The idea of a danmaku photography game first came to ZUN when he was taking snapshots of bullet patterns during the production of "Embodiment of Scarlet Devil" so that he could name them into "spell cards" to distinguish one pattern from another. He realized that taking snapshots was quite fun, and the idea should make a good game. After "Embodiment of Scarlet Devil", ZUN tried to incorporate this idea into a new weapon type for Reimu Hakurei (the main character of the "Touhou Project") where she would take pictures and seal away bullets. However, ZUN felt that he was forcing a totally new idea into the game unnaturally, since none of the characters in the games had a reason to shoot photos; so he filed the idea away for two years until after "Imperishable Night" was released.