Rainbow Cave Raid
Rainbow Cave Raid is a vertically-scrolling Touhou shoot'em up fangame made by kobito in 2022. It consists of only one stage, with a large emphasis on scoring over simply making it to the end and intending to provide a faster pace than usually seen in Touhou games. It can be downloaded for free here.
Title screen
| Developer: | kobito |
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| Release date: | 2022/02/20 |
Gameplay Overview
Rainbow Cave Raid uses three buttons, and only features a single playable character (Reimu Hakurei) with no alternate shot types. The game features 3 difficulty levels: Novice, Arcade and Extended. Novice reduces the number of enemy bullets, while Extended adds a harder second and third loop. There are also game modes: Original and Arrange. These feature different versions of the Burst system and different scoring systems.
Controls
- Z: Fires the player's shot.
- X: Uses a Burst if one is available.
- Shift: Activates focus mode while held, reducing movement speed and condensing the player's shot.
Shot
The unfocused shot spreads out and covers a large portion of the screen. It's also slightly more powerful than the focused shot (at 272 damage per second as opposed to the focused shot's 264), but the player must get very close to enemies for all four option shots to hit. The focused shot only fires directly in front, but still covers a little over a fourth of the screen width.
Burst
The Burst system is this game's equivalent to bombs. A Burst may be used when the gauge in the bottom left corner of the screen is full. Additional Bursts cannot be stocked, so it's a good idea to use them frequently and let the next one start charging. The gauge simply fills over time (0.2% per frame, about 8.33 seconds for a full charge). Bursts cancel all bullets in their area of effect on the frame they're used, and will deal damage to all enemies in their radius for half a second after that.
In Arrange mode, Bursts charge slower over time (0.16% per frame, about 10.42 seconds for a full charge), have a larger area of effect and deal increased damage (5 damage per frame instead of 2.2). It's worth noting that Bursts can be charged via certain actions in this mode (explained later), allowing them to be used more frequently overall.
Items
Original Mode
Note: "Item rate" refers to the amount each collected pickup increases the corresponding item counter.
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Red items are spawned when enemies are killed at a close enough range. This range varies slightly between enemy types, as does the number of items dropped. Bosses will drop these items simply as they are shot, but significantly more can appear based on the player's proximity to the boss. Item rate: 1.00 (Novice/Arcade), 0.55 (Extended) |
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Orange items are spawned when enemies are killed quickly enough, the amount of time allowed and number of items dropped varying between enemy types. Bosses will always drop some amount of these items when defeated, with a higher boss timer awarding more items. Item rate: 1.00 (Novice/Arcade), 0.50 (Extended) |
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Yellow items always appear from defeated enemies. However, these are the only items in the game that don't automatically move towards the player, and will scatter in random directions instead. If the player moves close enough to one of these items, it will begin to magnet towards them. This range is larger while focus mode is being used. Item rate: 0.90 (Novice/Arcade), 0.45 (Extended) |
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Green items appear from cancelled bullets, whether it be through destroying a boss or using a Burst. Item rate: 0.55 (Novice), 0.40 (Arcade), 0.12 (Extended) |
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Blue items appear when bullets are grazed by moving close enough to them. Two of these items spawn per bullet grazed with the exception of boss battles, where only one blue item appears for every grazed bullet. Item rate: 0.40 (Novice), 0.30 (Arcade), 0.15 (Extended) |
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Purple items appear from enemies as they are damaged while focus mode is not being used. Note that the type of shot used doesn't matter; firing the focused shot and exiting focus mode before the bullets hit anything will contribute to gaining purple items. Item rate: 0.50 (Novice/Arcade), 0.25 (Extended) |
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Pink items appear from enemies as they are damaged while focus mode is being used. The shot used to deal said damage does not matter, exactly like with purple items. Item rate: 0.50 (Novice/Arcade), 0.25 (Extended) |
Arrange Mode
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Point items are spawned when enemies are killed normally. Each enemy has a base number of items it will drop that can be multiplied by up to x2.5 if they are destroyed almost immediately. The speed at which this multiplier decreases to x1 depends on the enemy type. Bosses work similarly, with the number of items dropped starting at x3 and decreasing to x1 across the full time limit. These have a base score value of 500 points and increase the multiplier by 1. |
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Gold items are spawned instead of Point items from enemies that are killed while being hit by a Burst. The amount of Gold items dropped is calculated in the exact same way as Point items. These have a base score value of 1,000 points and increase the multiplier by 2. |
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Energy items appear from enemies as they are shot. The closer the player is to them, the more of these will appear. These have a base score value of 350 points, increase the multiplier by 1 and fill the Burst gauge by 0.7%. |
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Cancel items replace the green items from Original mode. These have a base score value of 500 points. Every fourth cancel item collected will also increase the multiplier by 1. |
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Graze items replace the blue items from Original mode, except every graze will always spawn 2 graze items, even during bosses. These only increase the Burst gauge, by 1.5% each. |
Both modes also feature extend items that award the player an extra life. These only appear under specific conditions.
Loops
Extended mode features three loops. The first loop is the same as Arcade difficulty, but the second and third loops have higher bullet density and new boss patterns. Loop 3 also ends with a mandatory alternate TLB, which cannot be accessed in the first two loops. There are no requirements to access the later loops.
In Original mode only, the speed at which the Burst gauge fills is increased by 15% on Loop 2, and by 30% on Loop 3.
Extends
Original Mode
Extends in this mode are earned by reaching certain total item counts (that is, the sum of all 7 individual item counts).
- In Novice mode, extends are awarded at 100, 250, 450, 700, 950, 1250, 1600 and 2000 total items.
- In Arcade mode, extends are awarded at 100, 300, 500, 750, 1050, 1400, 1800 and 2300 total items.
- In Extended mode, extends are awarded every 200 total items, with no upper limit.
Arrange Mode
Extends in this mode are earned by reaching certain multiplier thresholds.
- In Novice and Arcade mode, the first extend is awarded at x1000, with the threshold increasing increasing by 1000 + (number of extends gained so far) * 100 every time it's reached. (x1000, x2100, x3300, x4600 etc.)
- In Extended mode, extends are awarded every x2000.
- In Special, extends are awarded every x1500.
Secret Extends
Both game modes also have hidden extend items. These appear under certain conditions:
- Novice/Arcade/Extended Loop 1: Destroy all of the first midboss's options, then destroy the main body.
- Extended Loop 2: Destroy the second midbosses at the same time (within 35 frames of each other in Original mode, or 25 frames in Arrange).
- Extended Loop 3: Destroy all eight yin-yang enemies during the third midboss.
- Special: Destroy both large fairies at the end of the stage.
Scoring
Original Mode
Score in this mode is only calculated at the end of the game, and is equal to all 7 item counts multiplied together, plus an extra +0.1 multiplier for each life remaining.
Therefore, scoring primarily consists of losing as few lives as possible and collecting lots of items. Because of how score is calculated, it's also sometimes worth trying to keep a decent balance of all seven colors (particularly with purple and pink items). This also means that a 0-score run is possible if any of the item counts is 0.
Arrange Mode
This mode features a more traditional scoring system, with score being gained from destroying enemies and collecting items. There is also a multiplier that's increased by collecting items, which affects all score gained.
Thus, speedkilling and pointblanking enemies is essential for a high score, while using Bursts to take out enemies for gold items. There is also a life bonus at the end, which awards a base 50,000 points per remaining life.
Secrets
True Last Boss
Rainbow Cave Raid features a True Last Boss, which can be fought if the following conditions are met:
- Play on Arcade difficulty
- Do not time out the stage boss
- Have at least 2000 total items on Original mode, or a multiplier of at least x9500 on Arrange mode
- Destroy the special enemy that appears if the above conditions are fulfilled
Special Stage
The Special stage is a hidden bonus stage, accessed separately from the main game. It can be played by highlighting the final achievement in the Achievements screen and pressing the shot button, but only once all achievements have been unlocked. This stage can only be played in Arrange mode and is designed around its particular version of the Burst mechanic.
Version Differences
- v1.00a: Initial release
- v1.10a: Adds Arrange mode, the Special stage, slight stage design changes and some new features including achievements
- v1.20a: Adds Extended mode, some bugfixes
- v1.20b: Very slight visual tweaks and a bugfix
Trivia
- The game was originally being made for Touhou Game Jam 2021 with the theme "Rainbow", which inspired the scoring system in Original mode. The developer missed the deadline though, and the project was revived several months later.
- The jam version also had horizontal screen panning as the player moved left or right, but it was removed before the actual release due to negative feedback and because the stage design worked perfectly fine without it anyway.
- The v1.10a update was originally planned to have an endless mode that loops infinitely, but the idea was ultimately scrapped and later fleshed out into Extended mode.
- Arrange mode was originally supposed to have a unique TLB in the form of Momoyo Himemushi, but the idea was scrapped. The music for the fight was completed and planned to included with the soundtrack, but that idea was also scrapped last-minute due to the track not being very good.
- The music that plays on the title screen is a very slightly edited version of a track originally made for an unfinished joke game.
- One of the achievements was originally awarded for clearing Arcade mode with the TLB, while finishing with a final score of 0. This also meant that the TLB's item drops had to be disabled if the player defeated it while at least one of the item counts was still 0. The achievement was ultimately replaced for being far too difficult, but the changed item drop behavior was kept and introduced in v1.10a.
References & Contributors
- Page created by the developer, kobito.
