Overview
Shikhondo (also known as Shikhondo: Soul Eater) is an indie horror-fantasy vertical-scrolling shoot-'em-up developed and digitally published by DeerFarm for the PC on October 10, 2017.
Developed by Korean developer DeerFarm, Shikhondo is influenced by other "bullet hell" shoot-'em-ups, namely the Touhou Project series. Based on Korean mythology, Shikhondo has players guiding two characters (The Grim Reaper or The Girl) as they hunt down escaped youkai and collect the souls they've absorbed. The game's key mechanic is the "Soul Collect" system, where players can graze past enemy bullets to generate a super attack.
Co-developed by DeerFarm and exA-Arcadia, the remade arcade version titled Shikhondo: Red Purgatory features an exclusive tate mode and is the first true 9:16 shoot-'em-up. Bilingual voices (in English and Japanese) were added to the game to flesh out the story. Playing as either character in single player mode features a different voiced story unique to each character's perspective while the 2 player simultaneous mode has a combined storyline. The game's mechanics have been further refined to encourage more aggressive play by only allowing meter to build while grazing and attacking enemies. Players can no longer milk enemies for meter as in the original version. All enemy patterns have completely changed from the original. WASi303 from Success and Masayuki Shimano of Kojima Productions fame produced the new voices, re-engineered music and sound effects exclusively for the arcade release.
The game was later ported to the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on August 28, 2018, followed by a port to the Nintendo Switch on September 6, 2018, with all three developed and published by Digerati not by the original developer, DeerFarm. The game was later remade for arcades (using PC-based exA-Arcadia hardware) on September 14, 2020 as Shikhondo: Red Purgatory.
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