Gensokyo Defenders is a Touhou Project fan-game that combines elements of Tower Defense and Twin-Stick Shooters into a single package released in the US on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in November, 2018. The latest thing to hit Gensokyo is a series of "War games," that Reimu immediately sees as analogous to Capture-the-Flag, wherein one team advances on the defending team's base. Cirno, in her latest bid to prove herself the strongest, decides to challenge anyone and everyone in these new games.
Along with setting up traps to slow down the advancing enemies, the player character can attack enemies directly using a normal attack, two different Spell Cards, or the occasionally-available Last Word until all waves of enemies are defeated or their base is taken.
This game provides examples of:
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: As Cirno's story plays out, the narrative occasionally switches to the Three Fairies of Light for their games and contribution to the overall plot.
- Artificial Stupidity: Giant spear fairies will always charge towards the player when in range, even if doing so means they fly off of the stage for an instant defeat.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Barrier walls. While they will redirect enemies to take a different path to lead them into a bottleneck of traps, they disappear and have to be re-purchased after each wave. In addition, flying enemies will ignore them entirely. It's more cost-effective to lay traps that last the entire battle that cover both paths.
- Big Bad: Seija is the only one who actively wants to take the "games" part out of the war games and create a full incident.
- Boring, but Practical:
- The first four traps unlocked in the game: bamboo traps, watchtowers, springboards, and flowerbeds, remain relatively inexpensive and viable for the entire campaign.
- Powering up the character's main attack with Blue UFOs rather than upgrading any of the other attacks as the player will be using the main attack the majority of the time.
- Cirno's first spell card: It doesn't do much damage but freezes the enemies in front of her in a wide radius, freezes any other enemies who touch the area, and frozen enemies take extra damage from other attacks.
- Boss Rush: The basis of the final EX level, as each recruitable character (aside from the hordes of minor enemies) will attack anywhere from one to four at a time.
- Cast from Hit Points: Mokou's spell cards are powerful, but damage both her own health bar and the base.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The various colors of UFO power-ups indicate which attack they strengthen: Blue strengthens the main attack, red for the character's first spell card, green for the second, and gray for the Last Word.
- Damage Sponge: Silver Orbs only ever take 1 HP of damage no matter what hits them. The best way to get rid of them is use a springboard to throw them off the stage.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: The basis of Reimu and Sakuya's main attacks.
- Elite Mooks: Nearly every enemy type has a giant version that takes significantly more damage to kill.
- Expansion Pack: Gensokyo Defenders Plus adds post-game EX Story levels, new traps, and new characters.
- Impossible Hourglass Figure: Byakuren's design in the game gives her almost no waist compared to her bust and hips.
- One-Man Army: The player character is the only allied unit in most missions, taking on upwards of hundreds of enemies per level with just their spells and traps.
- Promoted to Playable: Yukari, Miko, and Byakuren in a DLC package released a few months after the game first came out.
- Shout-Out: After defeating the teamed-up Marisa and Alice, Marisa says, "You beat us, so you can do whatever you want with Alice; boil her, mash her, stick her in a stew."
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
- Marisa's second spell card starts off being able to do triple-digit damage and can be upgraded to do hundreds more (there's even a trophy for it in the PS4 version). Most enemies won't survive even a Level 1 blast.
- If an enemy or ally is defeated by an instant kill move, the damage shown isn't the Damage Cap number, it's an infinity sign!
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: The final level of Cirno's story is the only one where she has her own troops and has to take down her opponent's bases rather than simply defending her own.
- We Have Reserves: In levels with allied units, said allies can be defeated infinitely as they will always respawn from the base without the base itself taking damage- unlike it losing 5 HP if the player dies.
