Touhou Double Focus

This platformer may have a steep challenge, but once you get used to the controls, it'll slowly grow on you. Teamwork might be a wonderful thing, but no one ever said it's always easy. Sometimes, working with others can be a royal pain. At least, that's the case with Touhou Double Focus. While this isn't the first game to give players control of multiple characters simultaneously, it's not exactly one of the most comfortable either. There's actually a pretty steep learning curve to get the timing down for the best times to swap controls to make use of Aya and Momiji's unique abilities. Since each of them can only do a handful of attacks at a time, the switching needs to be fairly constant to be effective. It doesn't help that, even without this hook, the game would be a difficult experience on anything but the easiest setting. Basically, you can expect to die -- a lot. It's a frustrating experience, but it gets a lot more tolerable with practice and determination.

Once you start to get into the swing of things, Touhou Double Focus starts to have the makings of a decent platform adventure game. The back and forth exploration aspect makes the game feel a lot larger than it actually is, and the action can get intense. Of course, it would be nice if you were given a better sense of directions. Without any real cues to nudge players in the right direction, it's easy to find yourself chasing after the wrong abilities at the wrong time, stumbling into dead ends and being forced to fight back through the way you came. The game's a bit on the short side, with most players likely to be able to beat it in a few hours' time. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though, as it's just long enough not to wear out its welcome. Touhou Double Focus is far from perfect, but if you're willing to put up with a little headache at the start, you'll end up with a cute little time sink that's just different enough to stand out.