Touhou Artificial Dream in Arcadia DEMO

ayo for real. since i found out how to obtain party this game made even MORE fun

This game is a really cool concept I like it!

SMT and touhou? this sound inasane

When I saw that my level went down everytime I died and the rooms that make you not able to even use your menu I think my pants got a bit wet and I knew this was the right game for me.

Just got around playing the demo and I liked this a lot, definitely going to follow the development when I can! Honestly, seeing everything in action it's weird how long we took until someone tackled this idea seriously.

Some of my thoughts on the game:

You nailed the mood, it feels gloomy enough to remind you of SMT, but don't strip away the more inherent charm of Touhou. This of course is made possible by great pixel art and music, the dungeon textures are by far my favorite part in the game's visual for what I've played, but I also love how accurately the classic SMT enemy style is replicated here.

Althought I said I like the music, I'm mixed towards some of it. All the dungeon themes are awesome, same for the enemies apearing on the screen before the action starting taking place, but I'm not a big fan of the battle themes. They grew on me after a while, but I do think they are way weaker comparing with all the other tracks in the game. That said, they all at the very least are a good mash of SMT and Touhou.

The battles are amazing, really. Like SMT or Etrian, the early enemies are powercrept fast, but you need to respect the sleepers every time a new one appears and I respect that. I always love when battles are less about enemies with big numbers who can't kill you, but take forever to die and more of the good old "kill fast, die fast". I did not expected Sumireko to be this customizable, I can see myself messing around with countless builds to better suit my selection of characters and already in the demo I had those moments of me forgetting to progress the game because I was too invested in finding a specific sleeper to make my team a tiny bit stronger.

That customization is not exclusive to her either, even though the fusion mechanic is yet to be seem, I squeezed a lot of fun transfering skills and affinities between sleepers. It's a nice layer of complexity that not only rewards the player making the good meta calls for the dungeons and bosses, but also allows you to keep characters you like for longer than you would ever hope in a SMT game.

The hijack mechanic is neat, I got scared because I'm terrible at the genre, but it's simple enough to a potato level player like me to not only be able to get every possible enemy, but also learn to do the paterns consistenly. Also, it's just me or VIT affect your HP in those segments? I noticed after a while I was able to take 3 hits instead of 2.

One thing I was never a fan of in the early SMT titles was how the demons were so capitalistic, a stingy guy like me rarely summoned demons except when I really needed, but I think the battery mechanic does improve a lot in  the idea. You still have the same strategic side  of the summons consuming your resources at every step, but this time they don't directly affect your money as you can always wake up to get yourself a nice free recharge (the recharging items are pitfull for how much they cost early on, though, but this never really became a problem to me)

And about the dungeons... the demo one felt more like a mid game dungeon than an early game one because of the amount of mechanics already thrown to the player at once (at least by SMT I or even Etrian standards). I don't mind it, the dungeon layout looks nice in the automap and it's easy to to find where you need to go as long as you respect new enemies insteady of reckleslly charging all the way to the top after starting a save file. The traps are fine I don't hate any of then, but they do their job to scare the player and make so you have to think at lest a bit to travel through a couple rooms.

...That said, I could do it without the teleport maze, I never actually met someone who liked this gimmick in any Atlus game. In the context of the demo it is on a more "side" part of the map, so I don't mind it there, but I can see myself losing interest if I got exposed to an obligatory Eridanus 2.

I can see how Sumireko may not exactly be the most exciting poster girl to the fandom, but playing the game I quickly realised how perfectly she fitted the job description for the playable character and that feeling just grew more as I played for longer. I appreciate when the choice of characters seems meaningful enought, although shoving in your favorites is always a welcome joy for making you own fan games.

A couple nitpicks and smaller feedbacks:

-SMT has a bad record or inconsistency between playable characters, so a way to let your player knows they are distribuiting points to essentially a blank slate they can quite literally teach any skill in the game is appreciate to drive off that fear off "I may be putting points on an useless stat". Maybe show the player Sumireko's starting skills so we can at least recognize she will be learning more can be a good start without straight up telling the player "Hey, do whatever you want, it really doesn't matter!"

-Old SMT games and EO are sometimes terrible at teaching you important stuff, I don't think copying this aspect of the games is a good idea. Someone who played both or at least on of them can make assumptions about how everything works, but the game has it's fair share of unique stuff that deserves better explaning. For instance, the buffs in the Special option are a god sent, but I only learned how to use them in the Remains of Blazing Hell.

-I saw a couple people disliking the punishment for taking a "game over", but I actually enjoy how it's done in the demo. Comparing with SMT, a game over essentially means you lost all the map you explored, all the itens, all the money, all the recruits and all experience you gathered before the game decided you would die because of a surprise attack. So in comparison, keeping everything, but getting a single level down doesn't seem this big of a deal as long as the game don't scale on you losing 3+ levels for death later in the experience.

-I don't understand why the dungeon entrance has a icon indicating it's an exit, but the gate connecting to the Remains of Blazing Hell don't have any map icon at all, you can guess where it is after finding it a couple times, but I don't understand why this isn't a thing when even SMT I already had indications for exits/area connections.

All in all, the positives outweigh the negatives really well and I can't wait to see the game getting further in development to completion! With a bit of polish in the clarity I can see this being a fantastic experience much like the games who inspired ADiA!

As person that came from steam and according to information about that game that final boss for demo is Koichi, I decided to share my feelings that's probably not gonna be new, lol

Story

not sure about inspiration (smt) way of story, but that one seems working for me and consider I barely know any of Touhou characters, I could get +- understanding about their character type and other stuff, so it's alright

Graphics

Pixel art is cool. I mean it can showcase attention to details from creator like they tried hard for every single pixels instead of just use model and expand it, so it gives own charm of games from...80's? 90's? Not really expert

Sound Effects

8-bit if people call it like that sounds and music. They don't make people have blood from ears so that's a good. Rock theme for bosses is working. 

Gameplay

That's....one is heavily questionable. I will try to share what I think about it from perspective of first try of game

Beginning:

Huh, 6 stats, despite basic AGI affect speed and LUK probably affect status apply chances, other 4 doesn't knownable. I guess one is phys power + def and other hp, equivalent for magic too. 

Gun in equipment and being 25 looks big enough, hope we can upgrade it no we don't

Tutorial battle:

Hijack system looks both pain and good. Not really a player of bullet hell but pattern in tutorial was readable so it's fine. Special mechanic was also there but not really explained, so maybe for future. 

Further gameplay until end of floor 1 challenge:

Map is confusing. No ability to get shortcuts so have fun do 15 steps instead of 3. Floor traps is fine, but they feel not equal. Battery punishment is more noticeably than just poison apply.

Battery, right. 

Reason why MC has allies + abilities. Despite having items for recharge they cost a lot and the spend of it per step if your character weak (Battery spend being low if your character's level being higher than Sleepers is not explained). I also might miss it too but game also doesn't explains about ability to transfer skills/element resists from allies for cost of their death and ability to buy em instead of catch sounds overpowered if you know what to do. Fusion being locked for always makes me wonder why it was there and not hidden. Enemies was extremely easy that they could be beatable with regular attack only. 

Floor 2 hell zone and pain

And that's where problems begin. If your team wasn't overgrinded before, you will suffer. A lot. Boss also same. Has 3 fire attacks but due 2 turns can also use other element in pair, so you can't just makes 100% fire absorb team (boss doesn't have reaction to you having sleeper that's literally him makes me wonder if it's all real). 

The realization

After dying to boss for first time due not knowing what he is capable of, I started to see mechanics I didn't know before. First of all, EXP scaling being based on level, so Lower Level = Higher Multipler doesn't really explained. The stats you spend between levels also weird. I decided to try math it by using invest only in LUK for having no difference and then spended other 12 in 1 stat only for compilation, which lead me to these numbers:

STR - HP/2 + ATK * 2

INT - MP * 1,66 + MDF * 1 + MAT * 0,16

MAG - MP * 1.66 + MTK * 1,66 + MDF * 1

VIT - HP * 1.66 + ATK * 0,83 + DEF * 1

AGI - DEF * 0,25

Sure, I don't account Level Stats grow too, but knowing these numbers from BEGINNING (I pretty sure no one gives exact numbers) makes you know what to invest to become overpowered. 

ESPECIALLY when there is almost no ability to recover MP outside of shop (even from Special Points that's also have weird stuff. Having ability to store it and then later do 2 buffs is strong, so I don't know who in the heck gonna use half of cost just to SEE enemy stats/skills (kinda, you don't know what it does in status menu). Full Heal early on sounds very weak when you find character with mass heal so only  valid option is Enemy stun for buffing own team and then destroy him. 

Yes, destroy. After spending several attempts at beating boss and having super low level, I noticed that Battery Cost increase due low level and increased scaling, so due no game over and after calculating stats I simply lower myself to level 1 and with strong sleepers killed Hell enemies to get sudden exp jump and became pretty much op. 

The post-Boss

After finding out who boss is in term of sleepers, gave our MC absorb + skills for weak damage (I also don't remember explanation about more SP if hit weakness, I thought it's only from flashy enemy, which I...still not know what to do), I bring best team and he died very easily. After that I didn't really knew where to go due our Story quest was done and exit wasn't real so I tried go to ! And met...the labyrinth  pain. Thank you game for explanation of how to pass it on half of it's way, pretty much already guessed pattern. 

Second bass was weird. After being exhausted from random encounters and coming to boss with no SP, I simply die to him. After that I find out about his weaknesses too + get better skills from Hell mobs, I came again and...boss died after 3,2 turns (or 4 but literally only 1 member of mine killed him later one). 

Overall.

Overall is hard to tell. From one side you see effor in art style, music, aesthetic and that all but balance...one friend of mine deeply suffered because 75% of mechanics not explained like Battery Consume based on level or fact that you can RETRY Hijack on next turn (also despite having knowledge about lower hp = easier pattern, it's kinda hard to reach because scan skill cost way too much), no explanation about ACTUAL meaning of stats and so on. It's looks like promising game considered I browse leaks from Twitter but the current status of it is...require to guess mechanics. 

6/10 from me but I know someone can give lower like 4/10, hope it will be improved in future and on full release might even buy it when I will be able to do it. товарищ 

Dude, I love this idea for a fangame! I'm mainly leaving this comment, though, just to express that I hope the final game has a sizable amount of focus on the PC-98 Touhou games. You see, those games (especially Mystic Square) actually have a ton of references to SMT themselves! There's the fact that both Makai from PC-98 Touhou and Makai from SMT2 have six crystals that make a hexagram at the entrance to each, there's how Pandemonium from Mystic Square looks almost exactly like the Kether Castle from SMT2, there's how Yumeko's design is heavily inspired by Hanoun from SMT2, and of course there's Touhou's Alice taking a lot of inspiration from SMT Alice (as opposed to just Alice in Wonderland). And there's probably more similarities between those games than I can think of right now! So I'm really hoping that there's a good PC-98 Touhou presence in the full version of this SMT-inspired Touhou fangame. Even just a single (but full-blown) dungeon based on PC-98 Makai would make me happy! Thank you, and good luck.

this is the most based thing since sliced bread

this is extremely based

So, a few things

- The fact that the SP Meter is not carried by saves and gets emptied when loading the game is a bit frustrating.
- while the game is indeed supposed to mimic SMT, maaaybe it would be more fun if the difficulty of the bosses was dialed down a bit... Especially as Utsuho doesn't really seem to use much Fire skills at all during her fight, making my efforts to get a 100% fireproof party... useless. And the second boss just oneshot Sumireko on her first turn, for a true SMT-like experience XDD.
- yeah, add a way to load the game after getting killed without having to close the game... also, is there a way to actually exit to main menu?
-is there going to be a way to use skills of Sleepers not currently summoned, like healing skills? Summoning Sleepers just to heal somebody outside of combat is not going to cost anything other than their MP, anyway.
- SMT-like game without a game over sequence? Where's Komachi with her nice boat?!
- the encounter rate is annoying... but in a different way than it was in classic SMT games. I had a few instances of getting a couple of encounters on subsequent steps, but, generally, the rate is a bit too low. Maybe forcing an encounter for a small Battery fee would make hunting for Sleepers less irritating.
- access to the special actions menu in combat is under the X button... but the hint from an NPC tells you about the SHIFT key. Also, tooltips about what button/key does what in the menus would be nice.
- about Hijacking - it would be nice if subsequent attempts to hijack the same Sleeper during the same battle were made easier and, until success or end of battle. It can sometimes be difficult to beat that Sleeper down without knocking her out.

v0.1.3 Bugs (both relate to Sumireko in the back row and nobody in the front row). First is an issue that persists when saving, second is just a display bug.

• First is intentionally letting the battery hit 0% to remove the frontline party members with Sumireko backlined. During this time, I can still move one tile before the game normally corrects itself and places Sumireko in the front. However, if I enter the doorway to fight Utsuho, the row formations may not be corrected. If I immediately die turn 1, I am booted back to the Anomaly with Sumireko now on the back line until the end of a turn in combat (i.e. I can walk around). This persists across saving.
  • This one appeared intermittently (only twice, once accidentally and the other intentionally). I used a Burner Phone to save two tiles away from Utsuho's room while at 2%. I'm not sure if it's tied to something like letting the battery percentage hit 0.00% on the dot.

• Second is a backlined Sumireko and the entire frontline dying simultaneously (such as by Utsuho's glorious team killing Red Sun). When this happens, the status boxes of Sumireko and backlined party member Utsuho if she killed the team will have the animation of them moving to the front interrupted. That is, after returning to the Anomaly, the boxes will be partially offset. During turns in combat, they will slowly creep back into their correct positions.
  • Edit: It looks like this one happens whenever multiple teammates and Sumireko die at once (ex. if Sumireko is in slot 2 and Koishi in slot 1, and both die to Red Sun). The game will attempt to move Sumireko to slot 1, but the animation will be interrupted.

Super amazing so far, love it a ton. SMT and Touhou are some of my favourite series so this is amazing to me
My dependance on a compendium showing through again, so obviously can't wait for that... or maybe it's in the game and i just haven't unlocked it yet...

This was a really fun and interesting rpg. I enjoyed it a lot. Great job! 

Never played SMT before but having quite a bit of fun in the game so far :)

idk if there is a proper bug report form but i will just put the one I found here since it seems to be the place.

Saving and loading allows you to cure status effects, such as saving when you are poisoned, exiting, and then reloading the save. I'm guessing status effects just arent included in the save data or smth.

I adore this game with every fibre of my being you have a true banger on your hands

I agree with most other feedback as well (strafing being a huge one)

But one thing I haven't seen yet which would be nice is a meter that shows when the next encounter will be like in SMT Nocturne

But besides that and the other feedback this game is Chefs Kiss

Walkthough / Gameplay

Feedbacks & Suggestions

(I already beat both 2 bosses in the demo)

1) Tutorial needs to give basic info about the stats. Like which stat increase gun damage. What Agi and Luck do? Increase dodge chance? Accuracy? Item droprate? Critical hit chance?

2) Tutorial needs to give basic info on Battery feature.

3) There need to be more way to regain MP mid battle. There isn't a single MP restore item so I have to rely solely on Satori MP stealing skill.

4) Rare Gold enemy that drop extra gold/exp would be cool.

5) Please add skill description during skill transfer.  

6) Players should be rewarded for fully explore each map section.

7) There should be a midboss that guard the door before fire zone.

8) Strafing on Map Navigation

9) I'm fully aware that there are lot of hardcore SMT who love challenging videogame but if you want more people to buy your game you should really consider adding difficulty setting. Even the main SMT nowaday have baby mode for casuals.

10) Game sometimes crash mid combat. I'm not really sure what skill trigger it. I don't know how to send you the crash/error log

Strange Journey and longtime SMT/EO fan here. Got to end of demo after beating both Utsuho and the Mask of Hope stealer, maybe a couple hours at most.

How you managed to have it all only 15 MiB decompressed is beyond me, though considering your maps are only like 4 KiB at most...

• Left/right strafing and walking backwards (i.e. Strange Journey and EO's map movement style) is my #1 request to be added by far. Movement is extremely annoying otherwise even when set to Fast
• Being able to set battle effects to instant is an absolute godsend
• The menu navigation is a tad clunky. Switching active/reserve requires you to put the active character in reserve and then switch in the reserve member, you can only view the skill descriptions of active members (important for fusion and inheritance), can't use L/R in order to switch between characters' status pages, etc.
  
• SMT V's skill transfer and being able to transfer affinities onto Sumireko is good, saves the massive pain that was chain fusing. I'm not sure about being able to transfer affinities between demons though; it feels like it might cause them to lose their individuality
  
• Hijack mechanic is great imo and much better than negotiating, especially since you can reference spellcards. It's fairly good since you can either lower their HP for easy patterns or just immediately hijack for the high risk, high reward. I personally don't think much should be changed regarding it
• SP system is fine
• I personally think the game is easy, but for beginners maybe a Classic vs. Casual mode like recent EO games and Strange Journey Redux, where in Casual you don't have the harsh level drop from dying and the battle doesn't end if the protagonist falls but there are still demon allies alive
• "Story" is fine, good choice picking Sumireko since she has a gun (I get Yume Nikki vibes whenever I save lol)
• Yellow battery sucking tiles are much more taxing on players than the black EMP tiles or the purple poison tiles by a longshot
• Both bosses got smoked first try without much level grinding or taking advantage of affinity inheritance. Utsuho might have just been bad RNG on her end from being chain-Confused/Blinded, but Koishi uselessly kept spamming Peace of Mind and healing for 0 HP despite no buffs being present
• During AI autobattle, my Koishi managed to get -170/47 MP against Boss Utsuho
  
• You are evil for putting four-choice blind unidirectional teleporter maps already in the second stratum
• Tojiko is going to kill everyone who plays this game at least once
• Party member Utsuho being able to kill all three of her teammates with Red Sun is glorious
• Overall game is a blast to play as an SMT/EO fan
• If PC-98 Alice is  neither playable nor a superboss I will cry

tl;dr, feels like a great Touhou version of SMT/EO/Strange Journey, core systems are fine, needs a few QoL changes for the menu and movement

Enjoyed the demo a lot! But there were some bugs that break the game. One bug where you can actually switch out Sumireko with a sleeper in battle and when all party members die, the game crashes. And another one is where the recovery spell can be used even without 100sp. This allowed me to cheese the boss while spamming recover every turn.

Otherwise great game.

I actually quite like what's presented, even the hijacking and the general difficulty of the game. There's a lot of appreciation I have for an old-timey SMT1/2-esque game, and this definitely nails a lot of the right marks. I think most of the combat difficulty feels appropriate for the games it's clearly drawing inspiration off of, although it felt a tad bad to walk into the Remains of Blazing Hell and getting straight oneshot by a lightning attack off a Tojiko hitting Sumireko (who still had lightning weakness when going in). Granted that's avoidable and easily preventable after you have that knowledge, so it's not that bad of an issue in the grand scheme of things.

Death penalty seems a bit much when paired with that knowledge though, as I can't imagine losing a level or two every time I go into a new area while scoping out what enemies are present and how to avoid dying to them would be very fun, but I can live with it. If it ends up being changed, I'd almost suggest just having a traditional game over (lose progress -> send back to title screen or send to a load save prompt), as that'd keep the general 'punishing' nature of the game and encourage players to be more cautious without forcing them to go and grind the level they just lost back up.

My only request at the end of the day is that you add in a function to allow for strafing when walking around the dungeon (see: almost every Etrian Odyssey past EO1), because that would allow for much faster/less clunky movement without losing the appeal or feel of a traditional dungeon crawler.

Cool game, pretty fun, really look forward to seeing what the full game will contain!

I adore the style, but I have to agree with the other comments on the hijacking mechanic - it feels very rough to grind through several encounters to build my SP up, then actually run into a Sleeper rather than a fairy or kedama, then carefully lower their HP a bit so the pattern is easier, and only then take a shot at the minigame (and if I mess up, it's back to square one).

Also, there's a bug where you can use the SP-based buffs even if you don't have enough SP.

Maybe there could be a "force an encounter" button to spare the player from having to walk back and forth?

Looking forward to more!

I have to echo kuma9k's comments here. The encounter rate is weirdly very low, the hijacking minigame costs too much to do, it's too easy to fail, and what's more, you're not even told *how it works* when you first try to do it. I thought you had to touch the enemy's sprite with Sumireko's sprite and kept wondering why it didn't work, until I randomly pressed a button and discovered I could shoot.

Also, the Sleepers are way too hard (Satori, the very first Sleeper you meet, probably shouldn't be able to two-shot you), and losing a level every time you die is *way* too harsh of a punishment. I'd rather the traditional Dragon Quest punishment of losing half my money than that.

So far enjoying the demo. I would like to point out though a bug where the stats don't reset if you die before going to the anomaly and starting a new game. Don't know if you intended that but thought I'd let you know. Unless you want to  keep it for speedrun tech ;) 

This is really promising so far. I love the spritework and the music and you captured the classic megaten vibe super well. However I can't say I'm a fan of the hijacking system as it functions currently. The idea of using danmaku instead of negotiating is really cute, but the 50sp cost to even attempt it feels like a really unnecessary limitation considering how easily you can fail it even after that, and because of that I kinda found myself unable to actually get any more party members other than Satori for the longest time since by the time I actually was able to build up to trying I would fail it. I'd say either remove or lower the SP cost for attempting a hijack or make the actual hijacking process a little more lenient rather than 2 hits being a fail and locking you out for the rest of the battle. Plus I feel the encounter rate is a bit too low which doesn't really help the above issue either. Still, great work so far and I'm interested in seeing where it goes from here.

Edit: I later realised that you don't get locked out of trying a hijack again for the rest of the battle, just for the turn you tried it, and also that the encounter rate is significantly higher in the hell area. However I still stand by my other points.