Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View. (東方花映塚 〜 Phantasmagoria of Flower View.) is the ninth official game in the Touhou Project scrolling shoot 'em up series. It is often abbreviated as PoFV in English speaking circles. Phantasmagoria of Flower View, like the third Touhou game, Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream, differs from other games in the series in that two characters fight each other simultaneously, creating danmaku to try and defeat the other player. In this regard, the gameplay most resembles Twinkle Star Sprites by ADK.

Gameplay

Phantasmagoria of Flower View is a split-screen vertically scrolling shoot 'em up game in which two players use attacks to defend themselves from enemies that will release bullets in their direction, and can, under certain conditions, release spell cards onto the opponent's screen. Unlike most Touhou games, in Phantsamagoria of Flower View, the player has a health bar, allowing them to survive multiple hits, and each stage ends when one player depletes their opponent's health. The game features a Story Mode, wherein the player will fight a total of nine increasingly difficult opponents. After a one credit clear, the Extra Mode is unlocked, containing a single stage, which is considerably more difficult, and only gives the player a single life. In the game's Match Mode, the player can fight an opponent in a single stage, controlled either by the AI, or human opponents, locally or through the Internet.

Plot

Spring has arrived in the oriental enclave of Gensokyo, but this year's spring is just too strong to believe. Every plant is in full bloom, even out-of-season flowers and bamboo trees, and consequently the fairies and creatures are becoming hyperactive. This completely unnatural spring prompted the heroines to set out, either to try to find out the reason behind the hyperactive spring, or just to wander around for lack of better things to do. The incident, as it turns out, is a natural occurrence that happens once every sixty years, or one sexagenary cycle. Once every sixty years, something major happens in the outside world and fills Gensokyo with ghosts, who then infest flowers and make them bloom all over. Right from the beginning, it is not a cause of concern at all.

Characters

A total of 16 characters are available to play, among them: all are playable in the Match Mode, 14 are playable in the Story Mode, and 14 are playable in the Extra Mode.

[The characters of PoFV. Left column: Reimu, Sakuya, Reisen, Lyrica, Lunasa, Tei, Medicine, Komachi.

Right column: Marisa, Youmu, Cirno, Merlin, Mystia, Aya, Yuka, Sikieiki. | upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/PoFV///characters.png]

Development

ZUN, the sole member of the developer Team Shanghai Alice, originally did not plan to make a game for Summer 2005; however, he changed his mind when he realized 2005 marked the tenth anniversary of the Touhou Project, and decided to make a fanservice-type game to mark the occasion. He believed that, in a game, the best kind of fanservice is to pit players against each other so they can have a chance to meet, and so tournaments can happen and so on. In this spirit, ZUN adapted the system used by Twinkle Star Sprites to create a versus shooter, with the focus on dodging bullets (like other Touhou games) instead of shooting each other down. Though ZUN usually develops his games alone, alphes from the circle Twilight Frontier is listed as a "Graphics Helper" in this game. After releasing the game in the 68th Comiket, ZUN worked on a netplay patch to support online multiplayer, and released the patch in October 2005. The patch was not without its problems, as online games were often unsynchronized and unstable. However, a year later ZUN announced that he will not continue making patches to enhance PoFV's netplay because he wanted to move forward. ZUN had also written a short spin-off story to PoFV named "Sexagennially Empurpled Fragrant Flower" (六十年ぶりに紫に香る花), included in the fanbook Seasonal Dream Vision, featuring Yukari Yakumo as its main character. Phantasmagoria of Flower View was released on Steam on April 25, 2022. The release supports Steam's "Remote Play Together" feature for online multiplayer. This makes it the only game from Touhou's "Windows Generation No. 1" currently available for purchase, as the source code of other games, previously Phantasmagoria itself, are believed to be lost.