itch.io

This was soooo fantastic! I've just recently got into/finished watching a playthrough of Umineko, so this was fun and felt like an authentic bonus minisode. Getting to play the purple truth minigame for myself was a blast, and I loved the crime reconstruction aspect of the locked room circle. I did end up tunneling on (SPOILERS)

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Battler, as I figured the trick for the boat killing was something as hackneyed as "everyone else behind Shannon and ahead of Battler was asleep as he stood up and made his way to her" LOL. (BTW, the "type-your-own solution" section for this made me grin ear-to-ear as the solution dawned on me once I actually looked at the diagram and remembered we were working with a 3D space) I ended up very attached to him being the culprit, and came up with a solution I think works for how he could've done the locked room, if he had been the murderer? 

He locks the main hall-dining room door, tosses its key into game room, locks game room, tosses game room key into dining room,  locks kitchen-dining room door, opens window in servant room, puts the kitchen-dining room key in there, locks the servant room door and simply palms the servant room key for now. 

All doors are locked, but the trick was when the survivors gather in the main hall in the morning and Battler relents on breaking down the door, opting instead to check, rather than going to peer through the dining room window, what he REALLY did was enter the servant room through the open window, grab the kitchen-dining room key, lock the window, unlocks the servant room door, goes to unlock the kitchen-dining room door, deposits the servant key, relocks the kitchen-dining room door from the outside, heads back to the servant room, deposits the kitchen-dining room key there, then rejoins the group to bust down the main hall-dining room door.

At that point, he makes sure to grab the servant and game room keys, and I read his hesitation in opening the servant room door as him feigning apprehension while he covertly locked the door with the key before passing it to Erika, who confirmed it was locked, because it really was. So the trick was that it was locked when Shannon checked it in the morning, as well as when Erika checked it after breaching the dining hall, it just wasn't locked between the two points. I was right about a door unlocking being pantomimed, just whiffed on which one/who did the gimmick, lol.

The Nanjo-Erika conversation about being discreet in what you share was excellent foreshadowing for who attacks Shannon on the boat and why, btw! Should've immediately tipped me off about who the culprit was.

I loved reading through the hints, more so because it felt like talking with a friend about Umineko and impossible crime novels in general!

Again, really great job, and thank you for the fantastic and free game: I'm currently working on my own murder-mystery visual novel about impossible crimes with some Umineko flair, and I'm so happy to stumble across your work! (Someone had suggested Eulogy for Reason as I was looking for taped-room mysteries, and I was ecstatic to see Umineko fangames also listed here!) Can't wait to work through the rest of your stuff

Found some time to play through the story mode: It was fun, actually! I played the: (spoiler)

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Olympics ending through Fujimoto's route and Aya's genre challenge. Not the most exciting route/end I'm sure, but I know I missed the obvious Phantom Facade route (Btw it was a great little moment when the UI and music changed upon their debut, made me perk up at 2AM.) There was some great artwork and genuinely interesting talks along the way. If I could suggest some changes for the story web, it'd be either A) A visible tree where we can see the number of endings, the branches, and where we are now/where we've been B) Choice flags you can always return to C) A new game plus that lets you continue after your end with the same resources you have, just reset to an earlier point in the story so you can see the different routes without having to start from scratch

General suggestions are the same as others have noted:

• Ability to create albums/EPs with multiple songs
• PVs as a separate system
• Bigger formation size
• More Election slots to go along with this
• WCenter capability
• Ability to designate workers to only work with assigned sister groups, sister group concerts, etc
• Ability to do more than one type of marketing with a single
• Plus I always like the idea of subgenres from earlier in the beta, would keep things fresh if you could put research into them, too

I also like the format of preparing for the Olympic bid: I'd love to see more "missions" like that.

more than luck, I've been playing the beta since fall of 2019 and the chart topper is consistently a million seller, or near a million over all save files.

"You only need ~100,000 sales for this task, so it shouldn't be THAT bad"

hmm well in my game the #1 has never dipped below 900k each month. Is this just a bug on my end?

Gonna offer up that going from "reach level 2 of promotion" (ie release a first single) to "top the monthly sales chart" (ie sell over a million copies) as requirements for two sequential story beats is way too tall of an order for players since million sellers don't happen within your first year of play unless you REALLY speedrun it and play optimally (Even then it would take a dozen singles or several months and TV drama upgrades to get a million seller)

(Also I get wanting to keep the new features and systems fresh but I'd like to know what they are if I'm supposed to play the game this long to get to the next story part. I was interested in what the new features are but the chart-topper requirement was enough to put me off trying to experience it.)

There's been a long running bug where if there's a scandal (such as one as blackmail/one where you can pay off a reporter/the one where people online start making memes of the billboard), even if you successfully pay the blackmailer or make a positive choice, you still incur the liability.

Really like these, especially #4 and the idea of new idols having a favorite member of your group!

I'd also like to be able to name concerts, and sort of in that vein, maybe have a special pop-up like the post-Election single so that when you have an idol announced to graduate within the next 3 months, you can designate a concert/single as her graduation concert and last appearance with the group for a little boost.

Hello!

I’ve really been looking forward to the possibility of having more than 15 slots per single in Idol Manager, and I was wondering if that’s something players can change themselves via modding or going in through the game’s files, if that’s not going to be added to the game any time soon. Do devs or anyone else know?

Theater stats only display stats from when you last loaded the game

Not sure if it's a bug but the events could all use a look-over to see if they're working properly, for example, that contracts don't instantly end and incur damages when an event happens (I've noticed this happening recently, just now I got the funny billboard event where I did nothing and the event said all that came of it was some minor news stories, yet my contract immediately ended and I had to pay damages?)

yeah this is something I’ve also wondered ever since the appeal bonuses got removed post-Update 10. I also have tried to measure it out and still get obscurity bonuses

After starting a new game, I'm again of the opinion that the first cafe (or more preferably, the theater) should be free and ready to go when you start the game. 20mil for the theater+a full floor of rent is too high a price to be able to get use out of in the early-to-early-midgame.

This! Moving idols from the first group to the sister groups is a hassle, I wish we could audition specifically for sister groups

After reading through parousie's ideas, they hit on two things I'm interested in as well: Recurrency/continuous single sales. As is you release the single, and whatever it sells first week is its "total lifetime sales". I'm also interested in seeing singles continue to sell beyond their release week like actual singles in their example. It'd be an extra source of income, and could add some more decision making: Maybe an old single might sell more when its genre/dance/lyric style is trending? Maybe new genres and marketing styles could be introduced that improve longevity of single sales, or trade-off debut sales for increased sales over time. Could make copy production more involved too: You produce 300000 copies of a single, take a bit of a loss and sell 215000 singles 1st week, BUT those 85000 leftover copies can be bought over time, and you'll continue to see sales if your single had the right genre/marketing choices. On the other hand you might lowball how many copies you needed, and sell all 300000 the first week or very early on, now you can't take advantage of your song exceeding expectations and possibly selling another 50000 copies in the next few weeks, had you made that many.

Also agreed on how the game does sorta encourage you to only work with platinum idols (The new awards benefit for Best Employer pretty much ensure you'll mostly get silver/gold/plat idols), when normal ones mostly build the foundation for your company, and are the ones you attach to first and most strongly. Your highest earners and first centers are most likely normal idols, but they're objectively worse than most idols you'll draw after your first in-game year. I wish there was A) a way to disable special idols and B) following that, a way to rebalance regular idols to have strengths somewhat level to the special ones.

I like the above mention of merch: Maybe you could pick an idol and create a photobook for her based off a stat, and then by combination of her fame/that stat level it affects the sales of the photobook/the amount of fans she gains from it?

An addition to theater I could see is being able to decide a setlist for performances: the quality of the song/its vocal and dance values might boost the training performers get.  Also, I think idols need to be scheduled as well, and get boosts/stamina drain individually. I think it's a negative departure that the cafe has the ability to "schedule" girls (Sort of: If it's on manual, but you have to drag your girl back to the cafe if she finishes a shift which is already overly-tedious) but the theater doesn't when it could really be useful for boosting newer girls.  We could pick 3 or so girls for each day, and they're the ones performing and getting boosts. Maybe not changing the setlist/performers over time might cause the audience to get bored and require you to switch it up over time and cycle songs/idols through the setlist, just to make the theater a bit more hands-on. I also think it'd be great if girls could gain some fans by being in the theater, and I think it kinda fits better into the idol growth cycle than gaining fans through waiting tables lol. And with the cap of a live audience being 300 and streaming having some barriers, I think it would avoid the runaway growth that the cafe gave girls.

Finally, with the addition of the new room type, this is something that's been bothering me: I think there's too much to look at. My building just SCRAWLS up and down the screen, out of sight. You have cafes and theaters which take up 2 floors with just one of each, two floors to fit break rooms and single production rooms, another two floors to fit doctors and offices: it's too much to keep track of now. I agree with a much earlier suggestion that it might be time to consider allowing the player to upgrade rooms, rather than forcing them to add another floor on top of what they have: An upgraded breakroom takes your old one and allows it to restore stamina for 10 idols at 1.25 the original cost, then 15, etc., the cafe has its capacity doubled when upgraded, the office upgrade allows more than one staffer to work there.... The dollhouse style looks nice when you're only utilizing the first two or three floors with only a few roomtypes, but as the complexity goes up, it gets messy (Especially when you have to process things like business deals when your worker is 3 stories apart from the other two.) The released singles also could use some de-cluttering, like with separating sister group singles.

Update 13 Review/Impressions

I think this is the best update and brings Idol Manager a huge step closer to feeling like a fully-fleshed/realized game! I'll talk about why I like it, where I could see the elements in it going and where I think the rest of Idol Manager could be filled in.

Scandals

I like the utility of scandal points now, as they kinda just sat there before. There's reasons to want to get rid of them before your next single, now. I got a real shock when I tried to fire a staff worth 3 points and got an event!

Sister Groups

I like so many parts: how they interact with the clique/relationship system, how you decide which group they appeal to and how the formation stats per single factor into how well they appeal, etc. Regarding  the appeal, I like how it diversifies the types of idols you have due to the fanbases supporting idols of different groups: For example, I've never had an idol with a majority casual fans until I started a sister group targeting casuals, leading to an interesting scenario where despite one idol of that sister group having the most fans of any idol in all groups, she placed 6th in the election because the single was bought mostly by hardcore fans.

I feel like it's improved the longevity of a playthrough, as when you run out of things to do with your main group, you can just start a sister group and try building them up. But it's not exactly the same playthrough as you've got to juggle twice the amount of activities, leading to more engagement.

Where Sister Groups Could Go

I like the changes done to the game to integrate them (Like sales being affected by fans of idols in the single), and even wish some of them applied to the main group (Like being able to "upgrade" your appeal based off the stats of the songs, which would give leveling up stats a bit more importance.). I think some additions/tweak could be:

1) Aesthetic Differentiation

Like I've said above, aesthetic/UI-wise, some things look too similar when you want to focus on one sister group. I think something simple like picking a color for your new sister group, and then EVERY piece of info having to do with them carrying on that aesthetic would be very helpful.  Their singles' tabs, member profiles/portraits, etc.

UI-wise, things like organizing their singles on separate pages from every other group, their singles separately from the main group's in the jobs section, the compact view still respecting sister group division, etc...

2) Tools catered to their addition

Things like being able to audition idols directly into a sister group instead of having to bring them from the main group after hiring them, being able to assign workers/coaches/stylists to auto-train within/find contracts for a specific group instead of the whole franchise...

3) Separate concerts/media

Being able to create sister group-specific shows (this mostly pertains to the "random" and full-group cast options) instead of drawing from the whole franchise, and more importantly,  separate concerts where sister groups can have their own concert with a setlist drawn from their singles.

Possible Additions/Changes for the Whole Game

What I think the sister groups do well is that they add additional "cogs" to your idol machine and keep you on your toes trying to manage them. I think features that add these types of moving parts would help increase the longevity of a playthrough. Going from small-ish/subtler ideas to big ones:

Measures of success

Just some fun stats, perhaps some screen showing the fandom growth+sales growth of each group over time, showing the fan growth of individual girls over time, etc. The latter might be especially useful for deciding which girls you want to pay attention to, especially when you might miss the fan growth of girls who are doing dramas/shows but aren't in singles if you aren't checking on them.

Bigger formations/double center recognition

Now that sister groups are a thing, I'd love to be able to bring different demographics from different groups to the main singles, but 15 is a little small for this purpose. Hoping to see this number increase in the future!

More genres/subgenees, ability to tell what's trending

Already know I mentioned this, but I think diversifying some of the appeal combos would be interesting and helpful in single creation.

Idol personalities

Maybe idols can have likes and dislikes? They naturally like certain genres/dance styles/lyrics and will get a boost if they're on a song within that genre, or a hit if it's a style they don't like. Maybe some like being toward the front and others get anxiety being in the spotlight. Maybe an idol doesn't like doing cute/sexy jobs and will ask you to not give her those types of deals.

Achievements

Just some completionist goals, like "Release 48 singles", "sell 1 million copies", "have 100 idols at once", "create 10 groups",  "unlock every genre", etc, and lots of them!

Deepening mechanics

Perhaps this would be something only in Normal/Unfair difficulty, but I could see certain mechanics expanded on to provide some challenge: I read up some of the earlier promotion for the game, and I thought one of the interesting concepts was that your group would have relationships with specific business that give out contracts. This could be interesting in where business might return to offer better offers to you upon completion of a successful contract, or might blacklist you/a specific idol for sometime if you break a contract/get in a scandal. Maybe the fame system, which kind of comes off as defunct since buzz is gone and also lacked a function, could be tied into this, where when idols exceed a certain tier of fame, they gain access to a new, higher-quality tier of sponsors/businesses? 

The individual handshake, while super helpful for increasing sales, is too overpowered right now imo. The more idols you have, the crazier its bonus gets (I have 3 groups and get a 1000%+ bonus now that i've upgraded it a few times, so it does result in a runaway effect the longer you play.) Maybe a way it can be balanced is by tying it to fame and having some additional depth to it? For example, right now essentially each idol adds the same flat percentage, they contribute the same amount of fan sales. Instead maybe it could be based off the handshake slot system? Each girl is assigned a number of spots, and when they're sold, more can't be bought. If they don't sell out, it's not counted as a sale. This sort of scenario:

Individual Handshake has +10% hardcore appeal per idol (in a best case scenario)

You have five idols, resulting in a best case of 50%. Each idol gets 2 slots consisting of 5%, and they're evenly split between them all by default. You go with the default, but due to a couple of your idols being new/unpopular, you only get a ~30% boost rather than a full 50% (Because realistically no one's gonna go for a handshake with someone unknown, right?) But perhaps your most popular idol has more fans/demand than 2 slots would allow: you can take slots from the girls who won't fill up all their slots and give them to her, boosting you to 50 anyways, at the cost of her stamina being drained more.  Inversely, maybe your most popular girl is working on a lot of contracts right now and you want her to conserve her stamina, so you have her sit out the handshake by distributing her slots to other girls who can take them on. The girls spend a bit more stamina, but gain more fans than they might have before, you sell the same amount of handshakes, and your original idol isn't in danger of injury. This is just an idea I had that hits on the management aspect of the game (And I've always wanted an option to allow idols to opt-out of handshakes).

Music videos+albums

Like I wrote in a previous post, I think this is a natural inclusion for the game someday down the line, where the PVs might have their own genres that benefit the song they're associated with, and where you can work on multiple songs at once and tie them together to a single/EP/album that's more effective (but more expensive) than a single song. These would also give you a way to include all your idols and have them gain fans, even if they aren't quite ready to be on an A-side. These b-sides could also be used for concerts and help fulfill those center wishes.

More special events

Kind of anti-climactic for a final idea, but I'd love to see a Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament event be included in the game! Just gimmicky and fun, maybe with you being able to watch the randomized matches in real-time. 

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This really does feel like the strongest update so far, I'm definitely going to be playing it for a while. Thank you for taking everyone's suggestions and feedback into consideration, because you can really feel the game getting stronger with each update!

started my second sister group and their “research” screen seems to mirror that of the first ones despite them having different targets (My second is targeted at Hardcore Adult Males, the first at Casual Female Teens, yet the second group’s max fans/fan growth per single seems to mirror that of it they were also targeting Casual Female Teens)

Seems like removing scandal points freezes time. Also closing and reopening the game will add 2 or so group scandal points.

1) Seems like your pushes are cleared whenever you close the game

2) Not sure if it's purposeful but mental stamina is draining like crazy in this update, I've never had so many idols hovering around 0/becoming depressed one after another so quickly. One idol I sent to the therapist's mental stamina didn't go up at all after their visit, leaving me to believe there's some kind of bug here

OK so a bigger change suggestion I have regarding sister groups is that stamina-draining marketing choices like handshakes, 2 shot etc shouldn't affect girls outside of that group when it comes to their single release. I think a potential advantage of the sister groups is that you can rotate through their releases while another group rests up but with all their marketing tied together it kind of neutralizes this positive.

Hm, after a couple of hours of play, here are some small changes I could see:

On the sister groups screen where you can allocate the formation points (cute, cool, sexy, etc.) it'd be helpful if there was a way to undo an addition: I didnt know what was happening at first and accidentally sorted one of my points, and there's no way to undo it. A "cancel" option so you can leave that screen without saving if you make a mistake would be nice.

More designation between groups would be a godsend:

1) In the production/released tabs: I was working on two groups' singles simultaneously and they look identical, perhaps you could chose a color when you make the group too, and all their associated "tabs" retain that color for distinction's sake?

2) On the girls' job sections, maybe it could take a page from Stage48 and list singles like this:

Akizaka46

Give Me Six

Sounds Great

Tartan Plaid

Sakazaka46

White Goat

instead of just having all the titles one after one another chronologically?  (As in, Give Me Six releases on July 2018, Sounds Good on Aug 2018, but the idol participated in the sister groups' White Goat on Sept 2018, and then the full group's Tartan Plaid again on October 2018. Instead of WG following Sounds Good, it's separated to indicate which group the song came from.)

3) Following that, the tooltip for formations on the released single tab already looked a little cramped with how it tried to represent positions with written names, but now that there are sister groups I think it would be helpful if it showed maybe a list, rather than a comma-separated paragraph, split by group, and then displayed the formation when you clicked on the single's "card". The different groups' singles being tabbed separately instead of all being listed chronologically would also help!

Finally this is kind of a bug, but during the single formation screen, it will wipe your formation if you switch the group tab. The main group tab also retains all your hires across all groups, not sure if that's on purpose.

Thanks for reading! Still got lots to play, lol

before the first group awards, the pop up box to decide who will speak froze/whited-out when I tried to change which idol would give a speech

The newest update sounds positively bonkers and is probably the biggest package of changes/additions you've made in an update, I'm beyond impressed just reading about it..... Huge kudos for all the work that surely went into it. Starting it rn!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kuiper/idol-manager/posts/2723523 just in case!

Just went up now

Oh really? I hadn’t seen anything on the twitter or in this forum, mind linking it?

Edit: Nevermind, I see it now: really weird they didn’t announce it

Devs posted on Twitter on Tuesday that update 13 was coming in a few days, so I assume it'll be out sometime today or Monday

I was wondering, have you possibly considered expanding some of the marketing options into being a new part of single production, like making a PV/Music Video to promote the single? There’s already Bikini PV and Viral campaign that sort of hint at this, I could see that being it’s own category and being expanded to include different types of videos (Flash Mob, Traditional/Kimono, School, One-Take Dance, Drama, Action, Mini-Movie, Sports, Parody, Band PV, Retro, Travel/Foreign Location PV....)

Maybe these PVs could include a new staff role, or maybe you could “audition” Directors like you do with idols when you want to have a PV and chose from randomly drawn Directors with varying specialities/production levels in each type of PV? I could even see these PVs becoming a separate tab similar to media/part of the single release results screen where you can see how many views you got for the PV first week and see how views increase/decreased after the release week/week-to-week

Also, I don’t remember who said it, but I think being able to include more than one song on each single, and possibly work up to producing albums would be a cool addition. (You could designate which song is the A-side, but additionally package it with more songs that have different styles/idol lineups that can affect the appeal and sales of the entire single, maybe even solos, etc.) Each song might need separate production for the lyrics, dance, song, PVs so there’s a opportunity cost of being able to release less singles/having a more expensive single but it might have improved demographic appeal/sales. Also would give people with large idol rosters more to do with their girls instead of having to switch them out every single release

“Although this gets me wondering whether Idol Manager is supposed to be more of a board game with cards and dice, a visual novel with emotions and real stakes involved, or a mix of both... hm.”

Sorry, I know this post is weeks old, but this was really interesting to me and got me wondering about how different people play this game... To me, it’s neither of these: There’s no plot, or more importantly, *literary narrative* (ie no prose, no setting description, time progression within the plots, etc.) to speak of so it can’t be a visual *novel* (Unless we’re taking base components like “has anime visuals and textbox options that influence relationships=VN, but then Telltale games/Until Dawn etc seem much closer to being a VN than this game despite lacking the anime aesthetic)

It’s also not similar to a boardgame to me: at least not a casual one. The events do feel like something you might get in tabletop RPGs or games like that, but some of the mechanics, though honestly very nebulous in function (Opinion, appeal, etc.), are too involved and too prevalent to lend itself to being like a boardgame to me.

In my view, the game looks like a tycoon/management sim game, plays like one, etc. And that’s why I cautiously eye the promise of a story in the full release: I guess I’m slightly worried because the game has the ingredients/makings for a great idol management sim, but I feel it still hasn’t fully realized all it could do: If the story turns out to be just okay at the sacrifice of a game that has more to offer in the way of more challenges/things to do after you start making 20million off of each single released..... Would that be worth it if this game *really* feels like an idol management sim, not a idol visual novel? I guess I’m apprehensive because in SimCity, Civilization, etc., questions like “wait, why ARE we the mayor of this city? What’s our work history? Who are the settlers I’m directing? Who are my advisors?” and so on AREN’T pertinent questions because the game isn’t about lore and following story beats, it’s about building a powerful city/empire. Similarly, right on the box, Idol Manager is a management sim about building a great idol agency: So I do kinda worry when I read Fujimoto’s intro with the shadow figure, as I’m thinking, “wouldn’t frequent story breaks like this dampen the experience of someone who wants to manage idols directly? And wouldn’t the hands-on management portions of the game be a drag to someone who wants to play a VN about an idol agency?” It’s to the point I audibly groan if I forget to turn off the intro dialogue upon starting a new game, lol.

I guess I’m in-line with your last thought: I would not mind waiting longer if the devs want to deliver a better idol management sim that the game already promises. *But* I also hope they consider that taking longer to devote time to strictly working on a *story* might not necessarily make the game stronger, when at its core, Idol Manager shows all the signs of a management/tycoon sim that really doesn’t necessitate a plot. (Especially when some design choices kinda clash with the game, for example, one I’ve hit on a few times is that you’re managing an idol *agency* with only one act, that can only release one single song at a time with a maximum of 15 girls, yet you can hire as many girls as you want even though you’ll have little for them to do and no way to organize/group them in-game for convenience, linking back to the first problem of having only one group that can release only one song at a time with a handful of girls.)

Hello, so in update 10, there was a new system of trendiness that was toyed with where there would be added casual appeal and deducted hardcore appeal when a style was trending, and vice-versa. This system was replaced with the trendiness/obscurity bonus in Update 11.

I’d like to offer an opinion, and perhaps start a discussion over whether this change was for the better.

I remember seeing a certain feedback post about Update 10’s system, along the lines of: it makes the hardcore/casual appeal metrics of styles virtually useless as it can, for example, take enka, which usually has a  +30 hardcore appeal bonus and -50 casual bonus, invert those appeals one month and then have them as described the next, and even hit unpredictable values above and below those metrics.

After having played through 10 and 11 and now 12, and taking time to form my thoughts on it, I agree to an extent: the trendiness system of 10 made picking a style useless, as you didn’t know if the styles you were unlocking would actually appeal to the demographics you wanted them to appeal to until you looked at their appeal during single creation. Want to balance casual and hardcore appeal with a pop/love song? Well too bad, cuz those two styles are trending for the next 6 months, and will result in a +50 casual/-40 hardcore appeal!

However, one positive I’d give for that system in 10 was that you had a loose understanding of what was trending, just by selecting your genre/lyric/dance on the single: the appeal percentage changing provided instant feedback. By separating trending from appeal in 11, your grasp of what is trending was weakened. I’ve had cases where I counted up the appearances of styles in each of the three categories, picked the most popular ones, and still got an obscurity bonus. I also don’t know /what/ determines how many fans you get with this bonus. It’s not as transparent as 10.

After playing for a couple of months, I’m of the opinion that 10’s system was better. It had tradeoffs and rewards for sticking with a style or adopting a new one/it made you ANALYZE the environment of the game. But the trendiness volatility should not cause the styles to become opposite of what they were originally. For example, adding bonus casual appeal to R&B if it’s trending would be good, but making Loneliness lyrics have massively negative appeal to hardcores just because it’s trending, or love lyrics have negative casual appeal because they’re obscure, is just frustrating. Personally, I could see maybe a fix where the appeal won’t dip below the style’s base/upgraded appeal? (Avant-garde can’t go lower than -50 for casuals when obscure, or elegant can’t go lower than 0 for casuals, etc)

And speaking of appeal, I do think we don’t get to “mix and match” as much as possible and that some demographics get covered overly-well while others are much harder to hit. For example, female/male both have +20 styles, but adult has a +50 style, while teen and young adult maxes at +10... There are some good synergies that this naturally produces, such as Adult-Male, Adult-Female, Hardcore+anything that isn’t casual.... but getting a major appeal boost is hard when the numbers simply aren’t there, or the bonuses contradict each other. I think what would solve this, and what I’d love to see, would be additional subgenres unlocking as you play with a style, them having unique /slightly different appeals and combinations to the main genre and being able to upgrade them as you do with genres currently in order to increase their efficacy. For example, maybe there could be splits like:

Rock>Grunge>Surf>Punk>alternative etc...

R&B>Jazz>New Jack Swing>Quiet Storm>PR&B etc....

Pop>bubblegum>electro pop>Retro pop>City pop>ballad...

Avant-garde>chorale>folk>baroque etc... (Maybe even with some genres crossing over and sharing occasional subgenres like funk/R&B/hiphop, pop-rock, rock/metal?)

...With these subgenres having different, more unique appeals to vary things up a bit (For example, grunge’s level 1 giving a YA +15 bonus, compared to rock’s YA +5/Adult +10, or retro pop adding an additional adult appeal). I’ve mentioned before how I was very intrigued to see a similar sub genre system hinted at in the demo here, and I think it would open up more choices for gaining fans/sales and help immersion-wise to keep single creation feeling fresh as you play more, since you’ll have more than 9 genres to toy with.

But what does everyone think of the trendiness/obscurity system as it differs between Update 10 and 11?

OK I actually agree with both your points but wasn't sure if I was projecting: By the time you can get 10m to build a cafe, your concerts and singles make more than enough to offset any costs you have.

And I wasn't sure if I was crazy for feeling that the cafe is something we should get for free/cheap at the start of the game: it's already superior to the promotion and performance tasks by passively generating money and fans at the same time, just that it adds too many fans and kind of plays itself.

ok Update review:

Cafe:

Mixed-to-negative feelings, it’s a bit.... it doesn’t feel like a game: I built 2 in a game while having a high promotion level, and suddenly I barreled from having 150k fans to 500k in a matter of weeks, and had to self-impose a rule of not leveling up promotion too high and only keeping one cafe. Then in another game I put one cafe and had my unpopular, newest idols work it to try and boost their fans while they weren’t in singles: in a matter of weeks at promotion level +750 fans, I realized ALL my girls were working the cafe because the cafe had enabled my newest hires to catch up with girls who had been in singles for 2 years, and they all had the same amount of fans now.

I think the cafe fits into the game as a source of income: the fandom gain feels off.  While i like the idea of another type of passive fandom growth (ie you can gain fans without having to release a single, like with media and drama shows), the fact it gains SO MUCH and is an overpowered, superior version of the regular promotion tool is what makes it too much (And personally I don’t think it’s a fun mechanic, it’s very clicker game-esque where the cafe is essentially clicking the promotion button for you and there’s really no sort of gameplay involved with it.).

Difficulty:

I’ve played through unfair mode 3 times, and honestly it was no problem using the same “start as a modeling agency” strat. Other than rent adjustments and loans, I don’t see what’s changed between regular mode and this one, to be honest (And like a few other mechanics, I do really think this mechanic should be explained in detail rather than just “various balance changes”.)

Events and Art

The new events are fun and break up monotony, and the new art is great. I have more to say about this (Partly there should just be more in general), but I think I might make one big IM review in a bit.... Anyways really enjoyed them, good job.

Kinda hinted at this before with asking about having two centers, but now I'm wondering, is there anyway we could have the option of designing/controlling the size of a single formation? I'm not sure if there are any in-game/engine constraints to this but I've had a couple of games where I have 30-40 girls 6 years into the game and would like the option to have more than just 15 per single. Not everyone would use it all the time but I'm sure lots would appreciate the option to put as many girls as you feel you would need (I'd get that feasibly it probably can't be infinite, but I think a ceiling between 30/40/50 would satisfy everyone.) 

Going off of that, the election calculating more spots as you add more idols would be appreciated. I get how a "Top 10" is universal for countdowns but since the election is based off of the SSK I do find it weird how it doesn't at least match the (current) max single size of 15 idols. Finally, the current finished election event only lists the Top 5, could it be expanded to list all spots? It's a bit of a hassle because I like making a single based off of the results and I have to write it down/take a pic of the results before exiting the event if I want to remember who to add.

I followed your address and the autosave file I got was empty, checked manual saves and there was nothing after Nov 30 (started a new game for update 12.1 in December.). Tried a quick autosave but those files are still gone.

Game seems to have wiped my most recent save game. I had installed the latest build (and just that one, not the initial 12.1), last night I tried loading the game, only for my computer to shut off (Not sure if this was the game or my computer). I didn’t try playing again until today, but I’ve found that my previous autosave and manual save from my most recent game are gone.

buzz has been removed on purpose afaik

election is bugged: single will always say that it can't be released because concert isn't ready. I tried all different configurations (simultaneous concert and single, finishing the single and then starting a concert, finishing a concert and then starting the single, cancelling and redoing the election, single and concert, just the concert, etc.)

adding on that a reroll for the task would be great:the single and business offer ones are accomplishable while in debt, but if you get a "start a show" one in unfair difficulty while in debt, you're essentially stuck

OK major gripe with the latest update pertaining to unfair mode:

Locking off the bank loans and making all the loans tasked-based for Fujimoto is fine, but these tasks need to be actionable in game: "get a drama role" "pretty photoshoot" "get x an ad deal" "release a metal single" are things the player can influence or do themselves, things like "get a photoshoot in Tokyo Wanker" "get a variety show appearance on idol de lunch" are not and turns the game into a 20-sided coin-toss. These already annoyed me when I rolled them pre-Beta 12 because they made interest-free loans nigh unlockable but on unfair mode they make loans impossible if you don't roll the right show/publication. Either you should be able to influence the type of business deal AND the publication offering it, or there shouldn't be publication-centered tasks.