itch.io

(WARNING: spoilers for the ending of the rival's route. I don't think itch has spoiler tags, unfortunately. Beware, those who have not finished the rival's route of the main story.)

1. Out of sheer morbid curiosity, I romanced an idol and then went on to pick the sex tape option for the rival route. I'm surprised that the idol I romanced didn't acknowledge it, and in the case of marrying her (which I assume means the relationship goes public), surprised that it wasn't more of a scandal or outright career-ender. Was that overlooked, or will it be added later, or was it not included for simplicity's sake?

2. This is more of a self-indulgent suggestion that might be out of the game's scope, but would it be possible to romance the rival? Maybe as a post-1.0 DLC or update? I find the rival's chemistry with the player incredibly compelling and I'd love to have something a bit more permanent than the apparent one-off at the end of the rival's route. Unless more rival events happen in chapter VII, in which case I'm a dunce.

3. Some of the idols' dialogue when you fail to influence them to delay graduation feel unnecessarily harsh. I had one accuse me of never caring about her, and that felt a bit over the top considering I had level 4 friendship with her. Just say you owe me nothing more lmao. Maybe the possible dialogue could be based on friendship and/or romance level? "You never cared about me anyway" feels a lot more appropriate if you only have level 0-1 relationship with the idol.

Lastly: I love this game so much. Even if you ignore all the above, I still think this is a damn good game with a damn good story.

This isn't a bug that affects gameplay too much, but it's absolutely baffling for story continuity: an idol had the wish to center a political single, but as I was producing the single, I got an event with her where she told me she didn't want to center political singles because she didn't want to get involved with controversy. I realise that some kind of system to make sure idol wishes and story events don't contradict is likely not high on the priority list and might be more trouble than it's worth, but getting that particular combo was super bewildering.

When I get to the awards ceremony, no text appears, so I get stuck. I play on Linux, dunno if that's relevant.
EDIT: the event is working fine now. Not sure why or what's different, but at least I'm not stuck anymore.

Maybe the idols' salary satisfaction could take into account the agency's age and/or average weekly income? I'm in November of my first year and it seems kind of unreasonable that my idols need a 60k weekly salary just to stay at a satisfaction level of 50%, especially considering I only made 130k on my last single.

It'd be nice to have a page where you could see your weekly income/expenses at a glance. Like, "you're making x money off contracts, x money off of shows, you're paying your staff x amount, and losing x money on rent, for a net weekly profit/loss of x."

Also, maybe I'm just dumb and bad at games but the expenses/income sources in general feel like they could use some rebalancing. After pumping out a few singles and raising their levels the staff members get paid 50k+ a week, while I'll be lucky to make 2k off of one single. In the case that it really is just me being fundamentally awful at the game, some kind of idiot's guide to idol management tutorial for the game would be nice.