Touhou Shinjutounote ~ Hollow Song of Birds is a Touhou Project fangame developed by raichu, ido and Shijimi Nono and written by Milka Oyasu for the Danmakufu engine. The first trial was released on May 12, 2018, with the full game releasing later in January 28, 2019. The most recent version, v1.12, was released on July 11, 2019. Despite sharing the same universe as many of the developers' previous games, the story stands well on its own, and it's not required to play the older games to understand this one.
The primary gameplay feature of this game is the use of different colored gems to modify your character. In addition to the playable characters Reimu, Marisa, Sakuya and Kaguya, each can choose one of seven different colored gems that encourage different playstyles depending on which one you pick. Some are more for dealing extra damage, while others give benefits to your resources or movement. Some gems mesh better with certain characters, but the variety allows for a fair bit of customization and experimentation.
Time appears to have stopped throughout Gensokyo, freezing both humans and youkai alike in a sort-of stasis and only leaving a select few untouched, taking the color in the environment with it. Among the unaffected was Sakuya, whose time manipulation powers allowed her to avoid the freezing. Using her powers to unfreeze Reimu and Marisa, the group departs to take on the mastermind responsible for freezing Gensokyo in time.
This game contains examples of:
- Anti-Villain: Horou only agrees to help the Big Bad so that she can find a way back to the Outside World to reunite with members of her species, the endangered crested ibis
. She lacks any sort of malice, but it doesn't change the fact that she's technically responsible for this current incident, having frozen time on Set's request. - Boss Rush: The extra stage has you fighting all but one past boss at some point, with all of them eventually coming together at the end for the last spell card.
- The Cameo: Mystia appears as a Stage 5 midboss as part of a favor for the Final Boss, the latter apparently being a huge fan of Mystia and Kyouko's band, Choujuu Gigaku.
- Chuunibyou: Hikariko is vaguely referred to as one in the music notes, and it's not hard to see why; she's an asocial wreck in-person, but puts on a facade of confidence and arrogance while she uses Chirper.
- Cult/Scam Religion: The Youkai Land Buddhists are one very loosely based on the teachings of the Buddhist monk Shinran whom their leader Shiran was allegedly a student of, gaining the following of various anxious youkai in the process, including every other boss sans General Set. Their beliefs revolve around the idea that reciting the nembutsu (a chant) just once is enough to guarantee salvation in the next life, allowing for one to live life however they want without needing to take others into account. In truth, Shiran is mostly interested in power and money.
- Death Seeker: The Extra boss Mumei, after being freed from Set's control, convinces most of the previous bosses to cause another incident in an effort to get the heroines to show up and exterminate her. They wind up working to try and restore her will to live instead.
- Deliberately Monochrome: When the world gets frozen in time, all the color gets drained as well.
- Egyptian Mythology: The Big Bad of this game is none other than the Egyptian God Set, having set up the plot of this game as part of an elaborate revenge scheme against fellow God Horus.
- Fictional Social Network: Chirper, a thinly-veiled parody of Twitter that's exclusively used by bird youkai and Shiran's followers.
- Gender Flip: General Set is a confusing case, being spawned from the merging of a male God's body parts and a female seto-taishou. Ultimately, however, the character itself is still considered male.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The levels are named after colors, which pop out of the monochrome landscapes Gensokyo is trapped in.
- Easy: Green Level
- Normal: Yellow Level
- Hard: Red Level
- Lunatic: Black Level
- Extra: Violet Level
- Joke Character: Kaguya has terrible damage output and moves slowly, but her route, given that it needs to be unlocked first, solidifies this with its considerably wackier tone. By the end of the first stage, she's convinced that the incident is a Lunarian conspiracy, and it leads to a few fourth-wall breaks, references to other games (including other Kaisendou games), and overall more light-hearted dialogue.
- Maniac Monkeys: Ranran used to be a vicious youkai with interesting culinary tastes, but after killing humans was outlawed she became a rather nonthreatening dye shop owner.
- Mickey Mousing: Stage 5 is timed so that a specific wave of enemies at 1:47 of the music coincides with the instrumental solo. The placement also aligns with the notes of the solo.
- Multiform Balance: In addition to your basic shot type, you also pick a colored gemstone to augment your character's abilities.
- Red: Burns enemies for additional damage.
- Orange: Lets you counter attack when you graze bullets, but weakens your main shot.
- Yellow: Increases option count and hastens bomb gauge rate.
- Green: Increased movement speed and item collection range.
- Aqua: Adds an explosion on impact for more damage and splash.
- Blue: Freezes enemies, slowing them down and does additional damage based on enemy's health.
- Violet: Allows you to warp to the opposite side of the screen.
- White: Increases option count, but disables your Z Spell.
- Black: Slows down bomb gauge rate.
- No Social Skills: Hikariko can only exhibit any sort of confidence through Chirper, otherwise appearing as extremely timid and antisocial, generally falling somewhere between an Otaku and a Chuunibyou.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Shiran's "Chirplagiarism" Spell Cards mimic Spell Cards from official Touhou Project games. If you play as Reimu, she'll threaten to expose Shiran's plagiarism.
- Production Throwback: Reimu's Good Ending has Horou borrowing the Book of Lemengeton from Fuma Mishandra.
- Secret Character: Kaguya is a secret unlockable character, obtained by clearing the game without continues.
- Self-Duplication: The second boss, Chii, has the power to do this as seen in her Spell Cards.
- Time Stands Still: The primary feature of this current incident.
- We All Die Someday: Being one of the few non-joke moments in Kaguya's scenario, after confronting Horou, the immortal is able to parse her entire goal as thus:Kaguya "I want to be recognized. I don't want to be forgotten." The ultimate impossible request that so many humans and youkai in the past have failed to complete... Can you ever fulfill it!?
