8 Best Video Games Made Entirely By One Person

Tohou.

Even saying the name aloud is likely to instil a complex cocktail of emotions in those who have played any of the titles bearing this moniker.

For some, it will be a moment of dread, of sweat-drenched panic as memories of shoot-em-up bullet hell come flooding back, and of how utterly migraine-inducing some of the visuals can be. Yet for others, it will be a moment to smile and reflect on how this utterly insane franchise was the passion project of just one developer.

ZUN, the man behind the madness, created project Tohou (which is also just called Tohou in some places) in 1997 and never for one second took his foot off the gas, going on to create multiple mainline entries and spin-offs to the franchise for years to come.

When looking at the sheer complexity and almost stupefying patterns on screen, one might assume a team of mathematicians and scientists specialising in chaos theory came up with the title, but in reality, it was just one man with a dream.

And that dream to many was an absolutely nightmarish challenge.