General Scoring
This guide will explain everything needed to know to get started on scoring the Touhou games. This guide will contain basic information and some of the methods needed to approach the learning process.
Introduction[edit | edit source]
Scoring takes more time than the average survival clear. Scoring runs often contain more strategies that require correct execution.
When planning what category to score, many players are inclined to score their favourite Touhou game for survival. What's however also suggested is to look through all Touhou games and focus on the main, core gameplay scoring mechanics. Some survival game favourites may have a scoring system that is not desirable to play with. On the contrary it's also possible that the desired scoring game is a game that is disliked for survival.
Information about the main scoring mechanics of the Touhou games may be found under the main Touhou Wiki (under the "gameplay" section of each specific game). Do note that the Wiki page may not contain highly specific details about the scoring system and should instead be used as a base to take the mechanics into consideration.
Currently The Danmaku Gameplay Wiki does not yet have detailed scoring guides for every game and are still under construction. When every scoring page is sufficiently written, the gameplay section of the Touhou Wiki may be considered outdated.
This guide also contains a section that quickly describes the main mechanics of the main Windows games, and what to expect when making the decision to play them for score. The recommendation for newcomers who aren't sure about what to score, is to give a brief look at that section of the guide. To confirm if X scoring system is a desirable one to score, it would be recommended to consider watching scoring runs of that game and not only the World Record (which may be a deterrent to the game due to difficult tricks) but also lower scoring runs which usually feature more comfortable strategies.
Additionally, this guide will often mention to "ask a skilled player" as a solution or method for alot of information that may be desired to know of and this may be the best solution for most problems or questions. Skilled players often interact with the community and and are willing and glad to help if asked about their favorite category, but there may be exceptions. Asking for help is not mandatory but does help to getting skilled players to help out, especially when expressing alot of interest and asking for random tips.
Choose a Goal[edit | edit source]
The meaning of "goal" shall not be restricted to a specific score number, but instead referring to a scoring goal in general.
The way players play can be categorized in two different ways:
- Playing with a specific score goal in mind
- Playing without a specific score goal in mind.
These two mindsets lead to a different approach with everything, whereby the preference is usually subjective.
The specific number experience:
Most players play a Touhou category with a specific goal in mind. When playing for survival, the goal is generally to 1cc, LNB, low miss, or LNN. These are concrete goals players aim for and for many a goal is motivation. In scoring players usually set a score number as a goal. As a beginner it's difficult if not impossible to grasp what is a reasonable number is to aim for. This can make the idea of setting a goal a double edged sword. Players who get alot of motivation for a goal, may ask a skilled player a suggestion as to what score to aim for based on their skill level, which may be the best choice. Alternatively the scoring goal can be set to a very low number and can be built up from there. When aiming for a specific number, players also tend to narrow their choice for strategies and routes to the simplest methods of gaining score. This is effective, however it's also fair to recognize that by narrowing down on hard strategies, one may miss out on more engaging gameplay and as a result understand the game less.
The no specific number experience:
When abstaining from having a number goal, players may experience the game by trying out anything that looks fun or interesting, experimenting and learning the game in aspects that may be missed out on when setting a concrete goal instead. When taking this approach, players may more quickly learn what is a more realistic limit of one's ability to then adapt to real attempts. When doing credits this way, players may get a more realistic idea of what score they are likely to get. However at this point players should not care about the final goal and will instead attempt to string everything together into a single run. The con of this type of playstyle is the lack of a concrete number to aim for as a source of motivation. Players may also find themselves defeated when failing to do something that looks cool and interesting, causing them to give up early.
Most of this guide focuses on the specific number experience, as when playing without a goal, improvisation follows.
Replay gathering[edit | edit source]
With the goal to play for set in mind, the learning process can be discussed. One of the first important steps is to gather replays to learn from!
It is important to download as many replays as possible. More recent ones are a priority.
Scoring runs are almost never perfect, even the WRs. When watching just one replay (which may have made mistakes), can cause misinterpretations to be made. When viewing multiple replays with various mistakes (and possibly different routing), helps with understanding the game plan of said game: why do players do X strat, how bad are certain mistakes, etc. Some replays might also have good early games but bad late games, or vice versa. Recently achieved scores are ideal to views as recent scores tend to have more refined/easierstrategies than older ones. Old replays might contain suboptimal/harder strategies for equal score gain.
From here, if one is playing without a goal in mind, the approach is to keep learning strategies that can be done reliably and doing credits whenever ready to piece the run together (or become "Practice Parakeet" and do 1 credit a year).
When aiming for a specific score, having multiple replays helps with understanding what a good score is and (if applicable) what's a good PIV pace with an average early and/or late game. When having this specific goal, there are two kinds of replays to look for:
- replays that are extremely close to the score goal.
- replays that have a higher score than the goal (around 10-15% higher depending on the game).
The first category of replays help with understanding what numbers throughout the game are mandatory to reach that score goal. When scoring less in the early game in a practice setting compared to the replays from the first category, the score goal may not get reached, unless the late game becomes better than in the referenced replay(s). This may be particularly important in the early game where the PIV buildup affects the entire run (if applicable to that game). Since most replays have different early games, the best way to estimate what is the mandatory number is to average out the numbers of all the replays or ask a skilled player what a reasonable mandatory number is.
The second category of replays are also important. When practicing routes that barely reach the score goal, perfection will be required for the real scoring attempts, which is unlikely to occur. The more ideal approach is to practice a route that scores higher than the goal in order to have a run that afford mistakes, while still being on pace for that goal.
Optional third category of replays: the WR. The WR (likely) contains the best possible viable strategies done in a run as of the time the run was achieved. Depending on the game and one's initial skill level, it may not be recommended to learn from these replays when starting a scoring category. When as a player improvements have been made in said category and have developed a better understanding of the game/category, is when viewing the WR for reference becomes more reasonable. Knowing what is (close to) the best possible execution can also elevate one's understanding on how the game works on a deeper level and what to focus on when learning.
Practice and routing[edit | edit source]
Once the replays have been collected, the best plan is to create a route that can be followed roughly, regardless of whether one is playing with a specific score goal in mind. When aiming for a specific score, a run with perfect execution should not barely reach this score goal. A perfect practice execution should allow one to score higher than their score goal, as to have leeway for mistakes or suboptimal play.
How does one deal with mistakes?: This depends on the game. In some games an unintentional death causes no route changes and the run can continue while accepting the score loss. In other games an unintentional death forces the use of a backup route or compromised route that skips strategies to get back to the original route.
Two Important things to understand are:
- What one shouldn't do, understand which mistakes are gonna cost alot of score.
- Why replays do what they do, recognize if the observed deaths or bombs are a mistake or if these were planned.
Question everything that feels strange: Such as asking why players do certain things, what the point of certain actions are, why players in the replays gain more score than you and is causing the score gain. Asking such questions helps with figuring out how the game is played.
Getting used to the chosen route is important. Practice can start from Stage 1. When doing this and progressing this practice stage by stage, it helps building up the route while learning the game. If one (for example) were to skip a stage, learn the next stage and then go back to the previous stage, there may be a realization that the execution of the previous stage does not bring you to the next stage with the planned resources. This would force a re-route of the later stage.
Another option is to start with the late-game stages. By skipping to these stages, one can prioritize learning the difficult part of the game first. Once these stages have been learned, one can keep practicing them to increase consistency while learning the rest of the game. This comes down to personal preference. It is however advised to prioritize consistency.
It is highly recommended to get a feel for the early game score and/or PIV in the game that is played. Players can end up in a situation where they think: "This Stage 1 strategy is quite challenging. I can play safer and make it much easier, but by doing this I lose 2,000 PIV" or "Is this extra effort worth it for the PIV" without knowing how much score is gained from gaining 2,000 PIV at a certain point in the game. To find out the score value of the PIV, there are a few options:
- In most cases, another player has already compiled the value of the PIV in each stage. Asking around the gameplay communities should lead to it. (if the scoring for a specific game exists in this wiki, the value of the PIV may be already documented)
- When these compiled values are not available, the more complex way is to use Cheat Engine to modify the PIV value in a replay and check how much the extra PIV affects the score (especially useful in EoSD where it's hard to estimate the Star Item value). This might be complicated when having no experience with Cheat Engine. A tutorial will be left on how to use CE to check PiV value here:
From this point this paragraph will provide detail about what to do when aiming for a specific goal.
Getting a route down requires learning all the different strategies for all the stage sections/boss fights. The general rule of thumb: The strategies need to be as consistent as possible and the score gain should be as high as needed. Easy to execute, consistent simple strategies that give lots of score (low risk/high reward) are a priority to learn. Inconsistent and complicated strategies that earn little score (high risk/low reward) are suggested to be avoided as a beginner. For further detail about consistency, reading this document is recommended.
Once the routing has finished, one should try to clear each stage at least once in practice. Ideally the stages should follow the correct route. It however won't mat.ter if practice runs lose items or lack behind in PIV. This won't hinder the execution of the route. Once stages are practiced, one can start tracking Sum of Bests (SoB) for all stages or sections to keep track of while doing real attempts. Depending on how behind/ahead you are compared to your SoB, the following choices can be made: one can play safer as the run stayed close to the SoB, or one can decide to play risky when the run is far behind the SoB (keeping in mind that the SoB is above the real scoring goal).
From this point one may start attempting credits. Even when one isn't consistent in practice yet, doing full runs may help players familiarize themselves with the practical and mental environment of full runs early.
Scoring Gameplay Summary (Per Game)[edit | edit source]
Remember that these are short gameplay summaries, they will not go into detail. Any curiosity you may have can be found on the gameplay wiki page of each game, soon enough, this wiki will have a detail page for each game aswell. If you are curious about one specific game, you can also watch a run.
As of currently, this list includes touhou main games from 1 to 18, excluding PoFV.
The explanation applies for most difficulties. The fundamentals listed here carry out through most of the difficulties, the rare exceptions will be clear whenever you attempt scoring different difficulties
HRtP: The main focus of HRtP is the chaining of panels. This is done by having the ball hit panels without letting the ball hit the ground. The more panels hit this way, the more score is obtained from each panel, until reaching a cap of 25,600 points. One technique to make this chaining easier is by sliding into the ball before it hits the ground and then bomb immediately, clearing away many panels at once. To keep using bombs, suicides are used as they give you one bomb back every time. Many suicides can be afforded as the game awards you an extend for every 400,000 points obtained. Top level scoreruns will also chain items that occasionally drop from panels. When collecting enough of them in a row without dropping a single one can earn you up to 65,530 points.
SoEW: Scoring SoEW revolves around picking up Point Items high on the screen. In this game there is no autocollect system, meaning all items have to be picked up manually. Scoreplayers may choose to suicide twice at the start to bring themselves to their last life in order to not waste score extends, as in this game your life and bomb count cannot exceed 5. In some challenging sections bombs may be used to make picking up Point Items easier.
PoDD: Scoring gameplay in PoDD is focused on Spell Points and summons. Chaining enemies, fireballs and bullets in quick succession builds up Spell Points, which are used to summon bosses and these points themselves also add to your score. Chains also build up your gauge which you can use to summon Level 2 spells. These spells summon pellet bullets that can be reflected back to you to gain even more Spell Points. Fireballs are summoned by chaining enough enemies and bullets these too can be reflected back to the opponent. Summoned bosses can also be reflected back to your opponent by getting enough Spell Points. In short the game flow revolves around reflecting bullets, fireballs and bosses back and forth as much as possible, as this provides the highest amount of score potential and is also reflected in how hard the game becomes. And summons that are being cast do also get reflected in the Clear Bonus.
LLS: The main gameplay of LLS revolves around bombing Point Items, Cancel Bonuses and graze. Point Items are collected by using bombs while being high up on the screen. During a bomb's effect all items receive double the value, giving you up to 102,400 points (or 128,000 after maxing out your Dream Bonus by collecting enough Dream Items). Cancel Bonuses are the second component of a sizable chunk of your score. These can build up to several million points by clearing the final pattern of a boss while there are many bullets on the screen. The last component is graze. You get immediate score for every graze point obtained and it caps at 999 for every stage. The graze is also reflected in the Clear Bonus (up to 49,950 points before the point item multiplier is applied to the bonus).
MS: The main focus of MS is the collection of Point Items. At the start of the game, the goal is to max out the Dream Bonus gauge as quickly as possible. This meter fills up quickly by collecting Point Items at max value (51,200). Once the gauge is filled, Point Items will see a significant boost in their max value and from that point on items can be collected anywhere on the screen to give you the max value for each item. Once the Dream Bonus is maxed out, in most cases players attempt to never drop the Dream Bonus gauge again. This means players cannot die or bomb, the former being the more costly of the two mistakes as this resets your Power Item value, reduces your Dream Bonus by more than a bomb and loses you more score in the Clear Bonus of the stage you died in and also the final Clear Bonus.
EoSD: The core gameplay in EoSD revolves around the collection of Point and Star items. The point item value does not increase through the course of the game. The value of star items is based on graze. Most of the score comes from star items, so maximizing graze, and the amount of star items is the key component. Star items are spawned by canceling bullets, via power cancels, spell/non-cancels, and bombing (star items generated by bombing have their value dropped to 100. However, when a bomb ends the star items that are still on the screen will be collected at full value. Players abuse this mechanic to bomb in corners and still collect good chunks of score from bombs). Bombs are used in stage portions to grant Iframes to graze. During certain boss fights (mainly Meiling and Sakuya) bombs are spammed on specific patterns to generate star items. Lives tend to be used to suicide for more bombs. One last important Remember that these are short detail is that the value of graze is reset at the beginning of each stage. Keep in mind that this game has a lot of survival moments where you just dodge, you need good survival skills overall.
PCB: The core gameplay in PCB revolves around the collection of point items, border bonuses, and Spell Card bonuses (SCB). The value of point items (the cherry value, C), and border gauge (cherry+, c+), can be increased by shooting (~65% slower if focused), and collecting cherry and star items. C decreases if you die or bomb. C has a maximum number it can go up to (CherryMax, CM) which can be increased using Borders. Each bullet grazed during a Border increases CM by 30 when focused, and 80 while unfocused. Additionally, completing a border without breaking it gives 10000 CM and a border bonus (equivalent to 10 point items). Grazing also increases the value of the spell card bonuses, which is especially important in Stage 6. PCB is routed to allow players to collect as many point items as possible, while also increasing your CM asap, otherwise, your C will eventually stop increasing. Doing so involves shooting primarily unfocused, timing cancels, collecting cherry items, and occasional bombing to get many borders, especially on patterns that allow for heavy grazing during said border. The higher CM increase from unfocused grazing during borders and frequent unfocused shooting make good unfocused dodging essential for this category. Lives are occasionally used as bombs restock. Unnecessary deaths hurt, as they give a nice score boost in the end clear bonus.
IN: The core gameplay in IN revolves around the collection of Point items, time orbs, and Spell card bonuses (SCB). IN features the "youkai gauge" in the bottom left corner. Various actions cause the gauge to be pushed to either the left (human) or right (youkai). Being between 80% and 100% of either side causes different effects. The value of point items shown in the bottom left can be increased by collecting time orbs, while the value of time orbs themselves is based on the number of point items collected. There are many ways to generate time orbs, such as capping spells, shooting while human (-80% or less), grazing while Youkai during bosses (+80% or more), and familiar cancels. Spell card bonuses in this game are very big and are a priority to collect. Knowing all of this, the main goal of score runs is basically managing your youkai gauge, and the times at which you shoot to familiar cancel efficiently, to generate as many time orbs as possible, all while also collecting items (which are worth double when collected in human mode). Bombs are occasionally used to graze for time orbs. When it comes to lives it's better to preserve them as much as possible for the end clear bonus.
PoFV:
StB: This game's score system revolves around taking photos of bosses with as many bullets in them as possible, as these add Base Value to your score. Unlike main games in the series, high scores in StB scenes are often achieved by taking risks that are often unreasonable in the main games, due to the Individual Level (IL) nature of the game. Most scoreruns will take photos of bosses where they are in the middle of the screen to max out the Boss Shot (up to x2.0 multiplier) while also having Aya in the photo (for both the x1.2 Self Shot and x1.5 Two Shot multipliers) and with the boss displaying the Nice Shot (up to x1.5 multiplier). Often times this is achieved by positioning Aya to the side of the boss or a 45-degree angle due to this giving you the most room to aim your camera while also staying as far away from the boss as possible without losing multipliers. Sometimes Nice Shots may be skipped in favor of getting more bullet clouds in your photo as these add over twice the amount of Base Value to your score as opposed to fully formed bullets.
MoF: The core gameplay in MoF revolves around the collection of Point items and Spell card bonuses (SCB). The value of the point items written in the bottom left corner can reach up to 999990 value. The value can be increased by collecting Faith items, doing bullet cancels by ending a spell/non, and doing bomb cancels on non-spells. A bar under the PiV is constantly decreasing, when it reaches 0 your PiV will start dropping rapidly. Stages are routed to avoid dropping the PiV value as much as possible. The bar can be charged by collecting items, and killing enemies. You chain items and enemy kills to maintain the bar high. The SCBs increase the higher your PiV, capping as many spell cards as possible is ideal. Clearing with as many lives as possible is also ideal because not only does dying lose a huge amount of PiV, each life gives a strong boost of score in the end clear bonus. bombing also decreases PiV, but death bombing does not. Keep in mind that this game has a lot of survival moments where you just dodge, you need good survival skills overall.
SA: The core gameplay in SA revolves around the collection of Point items. The value of the point items written in the bottom left corner ,can be increased by collecting green items. In SA the value of the point items unlike in other games, is directly connected to your Communication gauge (CG). Items collected with a full CG are collected at full value. Doing a PoC instantly fills the CG and the CG is normally filled by graze. A multiplier acts on the base PiV value. The Multiplier starts at 0, and it can be increased by 0.01 for every 100 graze. CG also increases the multiplier by up to 1.00 at full CG. An important detail is that dying resets PiV, which is bad normally, but on some patterns, it is actually more worth it to suicide if it makes you graze (mostly on Parsee, but not only her). SA routing tends to suicide a lot in early stages and then stops in the late game once you have high graze, since lives do give a sizable amount of score for the End clear bonus.
UFO: The core gameplay in UFO revolves around the collection of Point items. PiV is increased by grazing and consuming UFO tokens during summons (1000 PiV per token). Item collection is mostly done through Blue UFO summons, which have an x8 multiplier on the PiV. In the first 2 stages, it is more worthwhile to summon flashing UFOs instead, because the bonus token from the reward helps with building PiV. Flashing UFOs also switch power items into point items when they are collected and vice-versa, so they are also used in sections mostly containing power items (with an x4 PiV multiplier). Players may also opt to summon Red UFOs instead. Touhou 12 requires high survival skills, more resources can help with keeping a run alive after accidental deaths. Ichirin, both mid-boss and boss, is a huge graze cash in. Blue summons start in stage 3, the usual route goal is: to collect as many point items as possible with as few summons as possible (to maximize PiV from tokens). Keep in mind that this game has a lot of survival moments where you just dodge, you need good survival skills overall.
DS: This game's score system revolves around taking photos of bosses with as many bullets in them as possible, as these add Base Value to your score. Unlike main games in the series, high scores in DS scenes are often achieved by taking risks that are often unreasonable in the main games, due to the Individual Level (IL) nature of the game. Most scoreruns will take photos of bosses where they are in the middle of the screen to max out the Boss Shot (up to x2.00 multiplier) while also having Aya in the photo (x1.50 Two Shot multiplier) and with the boss displaying the Nice Shot (up to x1.50 multiplier). In DS there is also an Angle Bonus multiplier. The multiplier on this bonus is based on how much the line between the boss and your character compared to the long edge of the photo are lined up perpendicularly. This means that in almost all cases photos are being taken in landscape mode, which provides up to x1.30 multiplier when playing as Aya and x1.70 multiplier as Hatate. There are more differences between both Aya and Hatate that may be found in this game's own page and sometimes strategies between characters differ when playing the same scene.
GFW: Scoring gameplay in GFW is focused on freezes. The main focus is to cover the screen with as much ice as possible as many times as possible. The main way to achieve this is by grazing bullets and shooting enemies for Ice Power gain and then strategically placing and timing your freezes. Freezes give you direct score whereby freezes of 60% or higher gain the most score (between 360,000 and 1,000,000). In order to get these large freezes, Perfect Freezes are often used. PF can be gained by covering enough of the screen in ice with any given freeze. You gain 1 to 10% PF for smaller freezes and 20% PF for freezes of 30% or higher. Suicides are also used to gain 25% PF. By killing enemies or boss patterns with your freezes you obtain Frozen Items which are worth quadruple the score of regular Point Items (4,000 instead of 1,000) and give you up to 9% Motivation, which are your lives. By the end of the game the goal is to finish the run with 1000% Motivation, as the Clear Bonus is based on this percentage and is almost half of your entire score in the maingame and over half of the score in Extra. During boss fights scoreruns attempt to time down almost every pattern to gain score from freezing, whereby damage control is crucial for achieving this effectively.
TD: The core gameplay in TD revolves around the collection of Point items and spirits. PiV is increased by grazing and collecting blue spirits (10 PiV each, 100 PiV in trance). Gray spirits don't give PiV but act as Point items. Routing in TD is done to maximize the number of spirits spawned to increase PiV and score. This is done by killing enemies quickly (which spawns more spirits) and chaining enemy kills. If a 1-second chain is held for 10 blue spirits spawns, gray spirits will start spawning. They will stop spawning if the 1 second chain is broken. Trances are routed to be used on sections that have large amounts of blue spirits to cash in PiV. Bombs are used to kill large amounts of enemies quickly, or more importantly, on boss fights to point blank bosses. This is because the closer you stand to a boss while damaging, the faster spirits spawn. This works very well with bombs, which stacks the 10 spirit chain almost instantly. Lives are used as bomb restocks.
DDC: The core gameplay in DDC revolves around the collection of Point items, SCB, and PoC bonuses. The value of point items can be increased by grazing bullets, canceling bullets via nons/spells cancels and bombs on nons (SakuyaB can also bomb spells). Doing a PoC gives the player a score bonus based on the items collected. The bonus is a multiplier applied to the total score gained from the PoC. Routing is done to collect as many point items as possible, but also collect them with the highest amount of items in a single PoC, to maximize the score bonus and resources given by the PoCs. Bombs are used to cancel bullets, graze with Iframes, and often to also PoC. Lives are used to suicide at opportune times to reset bombs and graze with Iframes. SCBs in DDC have a higher value than usual. There is a strong emphasis on trying to cap spell cards.
ISC: The scoring system in ISC is quite rudimentary: Grazing gives you star items, which can be collected for a certain value depending on the current amount of items collected. The value of the star items range from 10-1000 points. Additionally, the spell card bonus cannot be failed even on timeout, the bonus being worth 50,000 × (day number + 3) at the start of the spell and slowly decreasing. You are also granted a 100,000 score bonus after clearing any scene (unless you timeout). Typically, you would use items such as the lantern and substitute jizo for the invincibility frames they give you, which let you graze bullets at the source.
LoLK: The core gameplay in LoLK revolves around the collection of point items and chapter bonuses. The value of point items can be increased by grazing [only regular graze, not Graze items (GI) collected with slow-grazing], green items spawned from cancels and chapter bonuses (the PiV bonus is equal to graze, this PiV bonus does benefit from GI). The chapter bonuses give a score equal to a formula of graze and % of enemy shootdown. LoLK has more lives and resources than most games. Almost all of them tend to be used to suicide repeatedly to graze with Iframes or bombs. The best example of this is Ringo's second spell. Spawn grazing and GI items make up for most of the graze gain. the best shot that can make use of the mechanics is Reisen, thanks to her ability to graze effectively with big graze hitbox with shields active, cancels with shields breaks (breaks also collect items on screen) and 0 damage bomb, which gives more time to graze.
HSiFS: The core gameplay in HSiFS revolves around the collection of point, power and green items. The value of point items can be increased by collecting green items. While green items themselves are worth 1/10 of the PiV, once full power is reached, power items are worth like point items. Green items make for most of the score gain in the late game. Green items are spawned by canceling bullets with releases. The higher the release level, the higher the number that gets added to PiV for each bullet. Green items are worth 1/10 of PiV, no matter the release level. What this means is that in the early game, routing prioritizes few well-placed high-level releases to quickly increase PiV. In the late game release level doesn't matter for PiV, but only for length of the release. Bombs are occasionally used to graze bullets for season items. Lives in the early game are used to reset bombs, but in the late game losing as little lives as possible is ideal to not lose the power to point item conversion at full power.
VD:
WBaWC: The core gameplay in WBaWC revolves around the collection of point, power, and green items. The value of point items can be increased by collecting green items. While green items themselves are worth 1/10 of the PiV, once full power is reached, power items are worth like point items. Green items make for most of the score gain in the late game. Green items are spawned by shooting down enemies with any hyper, and by canceling bullets with Otter spirits or nons/spell cancels. Most of the green items are generated by otter spirits. WBaWC routing is done to allow players to hyper as many times as possible on the juiciest sections in the stage. To do this players have to manage and predict the behavior of multiple tokens at the same time. Bombs are used to make use of Iframes to collect tokens. Lives are used for bomb restock but more importantly to spawn bonus static otter tokens, which are used to hyper the same pattern more than once if there is enough time.
UM: The core gameplay in UM revolves around the collection of gold, power and green items. The value of money items is increased by collecting funds, the fund cap for money items is 1000 funds, for a total of 1M gain from each money item. Once full power is reached, power items are worth like point items. Green items award the value of the current funds. Money items are what gives the most score in this game, other than being spawned by enemy kills and bosses, money is spawned when using the mallet card to cancel bullets (together with some green items). The goal here is to use mallets in the most dense patterns of the game, other cards are used to help with this goal (may it be help with positioning, cooldown decrease, help with survival while waiting mallet cooldown). Bombs are used to set up for mallet cancel. Lives are used for bomb restock.