Youtake on the role of manager at a small (but growing!) talent agency. As you cultivate and train the newest generation of young pop stars, you'll have to decide who to hire and who to fire, who gets promoted when things go well and who gets reprimanded when things get sour. The personal lives of these young celebrities are a part of your business, and the life of a pop star isn't always a happy one. Their crowning personal achievements can be your greatest commercial successes, but their emotional meltdowns and PR nightmares can spell financial disaster for your company.
You take on the role of manager at a small (but growing!) talent agency. As you cultivate and train the newest generation of young pop stars, you'll have to decide who to hire and who to fire, who gets promoted when things go well and who gets reprimanded when things get sour. The personal lives of these young celebrities are a part of your business, and the life of a pop star isn't always a happy one. Their crowning personal achievements can be your greatest commercial successes, but their emotional meltdowns and PR nightmares can spell financial disaster for your company.
It's not just the idols you have to worry about. The world is full of gossip magazines, super fans, and rival groups, all thirsty for a scoop on the latest scandal. There's a lot of people who want to tear you down and are willing to play dirty, but try not to let it get to you. It's not personal, it's business.
Provide voice training and dance lessons to the idols you have scouted, training them to become top-notch idols. Do you want a cool group or a cute group? Will the office control what they post on social networking sites? Or how long should their skirts be? You decide.
What will be the lyrics, idol arrangement, choreography,who is center stage, and how many members will sing per group? The players themselves will produce the music, produce the CD, and release it. Of course, be careful not to spend too much money and end up in the red.
In addition to releasing single CDs, you can freely operate a cafe, theater, general elections, program production, and many other types of businesses. However, there is a limit to the amount of funds you can raise. Be careful not to fall into a cycle of losing profits.
Idol management is fraught with problems, such as scandals, outside media manipulation, and interpersonal relation issues between idol group members. To avoid risks, form good relationships and aim for smooth management of the office.
Free play with no storyline can also be used to avoid random events and love scandals. There are two unique difficulty levels: "Relaxed," where you cannot go bankrupt, and "Unfair," which makes it more difficult for players to make ends meet.
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On the easiest mode, the game promises money isn't an issue, and that's partially true - if you go bankrupt, you'll get bailed out. The first time is a freebie. After that it seems to come with strings attached, like bringing on an idol who really isn't very good but thinks she walks on water and is the daughter of your financer so you'd better make it work. However, if you're in the red, you can't do things like produce CDs or concerts until you have the available money, making it harder and harder to keep going. When I tested hitting bankruptcy, I realized I had to pretty much wait out the 30 days because I couldn't release anything except digital singles.
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Might be interesting to share how we arrange our buildings and why...
This is my top floor... since I manually assign idols to doctors, this lets me see all my doctors at once. The managers are on the next floor, at the bottom of the screen, so I can see when a business opportunity arises.
This keeps the costs lowest, since you won't have to spend money on spa to give your idols some well deserved break. You also get and need (!) two managers to fetch business proposals, given how much they can fail at lower levels of their "deal" skill, and one of them will also need to assist you with producing or researching.
I have spent nearly two years and have had hundred of conversations with my idols trying to identify a bully. And have completely failed to do so. And now - I seem to have a second bully.
This is utterly ridiculous and completely broken.
Entire cliques will bully one person, hence there are multiple bullies. If you can get the leader of the clique to stop, the rest will too. You can also use influence to tell one of the members of the clique to let-up (which may in time eventually have them stop bullying, I think).
How you go about it is up to you. You can transfer influence (at a loss) from one idol to another by asking them to get blackmail on another, though that may fail and you'll be out the influence. You can move the leader of the clique to a different group (this is the most direct and quick method if you don't have influence over the leader), and I think you can also hold scandal points over their head too, though I've never tried.
Manage a pop idol agency from the ground up in true business sim style. Players will hire idols, train them, get to know them, and keep them happy while climbing the charts and conquering the entertainment world.
Idol Manager provides a free-play mode and a story mode.[1] The story mode features three difficulties and multiple endings.[2] In the video game, players take on the role of a business manager, who is responsible for the daily trainings and commercial activities of Japanese idol groups. The game also features random events, allowing players to navigate through PR disasters and defuse tensions between group members.[3]
Idol Manager was revealed at E3 2020.[4] It was developed by Glitch Pitch, an indie game studio located in Russia, and published by the Japanese independent video game publisher Playism.[5] The in-game images and cover art are created by Pixiv artists.[6] The game was launched on 27 July 2021 for Microsoft Windows via Steam.[7] The Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions were released on 25 August 2022.[8]
Tilly Lawton of Pocket Tactics rated the game an 8 out of 10, praising the game is fascinating and in good combination with its visual novel aspects, but wrote the game is "not for everyone" and pointed out the UI system of the game is somewhat inconvenient.[10]
Idol Manager's February update is now live! If you joined the beta program by backing the game or buying the game on
itch.io, to manually update you can head over to the game's
itch.io page to download the latest version.
This update adds a new building type: theaters! You can build one theater for each group that you manage. (For example, if you have one sister group, you can build two theaters: one for the main group, and one for the sister group.) Each theater can seat up to 300 fans.
You have control over the price of theater tickets and can change it at any time. Setting a low ticket price will entice more fans to show up. Setting the ticket price too high will make fans more reluctant to show up. The more fans your group has, the higher you can set the price without hurting attendance. If your theater is hitting maximum capacity, you can probably get away with charging more!
You can also set up theater performances to be streamed online: fans can pay a monthly subscription fee to get access to a livestream and VODs of all theater performances. To unlock the ability to stream performances, you'll need to do research (spend office manager research points) and purchase equipment (spend money).
You can set (and change) the subscription fee: much like ticket prices, low subscription fees will entice new subscribers to join, while hiking up subscription fees will make new subscribers less likely to join. (Increasing the subscription price may also cause some fans to cancel their subscription.)
You can choose which demographic to target with each performance, which will make certain kinds of fans more or less likely to buy a ticket for a live performance, or start/cancel an online subscription.
All of your subscriptions will come from people who are already fans of your group. (You can't have more subscribers than fans.) Hardcore fans and adults are easier to convert into paying subscribers than casual and teenage fans.
We look forward to hearing what you think about the new features we've added in the beta community forum. Your feedback, suggestions, and bug reports are what allow us to keep improving Idol Manager, so thanks to the many of you who post in the forum to share your thoughts with us!
The latest update for Idol Manager's beta is now live, bringing several a long-awaited new feature: the ability to create multiple idol groups! If you joined the beta program by backing the game or buying the game on
itch.io, to manually update you can head over to the game's
itch.io page to download the latest version.
Scandal points are applied to an individual idol or to the entire group. Events involving a specific idol (e.g. dating scandals) will assign scandal points to the idol involved, while events that don't concern a specific idol can gain scandal points for the group.
Your scandal point total is based on the sum of all of the idols' individual scandal points plus the group scandal points. Having too many scandal points can now result in certain penalties, including:
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