If you're in serious trouble, you can use a 'special attack' or 'bomb' by holding down the special attack key (X by default) for about a second, then releasing it. So basically, the idea is to knock the blocks into each other and create large explosions that clear up the screen for you. These explosions don't damage you, but they do cause damage to enemies/bullets. However, if you shoot them, they will bounce around like billiard balls for a second or two before exploding, and if they collided with any matching shapes in that time, those shapes will also explode. Over time, coloured shapes gradually appear on the field, and like pretty much everything else, touching them will hurt you. This is where the Irisu Syndrome part comes in.

However, another major difference from Touhou is that you can only fire one bullet at a time (or to put it more accurately, you can only have one bullet on screen at a time), so clearing out vast waves of enemies/bullets just by shooting them quickly becomes impractical. Fortunately, there are a couple of ways in which Murasaki is kinder than the Touhou games - firstly, you have a health bar instead of dying from a single hit, and secondly, you play one stage at a time instead of having to clear them all in one go. The boss will change its attack pattern each time you deal enough damage or spend too long trying to do so, and once it runs out of attack patterns, you have beaten that stage. The game is divided into stages, each of which consists of many weak enemies followed by a much stronger boss. Like the Touhou series, Murasaki is a bullet hell game in which you shoot enemies, collect score items, and dodge loads and loads of bullets. Perhaps the best way to describe Murasaki's gameplay would be 'Touhou meets Irisu Syndrome'.

Taimanin murasaki guide