Touhou Project (東方 Project) is a franchise comprised of bullet hell shoot 'em up games, made by Team Shanghai Alice, as well as seven spin off games co-produced with Twilight Frontier. There are currently 33 games in the series, made up of the first 5 games known as the PC-98 era games with the first game made in 1996, from 6-9 known as the 1st generation Windows era games, 10-13.5 known as the 2nd generation Windows era games, and 14-20 known as the 3rd generation Windows games, with the most recent game installment released in 2025. Alongside the offical games, ZUN has released various print works and music CDs in the franchise. The franchise features around 170 characters currently. The series mostly follows the protagonist, Reimu Hakurei, who is a shrine maiden at the Hakurei Shrine and works as a youkai exterminator in Gensokyo, alongside the deuteragonist, Marisa Kirisame, an ordinary human magician who lives in the Forest of Magic.

This page probably won't feature much about the PC-98 installments of the games since I simply don't know enough about them and aren't interested enough to learn about them/play them rn... sorry!

Some basic key terms:

Gensokyo: The place where the Touhou franchise is set. It's a land sealed away from the Outside World by the Great Hakurei Barrier, where humans and youkai live among one another. Things enter into Gensokyo through being "forgotten" by the outside world.

Great Hakurei Barrier: The barrier which seperates Gensokyo from the Outside World, upheld by Reimu Hakurei. The Hakurei Shrine is located somewhere along this barrier, and Yukari Yakumo is also said to live somewhere on the barrier.

Youkai: A term used to refer to Japanese folk creatures, ghosts and supernatural beings in general. Because of the countless folk tales around the world, the types of youkai are endless. Gensokyo is one of the few sanctuaries left for youkai in the modern era due to the rationalism and logical explanations for strange phenomenons leading to a lack of belief, making it difficult for youkai to survive.

Human Village: Where the small population of humans in Gensokyo live. Due to youkais innate need for conflict with humans to survive, the humans and youkai of Gensokyo have developed a number of unique rules and customs regarding fighting.

Fumos: Fumos are a type of plushie manufactured by the Japanese company Gift, best known for their line of Touhou plushies.

Yukkuris: Yukkuris are fictional creatures made by the Touhou fanbase, and are usually disembodied heads of various Touhou characters.