An action lover’s dream duo: Touhou Luna Nights and Crimzon Clover World Explosion (Switch)
These two indie games are so up my street it’s ridiculous, it’s like they were both tailor-made for me and that is a rare feeling indeed. Touhou Luna Nights is like Castlevania Symphony of the Night had a baby with Metal Slug. With the added bonus of time manipulation. Crimzon Clover World Explosion is a terribly named but extremely well done modern shmup. (Apparently weird names are mandatory for modern shmups.)
Let’s discuss Touhou Luna Nights first. A Metroidvania with time control; honestly it’s one of those great ideas that makes me say, “wow, I can’t believe no one did this before”. I say that, and actually there is another recent indie game called Timespinner that, as implied by the name, does in fact mess around with time. Even so, it’s such a strong idea you wonder why it’s not been done before in mainstream games.
Touhou Luna Nights is a lighthearted tribute to Symphony of Night that wears its key influence on its sleeve. There are several references in the level settings and design: there’s a clockwork gears location, a library, a throne room at the top of an open air broken staircase, and a couple of really long corridors populated with big enemies. It doesn’t bother me, but then again I’m not ultra-familiar with Symphony of the Night. If I were, some of the homage might be too on the nose, or overly familiar.
There are several things that help distinguish Touhou Luna Nights. The main things are its fantastic visuals, tricky boss fights, and cool time control mechanics.
Because of the difficulty of boss fights especially and the use of some “bullet-hell” like patterns, there’s a high barrier to entry. Basically, almost from the word go the game requires persistence to make progress. Early on I found the bosses were significantly harder than the preceding exploration sections; by comparison the normal enemies didn’t put up much of a fight and the platforming wasn’t challenging at all. Deeper into the game though, placement of save points and HP/MP recharge points gets trickier, so I’m now travelling further through tougher challenges to reach a checkpoint.
It is thankfully possible to boost your odds if you do get stuck. Your character does level up and you can grind by defeating enemies, but this doesn’t have an obvious impact on your ability to survive. You get more substantive rewards from finding secrets and completing optional challenges, but again, these aren’t “game changers” that will suddenly render the game easy.
Ultimately, Touhou Luna Nights is pretty much my ideal difficulty, it’s challenging whilst rarely frustrating. I find it extremely satisfying to break though a tough boss fight or tricky level gauntlet.
I should mention as well the time mechanics. These are innovative and well-done: you can slow things down or stop things altogether. There are clever takes on these abilities, both in the levels and boss fights. My favourite are yellow objects that move in reverse when time is stopped.
All in all, Touhou Luna Nights is a real treat. Visually it’s a delight, with intricate 2D sprites and detailed character animations. The main character is a maid, which is a bit strange, but the story is clearly written with fans of the Touhou series in mind rather than newcomers, and it’s thankfully easy to ignore. All the basics, from moving to jumping to attacking feel great, and it’s exactly what I want out of this type of game.
I can say the exact same thing about Crimzon Clover World Explosion. Fundamentally, it feels great. Most impressive to me is the performance, this game throws everything including the kitchen sink at you in terms of enemies, bullets, explosions, stars and medals, it’s insane. And yet the game runs smooth as butter throughout.
The basic game is like a classic arcade game, short and to the point, with five stages, and a special time attack stage. There are different ships to play with, plus around 10 different game modes and types, so there’s more to dig into than it might initially seem. The standard “arcade” mode gets very challenging once you get past the first stage, but thankfully there’s a novice mode which is a good introduction.
I don’t have that much more to say about Crimzon Clover World Explosion to be honest, it’s extremely solid and another case of a game seemingly custom-made to my specific tastes.
Oh, you know something I nearly forgot to mention: online leaderboards. As my past bragging about Blazing Star proves, I love a good leaderboard chaser, and this is scratching that itch. I’m in the top 25 for one ship/mode combination, and I hope to better that. Top 10 here we come…!
And can I just say a huge hats off to the developer, the credits revealed that Crimzon Clover World Explosion was pretty well made by just one person, who goes by the alias YOTSUBA. That is incredible for many, many reasons. It’s honestly humbling just how talented some people are and what is possible in terms of indie development these days.
For as excellent as Touhou Luna Nights and Crimzon Clover World Explosion undoubtedly both are, neither are ideal choices for someone new to their respective genres. For those unversed in shmups or intimidated by them, my first recommendation on the Switch/PC would be Jamestown+ (incidentally, I am constantly mistakenly calling this game Jonestown+). Jamestown+ is a true rarity in being a genuinely accessible shooter. It ditches the typical arcade game structure and is highly flexible in it’s difficulty. Playing that game genuinely helped me better understand and improve at the genre – these gameplay vids of me playing Crimzon Clover World Explosion hopefully demonstrate this!
A lovely, albeit grammatically incorrect message brought to you by the developers of Crimzon Clover World Explosion.
Very Very Gaming 
I really don’t know shmups, and I’m absolutely horrible at the game, but even with that I can tell that Crimzon Clover is an absolutely phenomenal game. I can’t tell if it’s doing anything particularly special, but what it does do, it feels like it just does so well. Everything just feels so solid, and it keeps up the energy really well. It’s one of those games I keep coming back to when I get a spare moment. Never getting not horrible at it, but still having a great time with it throughout.
Thanks for your comment Aether! It warms my heart to know that other people are playing this as I’ve not seen much chatter about it online and yet it’s fantastic. I agree with you, it’s not any single aspect that stands out, it’s the complete package. I’m not great at the game either, so I appreciate the novice and arrange modes are that much easier than the arcade mode. In arrange mode especially I’m discovering there’s some strategy involved. I’ve found that using a faster ship to collect all the goodies, in combination with a homing upgrade (has different names for each ship) to destroy enemies no matter where I go on-screen, is really effective. It’s possible to accumulate a lot of extra lives this way and get further on a single credit. Great stuff.
I have not played either of these games. The time manipulation aspect of the Touhou Luna Nights game was an interesting feature of the game, with the ability to reverse enemy attacks and pausing the movements of obstacles to progress, although it does seem like it would make the game fairly easy. The game also seems to have an interesting steampunk aesthetic. It does seem unusual that the bosses were much harder than the exploration aspect of the game. The Crimson Clover World Explosion game seems strange. It is weird that some of the characters in the game are seen from a perspective directly above them, while the background and the enemies on the ground are created using an isometric viewpoint. It does seem challenging avoiding the many enemies on the screen while being distracted by the player’s brightly coloured attacks and the stars and numbers that appeared when enemies were defeated. The screen for the game does seem quite small. Congratulations on your high position on the leader boards.
Is Touhou Luna Nights similar to other Castlevania games? Or just Castlevania Symphony of the Night? What are the optional challenges? Does using the time manipulation make the game easier? Why is the screen for Crimson Clover World Explosion so small?
Luna Nights is specifically like Symphony of the Night I think, there’s a lot of direct references to it. I haven’t played the other Vanias though that came after Symphony though, so maybe there’s other stuff. Optional challenges in Luna Nights are usually hidden behind fake walls, for example in the first video in this article the first clip you see me going through an optional room. Stopping time does make it easier but it’s designed around it, and it’s still a hard game so… if you didn’t have the option, the game would be brutally tough.
Crimzon Clover is a vertical shooter so it’s designed for a widescreen monitor rotated vertically. I have played it properly on a monitor and it is really cool having it fill the screen. However when you record it on the Switch the videos come out sideways, which is why I recorded the horizontal option 😀