>>68671683>What not to streamDead air and repetition kills streams. Touhou necessarily involves a lot of practice, but you should try to avoid practicing for too long during a stream. Even though it'll help you beat the game, nobody wants to watch you do a 20-set of a hard spellcard in complete silence. Figuring out a pattern and talking about it is fine. Simply trying to get better at a pattern you already understand is something you should keep off-stream or in short bursts. Also, finish your god damn runs. Every player understands "early game jail" (resetting a lot in the early game because things don't go your way), but nobody wants to watch it. Even if you game over, put in a continue and finish the run. You'll actually improve faster if you keep this in mind.
>Potential ways to make it bigAs I said before, you'll need a lot of creativity and ingenuinity for this. If you manage to hit it big and still have primarily danmaku-focused content, you'd be a genuine trailblazer. It's possible though - Touhou itself is not niche, only the games are. You'd genuinely be surprised to know how much of the internet knows about/used to be into/is currently into Touhou media. You'll need to resonate with these potential viewers outside of Twitch if you want to draw in large amounts of them - I'd honestly recommend trying your luck with making some YouTube videos showcasing your autistic passion for either the series or the genre and advertising them on Reddit, YT Shorts and TikTok. Making content about extremely popular Touhou doujin works is a surefire way to get some views. To market danmaku videos to the outside world, you should most likely take a page out of other hardcore single-player gaming communities with healthy YouTube ecosystems, like rhythm games and the entirety of speedrunning. Touhous aren't remotely close to being the world's most difficult games once you know how to play them, but you sure as hell want to make it seem that way in your thumbnails. Clickbait people off the sheer premise of a cute girl conquering a humanly impossible challenge... but also explain to any new viewers what they're looking at so that they don't just get confused and click off (seriously, that'll happen a lot - you might wanna get used to speedrunning basic and clear explanations as well). Once you get to around the current average skill level (ability to 1cc hard/luna/extra), you'll really start to dazzle, impress, even mystify new viewers with your skills and it'll hopefully keep them curious enough to stay. People do like a sweaty gamer girl (looking at you, dokibird).
While I think taking the time/effort to grow your brand outside of just your stream is important to make this work and I gave you some suggestions, you should of course also grow your stream's viewerbase directly. Network with other active Touhou streamers so that they raid you when you're on, and potentially collab with them. Some names of good people to know: Punderfullll (female), AspreyFM, Yatsuzume, Gastari/Touhou Replay Showcase, Kana, aisu_lemona (JP), Suwawako & Clownplease on YouTube... (or anyone here who grabs your attention:
https://streamscharts.com/channels?game=touhou-project). Some known indies who'd be down: BatAtVideoGames, Shondo, Girl_DM, Pippa, Mint Fantome (come back please). And from big name corpos (good luck): Mori, Fuwamoco, lots of HoloJP. Some danmaku collab ideas: PvP games (PoFV/TH9, UDoALG/TH19), CO-OP games (ZeroRanger is really good for it), racing (Touhou 15 Pointdevice mode (aka checkpoints w/ infinite retries), scene game (TH9.5/12.5/14.5/16.5/18.5) bingo, or playing any maingame at the same time and trying to get the best run).
>Basic spoiler-free 2hu game infoTH6 - Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: Oldest, jankiest, most popular one. Full of nasty patterns and missing tons of QOL, but normies recognize it.
TH7 - Perfect Cherry Blossom: Relatively easy but very long. Unique gimmick will save you a lot but actually understanding how it works is difficult.
TH8 - Imperishable Night: Very feature-rich game, iconic soundtrack and lore, considered one of the best for beginners. May teach you bad bombing habits due to unique gimmick.
TH9 - Phantasmagoria of Flower View: PvP game (with story mode). Great atmosphere, fun gameplay loop, but it's not for everyone.
TH10 - Mountain of Faith: Easiest game by far if you use your bombs, thus also a good beginner game.
TH11 - Subterranean Animism: Difficulty peak for Normal difficulty. Very fun early game, stressful late game.
TH12 - Undefined Fantastic Object: Difficulty peak for Hard and Lunatic difficulty. Unique gimmick is important but can get annoying quick. Will require routing.
TH13 - Ten Desires: Unique gimmick is fully controllable and only beneficial, pretty much more pattern-skip resources to use. Makes for an easier game, thus also quite beginner friendly.
TH14 - Double Dealing Character: Extremely gimmicky but that's also its charm. Have fun discovering that one lol
