommend if you can tolerate the difficulty. be sure to get all the gears, the EX levels are crazy
I wish i was a sunflower in Yuuka-sama's garden.
The lava world is kicking my ass.
Pretty fun tho.
Pretty fun tho.
👍🐎
"charming" platformers usually have an issue with lasting appeal, games that have a lot of charisma at the start usually become bland and generic by the end. YuuYuu Jiteki no Yuukarin is thankfully an exception. I had a stupid grin on my face throughout the vast majority of this game and there is no shortage of charm and polish anywhere, most of the game's visuals and humour can be appreciated even if you aren't a touhou fan but of course there's a lot of good homages for fans of the series too.
Yuukarin game is no joke in difficulty either, mechanically feeling like a mix of Kirby and DKC but it takes much more inspiration from DKC in terms of level design and difficulty. I think this is definitely for the best because Yuukarin game is right up the alley of anyone looking for a platformer that is a solid traditional challenge without falling for the trappings of typical kaizo bullshit, and when it works, it works exceptionally well.
The only issues I had with Yuukarin game is that some levels towards the end are just too damn long for their own good and I can think of at least a couple of levels that would have been better split into two or even three separate levels. The extra checkpoints in the steam version undoubtedly mitigates this issue but some of the levels can still feel exhausting because of how dragged out they are.
The other issue you should be aware of is that unfortunately Yuukarin game only has a machine translation into english which is quite awkward and diminishes some of the aforementioned charm. Fortunately I know at least enough Japanese to get the general gist of much of the dialogue so I could sidestep this problem but for most other people this may be a slight dealbreaker. Hopefully the dev becomes more open to the idea of giving Yuukarin game an actual english translation soon because the game sure as hell deserves one.
Overall, yeah Yuukarin game kinda slaps. Highly recommended to anyone who loves DKC-style traditional platformers and touhou girls with big titties.
Yuukarin game is no joke in difficulty either, mechanically feeling like a mix of Kirby and DKC but it takes much more inspiration from DKC in terms of level design and difficulty. I think this is definitely for the best because Yuukarin game is right up the alley of anyone looking for a platformer that is a solid traditional challenge without falling for the trappings of typical kaizo bullshit, and when it works, it works exceptionally well.
The only issues I had with Yuukarin game is that some levels towards the end are just too damn long for their own good and I can think of at least a couple of levels that would have been better split into two or even three separate levels. The extra checkpoints in the steam version undoubtedly mitigates this issue but some of the levels can still feel exhausting because of how dragged out they are.
The other issue you should be aware of is that unfortunately Yuukarin game only has a machine translation into english which is quite awkward and diminishes some of the aforementioned charm. Fortunately I know at least enough Japanese to get the general gist of much of the dialogue so I could sidestep this problem but for most other people this may be a slight dealbreaker. Hopefully the dev becomes more open to the idea of giving Yuukarin game an actual english translation soon because the game sure as hell deserves one.
Overall, yeah Yuukarin game kinda slaps. Highly recommended to anyone who loves DKC-style traditional platformers and touhou girls with big titties.
You need to be in teh future to be able to beat some of these levels I hate this world.
But
I love my wife
My Yuuka
I'll play jank ass kino just for you, love me.
But
I love my wife
My Yuuka
I'll play jank ass kino just for you, love me.
MARKETTEN AYÇİÇEK YAĞI ALAN OROSPU ÇOCUĞUDUR
Recommended by Lob the Dob
Sorry Lob, I can't do this.
Mechanics of this are very solid, I love platformers that have a lot of options backed in the moveset. This game has 4 (!) different ways to break your fall which easily combine into each other, and similar breadth of options propagates to enemies too. In no situation it's not fun to control which is definitely the most remarkable thing NUU achieved here.
The problem is, the difficulty stacks against the player so hard it reaches Volgarr the Viking levels of bullshit past the midpoint of the campaign. The levels are LONG, you die in 2-3 hits while food items restore 1/10th of the healthbar, checkpoints aren't numerous even after the supposed update, and Yuuka's hitbox is so large it's hard to be precise with the movement. Clamped together it makes for a very frustrating game where I don't feel like I'm that much in control. Plus the use of Touhou here is more or less for a backdrop with no regards for canon which I don't hold against it, but a big part of the enjoyment of Touhou fangames for me comes from how they deal with characters and concepts of the universe and adapt staple mechanics of danmaku games.
Really thought this'll be a hit for me and I'm disappointed I have to put it away, maybe I'll give it another go sometime later to see if I can crack it past the fourth world.
Sorry Lob, I can't do this.
Mechanics of this are very solid, I love platformers that have a lot of options backed in the moveset. This game has 4 (!) different ways to break your fall which easily combine into each other, and similar breadth of options propagates to enemies too. In no situation it's not fun to control which is definitely the most remarkable thing NUU achieved here.
The problem is, the difficulty stacks against the player so hard it reaches Volgarr the Viking levels of bullshit past the midpoint of the campaign. The levels are LONG, you die in 2-3 hits while food items restore 1/10th of the healthbar, checkpoints aren't numerous even after the supposed update, and Yuuka's hitbox is so large it's hard to be precise with the movement. Clamped together it makes for a very frustrating game where I don't feel like I'm that much in control. Plus the use of Touhou here is more or less for a backdrop with no regards for canon which I don't hold against it, but a big part of the enjoyment of Touhou fangames for me comes from how they deal with characters and concepts of the universe and adapt staple mechanics of danmaku games.
Really thought this'll be a hit for me and I'm disappointed I have to put it away, maybe I'll give it another go sometime later to see if I can crack it past the fourth world.
I've now officially beaten two Touhou fangames while having not beaten a single actual Touhou game. I don't know what to say, I'm not really a shmup person but Touhou Luna Nights blew my ass out with how good it was so I feel the need to give these games a chance, especially if it's a 2D platformer like this one.
YuuYuu Jiteki no Yuukarin feels like sort of a love letter to the best platformers on the SNES. It's very "pure" in that sense, no side modes or rogue-lite elements or attempts at "INFINITE REPLAYABILITY". Just choose a difficulty and you're off. Gameplay-wise, the game mostly prioritizes movement and attacking in the air rather than on the ground. On the ground, your character is slower than most platformer characters, even when running, and your attacks have a shorter range. In the air, you have the ability to hover, which gives you a slight boost upward, along with an attack that launches you further upward and one that has the highest range out of any attack. In both states you have a dash that turns into a Kirby Super Star suplex-style grab attack. In fact a lot of the moveset feels very Kirby-like, like someone took their favorite Kirby power-ups and put them into one character. Attacking enemies has that chunky Kirby attack feel as well, and the ability to stay in the air by chaining these moves together feels incredible, it's like there's always a move to fall back on if another fails.
While the gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of Kirby, the game series I kept being reminded of here was the Donkey Kong Country SNES trilogy. The level design feels inspired by that game in terms of the way it introduces new level mechanics and enemy types to tackle very frequently, and in the way they require a bit more careful observation and planning than your average Mario level. Rushing in this game is often what will kill you, it encourages stopping every now and then to really think about what to do next. Also it's fucking hard, like as hard as those original DKC games at many points. Thankfully this game also uses DKC's method of balancing, which is "let's just give the player a shit ton of lives constantly so that they won't game over that many times". Of course getting game over in this game just means having to do the entire level again, and not going back to some save point on the world map, so in that respect it's a bit kinder. This game does not let up in it's difficulty, but it also never feels like it's presenting an impossible challenge. Parts of levels can be brutally difficult but every death feels like a step in learning how to solve it. This is a game about mastering every move in your arsenal, knowing which moves to chain into others and what actions to take when faced with certain obstacles. Every time I completed a level it felt like climbing to top of a new, even bigger mountain than the last one.
Some deaths can feel a bit unfair, at least in my opinion, due to the fact that there were times I wasn't totally sure what the main character's hurtbox was. Your sprite in this game is pretty big, but that's not necessarily a problem since the game is designed around your sprite being bigger than the average platformer sprite. But there were times where it felt like a projectile barely scraped the bottom of my feet and it hit, as well as moments where I couldn't even tell where a projectile hit me, mostly due to the fact I didn't know which parts of the sprite actually mattered when being hit. To be fair though, in the many deaths that I went through in this game, this situation only represented a small minority of them. Also, like another review on this page said, these levels can go on a bit long, but thankfully there are frequent checkpoints (can't imagine playing the original version of this game that didn't have more than one checkpoint in every level).
In terms of presentation, one of the highlights of this game is the sprite work. All of the main and supporting characters have really good, charming sprites with a lot of personality in them. The main character has so many good little animations for different actions and levels, you can tell there was a lot of love put into them. The fact that in the mid-checkpoint of each level you sit down at a little kotatsu to eat a piece of cake and drink tea while talking with another character, it's so good and clearly made by someone who cares a lot about this cast. I guess if I had to say something I didn't like about the presentation, it's that a lot of the enemy design can feel a bit generic at times, and the same can be said for the environments. Also everyone in this game is tiddied the fuck out, which may be a turn off for some but I never found it too, overpowering.
Overall, this was a really good time, would recommend to anyone looking for a classically hard 2D platformer. After beating the main game, if you collect the secret collectible in every level (it's not actually that secret, it's usually pretty easy to find), you unlock a set of EX levels and holy shit they are no joke. With 50 lives, I only made it 3/4ths of the way through the first EX level before getting game over. Thankfully grinding for lives in this game is fairly easy, but I'm gonna go play something else before diving back into that nightmare.
YuuYuu Jiteki no Yuukarin feels like sort of a love letter to the best platformers on the SNES. It's very "pure" in that sense, no side modes or rogue-lite elements or attempts at "INFINITE REPLAYABILITY". Just choose a difficulty and you're off. Gameplay-wise, the game mostly prioritizes movement and attacking in the air rather than on the ground. On the ground, your character is slower than most platformer characters, even when running, and your attacks have a shorter range. In the air, you have the ability to hover, which gives you a slight boost upward, along with an attack that launches you further upward and one that has the highest range out of any attack. In both states you have a dash that turns into a Kirby Super Star suplex-style grab attack. In fact a lot of the moveset feels very Kirby-like, like someone took their favorite Kirby power-ups and put them into one character. Attacking enemies has that chunky Kirby attack feel as well, and the ability to stay in the air by chaining these moves together feels incredible, it's like there's always a move to fall back on if another fails.
While the gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of Kirby, the game series I kept being reminded of here was the Donkey Kong Country SNES trilogy. The level design feels inspired by that game in terms of the way it introduces new level mechanics and enemy types to tackle very frequently, and in the way they require a bit more careful observation and planning than your average Mario level. Rushing in this game is often what will kill you, it encourages stopping every now and then to really think about what to do next. Also it's fucking hard, like as hard as those original DKC games at many points. Thankfully this game also uses DKC's method of balancing, which is "let's just give the player a shit ton of lives constantly so that they won't game over that many times". Of course getting game over in this game just means having to do the entire level again, and not going back to some save point on the world map, so in that respect it's a bit kinder. This game does not let up in it's difficulty, but it also never feels like it's presenting an impossible challenge. Parts of levels can be brutally difficult but every death feels like a step in learning how to solve it. This is a game about mastering every move in your arsenal, knowing which moves to chain into others and what actions to take when faced with certain obstacles. Every time I completed a level it felt like climbing to top of a new, even bigger mountain than the last one.
Some deaths can feel a bit unfair, at least in my opinion, due to the fact that there were times I wasn't totally sure what the main character's hurtbox was. Your sprite in this game is pretty big, but that's not necessarily a problem since the game is designed around your sprite being bigger than the average platformer sprite. But there were times where it felt like a projectile barely scraped the bottom of my feet and it hit, as well as moments where I couldn't even tell where a projectile hit me, mostly due to the fact I didn't know which parts of the sprite actually mattered when being hit. To be fair though, in the many deaths that I went through in this game, this situation only represented a small minority of them. Also, like another review on this page said, these levels can go on a bit long, but thankfully there are frequent checkpoints (can't imagine playing the original version of this game that didn't have more than one checkpoint in every level).
In terms of presentation, one of the highlights of this game is the sprite work. All of the main and supporting characters have really good, charming sprites with a lot of personality in them. The main character has so many good little animations for different actions and levels, you can tell there was a lot of love put into them. The fact that in the mid-checkpoint of each level you sit down at a little kotatsu to eat a piece of cake and drink tea while talking with another character, it's so good and clearly made by someone who cares a lot about this cast. I guess if I had to say something I didn't like about the presentation, it's that a lot of the enemy design can feel a bit generic at times, and the same can be said for the environments. Also everyone in this game is tiddied the fuck out, which may be a turn off for some but I never found it too, overpowering.
Overall, this was a really good time, would recommend to anyone looking for a classically hard 2D platformer. After beating the main game, if you collect the secret collectible in every level (it's not actually that secret, it's usually pretty easy to find), you unlock a set of EX levels and holy shit they are no joke. With 50 lives, I only made it 3/4ths of the way through the first EX level before getting game over. Thankfully grinding for lives in this game is fairly easy, but I'm gonna go play something else before diving back into that nightmare.
This game's very interesting and something I plan to talk about in a future Touhou fangames exhibition on my channel, so I'll keep this brief.
Beautiful and cozy hand drawn artstyle that really gives the game a nice sense of flair and style, the movement is very clean and your various attacks and movement options can chain together very well into smooth combos or constant fluid movement. The level design is pretty good across the board, the music is very nice and seems to be mostly original? It's very creative overall in a lot of its ideas, and all of the boss fights were fun. The game seems to have a good amount of Kirby inspiration (with some light DKC occasionally?) which I greatly appreciate.
Overall, a very good time.
But a good time that I feel has 3 major issues That effect some of the later stages by quite a lot.
Stages 3-1, 4-1, and 4-3 are especially massive difficulty spikes within their sections of the game and are ultimately some of the worst levels in the game imo. They're overly difficult and for seemingly unfair reasons.
The 3 major issues presiding over the difficulties being:
1. Yuuka's hitbox feels too large
2. Enemy damage output is high
3. There's only one checkpoint per stage, and the distance between reaching the checkpoints and until the end of the stage get ridiculous endgame.
These 3 points can coalesce to make those 3 levels into very arduous tasks that definitely affected my view of the game. Most other levels were perfectly manageable even if a little annoying (like level 4-2) and I dont think were too horribly affected, but when it got bad, it really got bad.
I wont complain too much, because I need to see if Easy Mode fixes the issues I have with Normal Mode's balancing.
Outside of the difficulty spike issue, I really enjoyed my time with this game! I look forward to seeing the rest of the creator's works and I look forward to covering this game in more detail in a video, that hopefully comes soon? I've just gotta get to that script and all lol.
Beautiful and cozy hand drawn artstyle that really gives the game a nice sense of flair and style, the movement is very clean and your various attacks and movement options can chain together very well into smooth combos or constant fluid movement. The level design is pretty good across the board, the music is very nice and seems to be mostly original? It's very creative overall in a lot of its ideas, and all of the boss fights were fun. The game seems to have a good amount of Kirby inspiration (with some light DKC occasionally?) which I greatly appreciate.
Overall, a very good time.
But a good time that I feel has 3 major issues That effect some of the later stages by quite a lot.
Stages 3-1, 4-1, and 4-3 are especially massive difficulty spikes within their sections of the game and are ultimately some of the worst levels in the game imo. They're overly difficult and for seemingly unfair reasons.
The 3 major issues presiding over the difficulties being:
1. Yuuka's hitbox feels too large
2. Enemy damage output is high
3. There's only one checkpoint per stage, and the distance between reaching the checkpoints and until the end of the stage get ridiculous endgame.
These 3 points can coalesce to make those 3 levels into very arduous tasks that definitely affected my view of the game. Most other levels were perfectly manageable even if a little annoying (like level 4-2) and I dont think were too horribly affected, but when it got bad, it really got bad.
I wont complain too much, because I need to see if Easy Mode fixes the issues I have with Normal Mode's balancing.
Outside of the difficulty spike issue, I really enjoyed my time with this game! I look forward to seeing the rest of the creator's works and I look forward to covering this game in more detail in a video, that hopefully comes soon? I've just gotta get to that script and all lol.