ZUN, the sole member of the developer Team Shanghai Alice, originally did not plan to make a game for Summer 2005; however, he changed his mind when he realized 2005 marked the tenth anniversary of the "Touhou Project", and decided to make a fanservice-type game to mark the occasion. He believed that, in a game, the best kind of fanservice is to pit players against each other so they can have a chance to meet, and so tournaments can happen and so on. In this spirit, ZUN adapted the system used by "Twinkle Star Sprites" to create a versus shooter, with the focus on dodging bullets (like other Touhou games) instead of shooting each other down. Though ZUN usually develops his games alone, alphes from the circle Twilight Frontier is listed as a "Graphics Helper" in this game.