Let us know if you want to see something in the game.

If your idea is easy enough to implement, we might just add it in. Otherwise we'll keep it in mind for after the release.

Being able to choose where to place a room would be nice! It'd be useful to be able to move it within the empty space on the floor you selected. Perhaps not mechanically, but aesthetically. Idk how easy that is or if you've already thought of it. I defer to your judgment.

A few random things that might be fun:

1) Adding an international trait (based on your Ma Rio name post on Twitter), where having an international girl in your lineup will increase revenue on an international tour.
2) Implementing some sort of task list/tutorial at the beginning to try and ensure that the company remains solvent until the first single or two is released.
3) Being able to save certain formations/lineups so you don't have to drag and drop 15 girls every time you release a single.
4) Having the ability to produce "subgroups" and other groups under the same label.
5) Having something like a mixi ranking, that is an unofficial (partially randomly generated, partially based on who has the highest fame/who has been pushed/who has been center/who has gotten promotions recently) ranking of the girl's popularity outside of the yearly election event.
         5a) This could affect the sales of singles.  For example, the AKB48 janken singles often sold less because the senbatsu were not center--so the diehard fans might not purchase as many singles if the girls that they like aren't center.
         5b) Certain girls might have different popularity rankings with different fans.  For instance, Girl A might appeal more to casual fans, whereas Girl B might appeal more to diehard fans.  The lineup of singles might affect the sales as well.

Okay so first of all, I'm a beta backer so I could only play it since yesterday, but I'm already kinda in love with this game. It's already really fun to play and shows lots of potential for the future. I would have tons of ideas to make this game even better, but I will tell them one by one.

First of all I wanna start of with the thing that bothered me the most in the first few hours i played this game now. I tried out a lot and also restarted a lot to get a feeling for this game and to get to know it a little better. In every restart I did I always had a problem with the girls' mental stamina, no matter my playstyle. Maybe I'm just bad, but I think so far there's no active way to really handle this is there? What I would suggest for the future are 2 things: 

1. When the doctor's office is implemented I would suggest that he can treat both mental and physical stamina problems, so girl's can go to the doctor's office if they need to. (But I don't know what you had planned with it so far.)

2. What I'd really like to see is freetime activities, which would be certain events you could organize, that, depending on the event, better the idol's physical and and/or mental stamina. (For example simple events like a dinner or bigger events like a vacation.)

Also I would cap the mental stamina. At the moment (at least what i saw), it can go into endless negativity and there's no way to get an idol out of this. So at like e.g. -100 I would just cap it maybe.

I also want to reply to likitty1227's idea of the international trait. I think this would actually be a great idea. I would even go a little further. Someone on that Twitter post also mentioned that you could implement an ethnicity system for the girls. I think this would be a great idea! 90% of the girls could still be Japanese, but 10% could be from other Asian countries, like South Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand etc. In the real idol industries it's often the same. So those idols could have the international trait. To implement this you would probably need a name list for random generation. If you would like to implement something like this you can come back to me if you want to, I would be willing to help you with the name lists.

I will let you know some other ideas over time then.

Anyways, keep up the great work, I'm happy to be part of the beta!

Hi, I have played the game for some hours and have something to think about:

1/ I assume that we cannot gain our relationship in this version, right? Because until now, after I raise my group's fame up to 8 stars, my relationship with my girl still in "OK" zone :D

2/ It's very nice when we have the members can raise relationship with each other, I actually saw they fell in love or hate each other but  I think it'd be nice if I can do something to fix their feelings about each other or maybe their bad relationship could affect the group some ways.

3/ Is it because of me or the game doesn't have so many events right now? Because until now, I only caught 1 events and 2 or 3 small scandals. It made me feel the game somehow is pretty easy when I could raise my girls' fame to 8 stars only in 2 hours :D

4/ Can we have maybe in some next updates that we have more girls from another asian countries like Korean, Chinese, bla bla.... It would be nice when we have some nationality in our group ,right? :D

5/ I caught a small bug that my group performance level stop at levels 5 even I hold 3 concert until now and take like 200 millions profits from it :D

6/ Final, can we add some rival groups and rival companies in the next updates? Because it make me feel like try to raise fame of group to 8 or 9 stars is nonsense when we are the only one group in the country :D

Those are just some ideas or thing I found in the game until now. This concept is so cool and if we can put more features into this, it could be awesome I think. Nice works!!!!!!!!!(anyways, sorry for my bad English :D)

I can't advance the text by pressing Enter in the introduction sequence (only clicking the mouse works).

Also, after clicking a choice with Fujimoto or my manager, Enter no longer works until the next text is displayed.

Typos: Introduction - Well, you might be waiting for awhile. -> Should be "a while".
Fujimoto: "So, I might stop by the office every once in awhile" -> a while.
Manager advice: "changing policies can take awhile" -> a while.

Well, you get it, I won't report them anymore.

Choices: The top-right position is a bit odd. Why not center them?

It would be nice to be able to close windows by right-clicking and/or pressing the ESC key.

Snitch trait : The formulation sounds strange. "Reports possible scandals even if relationship with the player is not good enough"
I'm not sure I understand. A very bad relationship could prevent it?

It would be nice to have a marker to know when a day ends, since we've already have a progress bar for that.

I think like adding in different team roles like lead dancer and lead singer would make thing a lot funner especially early game. Like, having a Lead dancer with a 99 in dance could give the rest of the members a minor boost to dance and the same thing for the lead singer. that way if you first start out and have a 70 in vocals idol and a 88 in dance idol your early game might not feel so bad.

(sorry posted in wrong categorie before)
Interface:
When you implement more game options/config settings; 

Make the mouseover/tooltip info delay adjustable.
Scrolling through the individual idols (idols tab) or room avatars is irritating when the delay (for age, status, etc info) is too long for you.

Event:
During a concerts it should display the playlist and, if it's a factor, their buzz/hype influence on the crowd.

Game mechanic:
Clumsy idols could occasionally stumble into a room and interrupt progress (I'm sure I'll hate that idol after a while ;-) )

I'm not sure if these items will be in the final game or not, since this is in Beta stage, but here are some ideas:

1. Have the genre of music that's playing during the concert performances match the genre of the single that is released. Right now, there is just one generic song that's played.

2. Have the idols that are in the cutaway or extra scenes, match the looks of  the idols that you actually have. Again, not just a generic piece of art.

3. There are only two scandals that happen. I am assuming again that this is just because of beta stage.

4. Have the idols in different outfits besides the ones that they start with.

5. Either a cap, or a way to fix mental stamina. (Again, I'm just assuming that it's being addressed in future releases) 

6. There's not really any interaction between the producer and the idols / staff.

Thank you

I think it couls be nice if we could have know what will make our traines happy, something like task mission for every memebrs. 

I also think that sort them into gorup/genearation could be nice! 

I like the game, thank you for your hard work!

Hi guys,

my suggestion involves my favorite feature yet : concerts.

I can undoubtedly say that right now concerts are the most exciting activity in the game. You get to go out there and influence the outcome, which gives us a break from management. That is a great way to keep us from getting bored for doing the same thing over and over non-stop. Actually, I would like to see more minigames like that every now and then. It really helps to soak the many hours of repetition from management gameplay in tycoon games.

So, since concerts are so fun to play, I thought that it would be nice to give them even more stuff. So here are some that I thought of:

1. It's cool that there's a chance that something can go wrong during the performances, but there's also not much to hope for besides nothing bad happening. I think it would be great to have along with the red (failure) and green (success) a third one: great success(could be golden colored). In analogy to failure, a great sucess would mean something extraordinary happened on stage, and you get to pick an option that will have an effect. It could be a simple boost in hype. Or it could inspire the idols and recover their stamina. Maybe encourage them and reduce the chance to fail the following performance. It could even have lasting effects, like giving them fame or improving the relationship between them. That would certainly make the wheel mechanic more exciting and open more options for cards as well.

2. Right now, every idol has a single trait that affects her daily life. We could have a second trait, a "concert trait" that affects her performance on stage. For example, an idol could have a trait named Pep Talk, that would allow her to help herself and other idols recover more stamina during talk segments when she's on backstage with them. Another could have Luck Charm, which would reduce the chance of failing a performance when she is center, and maybe improving the chance of a great success from my first suggestion. Maybe one could have Second Wind, which would allow her to once every concert reroll the wheel if she gets a failure. I think having a trait that specifically affects performance in concerts would help cement them even further as one of the main activities to work towards and look forward to.

3. Well, the third one is more of a general suggestion: visual improvements. Rather than a specific thing, anything the art and game design people can come up with to make concerts even more interesting and eye catching would be great. For example, the scene visuals and audio could become increasingly more hectic as the hype grows. Right now the hype works as a single bar, but maybe it could be like an exp bar, with the concert hype increasing in level whenever it reaches the end of the bar. It would also be nice if the idols didn't stay completely static. Some blinking and the usual VN animation would already be pretty nice. And particles! Because when you're using Unity, it's a shame not to abuse it. Even just a bit makes a lot of difference and it's actually pretty easy to get some really nice looking particles.

In any case, keep it up guys. It's shaping up nicely o/

PS.: by the way, just throwing it around, since you guys work with Unity you might want to check out some tools for 2D mesh animation at the asset store, like Any Portrait. Or external tools like Live2D which you can import into Unity. These work great for VNs and you might wanna give it a try for future projects as well.

I myself plan to try making something with AnyPortrait someday in the future, if I get some time for studying it that is.

Stole my friend's laptop to play this for a few hours before she booted me off of it. Completely obsessed.

1. Birthdays so I know when my idol becomes a hag starts getting too old.

2. Merch (hand fans, lightsticks, towels, decorative slogans, sticker sets) would be kind of cool. (You can limit this to concerts if you want. I know the focus is more on Jpop than Kpop.) Also fan accounts of any theatre/concert/handshake interactions.

3. This is probably being worked on but being able to manage staff salaries. Mainly for the dance/vocal instructors.

4. Being able to manually put idols on rest (mainly for stamina purposes.) Alternative would be to manually put idols in the break room or send them individually to the spa.

5. Another thing probably being worked on but being able to see what the girls post to SNS. I wanna know what my meme queen does, she probably flames people in the replies.

EDIT: 6. Pop-up calendar you can click on so you know when each deal is due, when loans are due, etc.

I've been into idols and idol culture for about 10 years and I think it's safe to say you've done a great job with this game so far. Keep it up!

Not really an improvement but being able to reread events (in the bottom right corner) would make management easier.

PS  :  good job

Being able to check or look over things that have happened (such as an idol liking you, or an idol losing mental stamina). I know there is a notification but it's easy to forget so being able to look back would be nice. And maybe some indications of why certain girls are losing mental stamina, as it's easy to forget.

Being able to bring up your fan demographic breakdown while planning your single would be nice, so I know what genres would be good.

I would also like to be able to name events.

Multiple save games please.

Lots of great ideas here, I would add 2 things

1- A way to save a formation, so you dont need to move every single idol in for each single

2- The possibility to divide idols in groups/units for easier managing would also be awesome

Great job so far, keep it up!

A thing I would also add:

This should be really easy to implement actually. I would like if you could also name your agency, it would just add a little more personality to the game. Maybe you could even add agency related events later.

Otherwise pretty much everything that was already mentioned here are really good suggestions that would make the game even better. I hope you consider to implement as much as possible of what was mentioned here.

Keep it up!

Cover songs/singles! You buy a license to cover a song, then your staff make a new version of the song, and if it's good, you can recive a boost in the fanbase the original song is popular.

1. One idea that I had is that if idols are allowed to date one scandal that could be enabled for certain age groups is pregnancy/marriage.  These scenarios could force the idol into early retirement.

2. Another scandal that would add some customization to the game could be the idol deviating from their natural appearances like getting tattoos or dying hair.

3. For aging idols and those whose stats you want to improve like the stat sexy, you could implement the feature for plastic surgery. It would be a nice feature due to idols in South Korea  for example commonly receiving plastic surgery. A nice feature that could be implemented with this is the ability to edit the idols appearance. You could display already default appearances and allow the player to choose from those. Or categorize face and hair and allow the player to choose from there. This would help with dealing with "twin" stars as well.

4. The ability to alter a idols clothing would be a nice implemented feature. It would be nice if each set of attire had its own attributes towards appearance. This feature would be nice because then your group could potentially have matching attire.

5. For world tours a feature that would be nice is the ability to unlock themes and items. With the ability to alter the idols clothing there could be outfits that pertain to specific countries. And what I mean by themes is what if we could alter the them of a room to a specific countries style.

6. Due to mature content being intended in future updates it would be nice if one could choose to enable or disable certain adult themes in settings.

7. I was thinking that pertaining to adult content there could be certain rooms that could be unlocked using scandal points. Lets say that 10 scandal points could allow the player to buy a room for escort services. Like the risk with dating a risk with escort services would be pregnancy which risks the idols career terminating early. 10 scandal points per room. And for higher scandal points (lets say 50) you could enable human trafficking. This would allow you to recruit new idols that would have no weekly expense. Due to it not being a formal audition the downside would be that the character would start with lower stats.

8. Another option that could be added is the ability to choose which age group you wish to work with. Lets say that you wanted to work with a agency that just worked with children. This would disable any adult content. In this scenario your idols would age out of your agency at 14. This feature would be nice for some cute animations. For adult content to be enabled you could have a agency where you only hire idols 18+. Yada Yada.

9. With retired idols it would be nice if they could come in a mentor a idol. This would add a minor increase in stats. And so this would not be spammed due to the retired idols busy schedule they can only come in once every two months or maybe three.

I think it'll be nice to have the option to click on a social media in the game and see what the idol has posted plus the comments and be able to take down a comment or the post

You may already be working on some of these (or maybe they're in the game and I missed it) so I apologize if they're redundant!

- The dance/vocal staffers with no stars in coaching can't coach any girls at all since they cap at a stat of 1 (I've never rolled a girl with a 0). This can lock you out of coaching altogether unless you can afford another staffer, and even then they just sit there consuming resources uselessly due to the need for scandal points.  This doesn't happen with the managers since even managers with a 0 in deals can still do business proposals, and 0 stars in production doesn't stop any staffer from producing. It just feels bad to have an "incomplete" staffer, so to speak, and makes the staffers that start with stars in coaching much more valuable.

- Loans can be hard to find. Some kind of shortcut to loans from the money indicator in the UI if your money's running low or is in the negative would be pretty useful, especially for new players who make bad choices of room purchases at the start (you pretty much need loans if you build every room except an office).

- I know you can see how much stamina (and weekly stamina) an idol has when choosing them for business proposals and shows (mostly through tooltips) but making it more easily visible (or at least a warning that it'll go negative if you accept/launch) would be helpful.

- Singles on physical media feel a bit underwhelming between having production costs and no knowledge of projected unit sales - it'd be nice to know how many units you're potentially going to sell, like projected ticket sales for concerts.

- TV Drama contracts are very very taxing on stamina (sometimes needing 60+ weekly), so they feel a little underwhelming compared to other proposals, even with the other benefits. Since girls need stamina for concerts and other gigs, I often find myself passing on drama contracts unless the stamina cost per week is low.

- It feels like girls' fame and production skills for staffers rise very slowly compared to coaching and business proposal skills, which can be maxed relatively quickly.

- The producer's influence rises extremely slowly right now, could never get it to above 2 and a half stars.

- Research is expensive (especially considering your staff can't be doing anything at all to get research points) and the related skills rise very slowly. With more money than I know what to do with, max coaching/business and production skills in the 80s, I barely have any genres at higher than rank 5 - the balance seems a little off.

- World Tours seem very accessible very early on, especially considering they're the final requirement for gain per performance. You'll have been able to go on several of those before reaching rank 10 on a specific genre (previous requirement).

- Getting ¥100,000 for a photoshoot job (promotion lv.5 requirement) is really easy. ¥100,000/w from advertisement (lv.4 requirement), however, seems to require several rank ups. Typically by the time I manage to hit that amount, +350 fans are negligible (they'll be in the hundreds of thousands or millions - I tend to focus on pumping out singles and concerts).

- As a whole Promotion seems objectively inferior to Performance except for very very early on, all things considered.

- Media seems to be the fastest way to increase fame with a fixed cast but I've never managed to turn a profit from it and it's super taxing on the girls' stamina.

- Active shows should probably be on top of the list at all times by default, they can get buried under canceled shows, I think?

- When you have a ton of idols it can be really difficult to find them in the list and/or tell them apart. More color variations in the assets would really help with telling them apart visually. It'd probably also help if auditions couldn't give you hairstyles you already have on your roster (unless repeats are unavoidable, but that's where varying colors would really come in handy) since the idol's face tends to be the main visual cue you get and the hair is the main thing that sets them apart (faces help, but much less).

As I said in the Bugs page, I'm having issues with being able to do any practice and whatnot so ... my thoughts might be flawed. 

-- How do you know if a single has released?

----> I really loved the ways Kairosoft (a mobile developer) had things 'produced' in-game. It's not really 'copying' or plagiarism since it's a general concept, but they would show a progress bar and allow you to put finishing touches on something if you wanted. 

-----> It could be cool to spend a bit for a release party or something for the girls that are in the single for mental health.

We're told that we get the FIRST FLOOR free, and yet I think I can only use the THIRD floor first and then can use some others? It's really confusing. 

I'm sure I'll have more one day... Man, I want to work on this game as a scenario/script writer so much :> I remember seeing the posts on lemmasoft long ago and wishing I could join in. Let me know if you end up hiring and I can show you my freelancing creds, lol! 

something i really struggle with is when putting rooms to auto practice, my girls with low mental and physical stamina go and practice. A toggle button to pick if they are allowed to practice to let their stamina heal up would be nice.

I just noticed this as we have new special events--it would be nice to have a "waiting events" info section (like we have the "waiting singles" and "waiting media" sections).

I REALLY like the elections, and I think it could be better if you could see in the girls profile there ranking, And maybe if we could have more then 10 places as the group get popular.

hello, I enjoy the game until now but I think it would be nice to have something like  an event to deal with the mental stress!

Maybe like the spa therapy for stamina, or a room like the break room, or maybe a new event. Thank you very much 

Forgive me if it's simply a cultural thing (I'm not overly versed in idol culture) but it sorta feels like we're forced to play in a certain way. You're rewarded for convolution and having 20 idols rather than say, having a core group of 3-5 that you want to take all the way to the top. I noticed that when I released singles, the quality of the single went up the more idols were in it as opposed to the quality of the idols that were in it which doesn't seem quite right imo. I think it'd be nice to support different playstyles, like having small units or solo singers with individual act names. You might still end up with the same quantity of idols, but not in the same group. 

I also think it'd good to be able to retire songs from concerts. You always end up with a million singles so when you go to plan a concert there's always a super long list of songs, many you will never touch because old/low quality.

So far I've played to 5star fame.  I had to cheat to stay afloat during the early stages, but I only figured out the power of no-cost digital sales at 4star fame.  I also have a better understanding of making money then before. (Will have to do a 2nd run without cheating, also letting my idols have free reign in social media/streams to destroy themselves generate scandals.  Free reign dating has so far been tame.)

1. Break room girl interactions need more variety...  More importantly, the fact that the current two interactions, arguing and hand-holding are pretty much marketing bait.   (When there is no discernible changes from such... emotionally charged interactions showing up.)

2. Setting up concerts, higher star singles at the top, rather then the bottom.  Takes a lot of scrolling once you get further in.  And/Or more sorting abilities that could be defaulted into.

3. More ability to sort the girls everywhere you choose between them.

4. Girls shouldn't be locked out of being picked when doing concert set-up.  (For example, if they are training 'now', they can't be added to concert parts, even though the concert is not happening 'now', nor anything else related to it for that matter.)

5. Raising other stats, instead of simply having them  stay static/declining from age.   (Improve/decline cute/cool/sexy/pretty to better match the companies style, in order to get a better position and/or simply the fact that they are growing up, which shouldn't be purely declining everywhere.) 
Really, late bloomers.  It shouldn't be binary.

6. Improved automation and ability to set toggle/auto with limitations for doing performance/promotion/spa treatment activities.  Player can't be expected to camp over the activities screen, when they have other things to be managing. 
6a. Alternatively, set-up a schedule for performance/promotion/spa treatment activities.
6b. Performance activity mostly becomes pointless later on when you can make 2 Billion profit from a 55 million concert.  Or pump out no cost digital release singles for over a million each.  (Granted, it takes awhile to get there and I had to cheat to stay afloat early on.)
6c. Promotion activity seems pointless.  Early on, you need to make money to pay the bills and fans already trickle in if you spam release singles to generate income and buzz.

7. Lyrics, need another employee or even having an idol do it.

8. Continuous training.  Drop a girl there and only train her.  An additional option to the current full random auto-train.

La ayuda al comenzar a jugar llega a ser de lo mas molesto al momento de jugar, me refiero a cualquier juego, pero no creen que se podría implementar un escenario tipo intro donde controlemos a otro manager que esta con los detalles de un concierto y con una implementación online. 

Al final de esos eventos igual nos podría mandar a un póster del concierto o alguna pagina de revista.

Se que es una idea sencilla y predecible, pero me parece que es un clásicos de inicios.

P.D.

Añadir una opción para hacer que las idolos interactuen entre si y que esto afecte en el nivel de aceptación de las involucradas (hacer que una idolo que no le agrada otra pueda afrontar sus problemas con esa idolo o intentar una relacion de amistad entre otras dos)

A page that shows the relationships idolos, hatred and affection, and possible outcomes of events that could develop: take a coffee, a talk before a concert, behind the scenes harassment, e.t.c.

Redirection of notices to the respective sections, eg. When a notice comes out that mentions that X idolo hates Y idolo; When X idolo improves its facets; etc.

Also send to write the lyrics of the songs with a writer or something similar, sometimes I have 5 or 6 songs that are waiting because I only have a manager who can write the songs.

Allowing each office worker to each search for specific business opportunity : 

office 1 - photo  

office 2  - drama

etc.

I'd love to see a randomise button for releasing singles - so once you have more girls than can fit in the single, they can be randomly placed into the lineup without hand-choosing them.

Not sure if someone suggested, but work on new singles should be completable at the same time, I mean I kinda get why choreo and song might not be doable at the same time, but marketing at least surely have to be decided in advance.

A suggestion to show a warning when an idol has a workload of over 35 fatigue a week and thus even if she spends every day at break, she won't be able to recover. The break room counting in days and assignment fatigue counting in weeks are fairly counter-intuitive.

Also wouldn't getting paid remove some of their mental fatigue? :>

Mental health is a problem for me, as physical health has a warning and is easier to remedy. An auto mental threshold for them to visit the doctor's would be great, or some sort of warning sign.

It would be great if there was a way to sort idols by attribute when choosing the lineup for a single.

For instance, if you want a dance-heavy song, you can sort them by their dance abilities.

I would also love to see two options for formation. The current one, which would serve as the Odd Number focus. But I would like to see another one that is an even number focus. There would be no center essentially, just two leads.

Also, I think it would be awesome to be able to assign each Idol a position within the group. So things like Visual, Vocal, Dancer, Rapper, etc. Each position could give a different boost or something? 

I think it takes too long to set up meetings with the idols.  It makes it hard to get to know a few girls while still running your business.

I suggest reducing the time to set up meetings to be as short as a day, but to reduce spamming/rushing maybe give each idol a cooldown before you can meet her again.  That way you can more feasibly get to know a few people without breaking the pacing of the game.

Maybe the better your relationship the shorter the cooldown.  If you have a poor relationship maybe you have to wait a week or two between meetings.  If you have a good relationship maybe you can set up meetings every other day.  This can be tied into the flavor of the game as the better you know the idol the more willing she is to meet you.

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.

If there was some sort of ongoing tracker for how much stamina an idol is gaining / losing per week shown on the small character cards, that would be great. I know I can go into the individual Idols character sheet thing, but clicking between all of them when I'm deciding who gets the contract is kind of Eh~.

Forgive me, I haven't read through all the other comments. These are my suggestions after playing around a little for the past three days:

• -Have a random color pallet for starting outfits; this will make the girls seem more varied than they do right now.
  • I have three girls with the same pink kimono, but what if one had blue and one had white? They suddenly look more distinguishable from one another.
  • Though, please, also change the color of their accessories. (ex: the girls with orange t-shirts and jean shorts have complimenting-color red hair ties. If they have pink shirts, give them yellow hair ties. If they get blue shirts, give them green hair ties)
• -New Room Ideas:
  • Salon: change an idol’s hair style. Give us a few that can only be applied through using the salon, rather than the starting hair styles.
  • Clothing Shops: allows the manager to buy new outfits and accessories for that particular idol. In the future, different shops can be added that have different styles.
  • Dressing Room: let an idol change clothes and accessories that have been purchased or granted to them.
• -Give the stylist the ability to change a girl’s expression (and make-up?)
• -When we achieve certain milestones in the game, give us achievement accessories for the idols that participated in that event (ex: a concert with 100,000+ attendance gives each of the participating idols a microphone that she can hold, or a cute exclusive necklace)
• -New staff member: Talent Scout. Send the scout on a recruiting mission to find a girl with the particular stats you want.
  • The more they level up, the better the Scout is able to match your desired search criteria or…
  • The higher ranked idols they are able to find for you.
• -Another possibility: give us the ability to fine-tune the auditions. Even if we are able to search for one particular stat/rank/trait range, that would be a huge help. (ex: audition to find an idol with 70+ in vocals, or one who is 14-15 years old, or one with the “aesexual” trait)
• -There is so much room to make additional DLC for more outfits, additional social events, Holiday themed items (Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Summer Break…), hairstyles, Cosplay etc. This would keep the game fresh and evolving!
  • People (me) would be willing to pay for this.

Some thoughts on trainers...

- Doctors n auto should choose the idol with the lowest stamina, they do not currently reliably do so.

- Choreographers and Singing coaches seem to choose the idol with the lowest relevant stat...  They do not however seem to reliably work their way up the list if that girl is not available.

- I can't figure out how Stylists work...  On Auto Train/Lowest Stat they seem to randomly choose a girl, then choose the lowest stat.  It seems to me that they should choose the stat and then the lowest girl.  This is not only consistent with Choreographers and Singing coaches, it raises the average.

- Even though they don't consume Stamina, Stylists should respect the minimum Stamina setting to make those idols below the minimum available to the Doctors.

- Maybe Stylists should cause a hit to Mental Stamina?  I don't know what's coming down the pike, but currently it's a little used stat.

Just started playing the Beta for the first time. This is only after 2~3 hours-ish of total gamplay.

Here's my first impressions:

• Tutorial: A Tutorial is desperately needed for the beginning of the game. (Which I believe is being worked on so i'm happily waiting for that.) Obviously, it should have the option to disable it every new game. I was struggling for an hour trying to figure out what I was even doing. Perhaps having an assistant like in IM@S who isn't a really staff but just someone who can help guide new players into the mechanics and gameplay loop. E.G: Having major goals we should be aiming for next like 'Recruit your first idols'/'Recruit Staff'/'Acquire all Facilities'/'Release our first single'/etc. Something will keep people from being lost. Which goes into my next point...
• Gameplay Loop: In terms of the gameplay loop, I wasn't sure what it was exactly before checking the forums. Based off of this it seems like it is. 
  • 1. Acquire Rooms/Staff (Dance/Vocal/Sales Manager)
  • 2. Recruit Idols 
  • 3. Gain Fans 
  • 4. Release single
  • That's all I know for now as I haven't progressed any further.
• Based on the above, Staff and Idols are the first thing we must obtain. However we also need to worry about getting the facilities we need to put them in. Which goes into my next point....
• Money: Facilities are really pricey and i'm not sure if it's because I should be making money before I even build room or if I shouldn't be buying the 3 main facilities at the same time. Bankruptcy happens really fast once you have full staff and rooms. Unless we are supposed to recruit idols and a Sales Manager first before even buying any other rooms. I wasn't able to progress unless I used the money cheat. Again, this could be resolved in clearer instructions or even a reduction in room prices. Or even having the rooms we need already available (although I'm not sure how that would affect balancing.)
• UI: Right now I enjoy the minimalist look of it, however I think that icons are way too small as I keep clicking the wrong one. In terms of pop-ups in the bottom right corner, I think they go away way too fast and I barely even notice them when they do appear. Also, it would be really cool to use the bottom bar to show progress of our singles and sales ala 'Kairosoft' games.

So far that's all I can say with my first impressions. I'm very thankful for the hard work put into this game as this is something that I really want to see finished one day.
Hoping to jump back in the update!

it would be cool if you could send your staff on training and some training are more expensive and longer. you coul also get different options of training for more or less effieciency. Im not a game dev so i have no idea how hard this is.

it would be nice if we could get rid of certain idols that we dont want anymore, or even create a fake scandal (or a real one) thats so bad it gives us the choice to fire the idol without having to pay an huge amount.

It would also be nice to be able to change the formation for singles, and i would like to see albums soon pls! ^3^ luv this game!

also could we get ways to increase the team chemestry or chemestry for cetrain idols or set up events at cetrain venues (like restaurents) were they can go hang out and talk it could also be a way to rest there stamina (both) .

And can we get more ways to rise the hype, im not sure how... oh! maybe we could promote the new song and realese teaser and pics, that would be really cool! Im sorry for all the recommendations im making, i just love this game soooo much!(^3^)

I have not been playing the game for a few months now.
Is the auto toggle still a checkbox with that weird UI (refer to https://itch.io/post/608381)?
If yes, can I suggest using switch instead of checkbox? like this image below

you can set trap in this game like girlish boy idol (I dont know why but my friend away say about it)

One small change I think would be nice to have is once we have talked with an idol to find out when she plans to graduate, if that could also be added to her information tab so that we don't have to schedule dates every time we want to check on her graduation status. 

I think you should be able to demolish a room that you no longer use. If someone made a room in a spot they didn't want or it didn't fit
within their budget, it would be very useful. Should able to do this at no extra cost (you lose the money you spent on building the room though) or 
maybe even recover 25-50% of what you spent on it.

Being able to move you rooms around freely would be cool but it's probably a bit over the top cos that's very unrealistic and a little too convenient but it's an idea.

Oh, something else that I thought might be cool is the concept of "preferred positions". You can currently choose where they stand on stage and I think it's quite detailed already but adding something like stat boosts if you put them at their preferred position would be cool (e.g their preferred position is to the left of the center) 

Following the concept of "preferred positions", there could also be like "roles", e.g main vocal, main dancer. If they are the "main vocal", their "vocals" stat has more weight on the success of the single/performance and for "main dancer", dance stat has more weighting. The 'leader" role could be done based on age/experience, the more suited they are to it, the better overall performance the group would give. The roles should be optional but if you do choose to use them, the idols who are the "main vocal" or "main dancer" should get more exposure and the others should get less.

I've been playing a lot the last few days and have been enjoying the game quite a bit. Looking forward to new updates! Even more excited for the switch version :P, keep up the great work!

This game doesn't have a tutorial for the first timer player. When the idol have many stars, the stamina got down very fast and the doctor was only reducing the idol's stamina in some moment. Also, there is a bug that when i went to bankrupt, my money got added 100 million and the game still continue with not the ability to make media show.  

Overall, the game is good. Good luck with the release in Steam.

Right now our only options for controlling trainers are either completely random, or completely manual.  Manual is a particular PITA in the case of stylists...  hitting that tiny square where dropping the idol will get the proper styling is frustrating.

I'd like to see a "max training level" setting, which would allow you to concentrate your trainers on the girls with the lowest stats (and bring everyone to an equal minimum standard).

- Anytime the game goes full screen (the player has no access to the speed controls), the game should auto pause.

- It would be really nice if the sort option on the formation screen worked,  :)  :)

I really wish there would be an option, to choose between managing a boy group, and a female group in the base game some day. Of course there's already a person that is kind enough to make a mod for that (really appreciated), but I kinda wish that wouldn't just be an option obtained through mods. I don't think you guys have to think about  that now (as there's probably a lot of things that are in a much higher priority), but I really hope that it is feature you would consider adding to the game some day

Hi im just here to tell you something i personally want but i dont know if everyone would want it

I kinda hoped there would be a trainee stage thats in between being casted and debuting

and with that, mentoring would make a bit more sense- and ive wanting to name my label as well.

and this is random but if we can take control of their hiatus time too , itd be more storyline for us to work with.

and I agree about the international idol's traits because right now there isnt anything in the game to differentiate 

them from the local idols, maybe a change in looks for the international would be great too- nothing too drastic

but like change in eye color or hair color would be fun

I think that had like when you are in a concert or single, when you are in formation and you choose a character, you can see a little  descrpition of him, it would be nice to had in the description his will ( for me it's boring to see on my character list where my character want to be for claim his wishes ), and i think that it should pretty easy to add . I think that when a a girl from office LVL up her competence DEALS , she should have like a better chance for negotiations because it's boring when she is  LVL max for this competence, and she failed ( didn't need to be like at 100 % LVL max but i think that every LVL up, she have a 2,5 % bonus for negotiations to be accepted, so if it's 55 % for 2 stars, for 10 stars / LVL max then it's 75 % . It's not cheated, but this is legit :p ) . And also keep up your excellent work :-)

Apologies in advance if someone else suggested this already but maybe add the option to outsource choreographers and producers on singles? It might be more of a k-pop thing but very often, groups will outsource producers/choreographers  to work with their idols on songs, lyrics, dances etc. It would just boost specific demographics like any other option when creating singles.

Sometime having the in game date displayed on a saved game is very useful.  (That is, in addition to the current display of the real world date and time of the save.)

Also, I think having semi-randomized results with estimates for promotions, performances and spa treatments could add a little more realism to the game. For example: A Lv. 1 Performance, instead of always yielding a 10k profit, could yield a random amount of yens between, say, 1k and 20k. For Promotions, instead of always getting 7 fans, maybe work with a random number between 1 and 15. For Spa Treatment, between 5 and 15 stamina points. Of course, as the player levels up those activities, the values also go up.

The system would work similarly to World Tours, SIngles and Concerts, for example, that also work with estimated values. Not sure how much luck is involved there, but the thing is there's no surefire way to know exactly how many fans you'll get from promoting your group, or how much money a performance will add to your pockets, and I feel IM could benefit from reflecting those real life conditions in-game.

It would be nice to be able to sort our cards during the concert scene.

Hi! I saw several friends playing this game on twitter and I've been sinking many hours into it since I bought it this Friday, good stuff.

Here's my in depth experience/observations followed by some features I'd like to see

My Overall Experience

For background, after several playthroughs where I would go bankrupt, I felt kinda railroaded into focusing on hardcore fans only just to make money, so that colored my experience. I didn't bother training my idols/enhancing their stats at all.

It was frustrating at first to understand what needed to be done without a tutorial (But I'm sure there'll be one in the final release/explanations of each management tab when first playing) so I had to restart a few times before I had a good enough understanding of the game to not fall into overwhelming debt before having any means to produce singles/shows etc. By the fourth/fifth playthrough I was finally able to turn a profit after organizing the second concert, although I was having a glitch where idol's initial satisfaction with their salaries didn't change so I didn't have to deal with that until I updated to 9.1, so that might've kept me in debt for longer.

I liked how challenging it was to have slightly manageable debt: Contracts were helpful but not super reliable at the lower star levels so I was having to plan out how to finance concerts, singles, and shows that could help increase cash inflow despite having to take loses while taking out loans to actually release things. It made me pace myself and it felt very rewarding to see the expenses eventually be outweighed by our revenue! Finally being able to host a senbatsu and seeing the results was also fun.

My Observations

(As a disclaimer, my salary satisfactions were not changing until the update so that could've obviously made my game easier.)

I feel like the pacing/balancing of the game is off: the beginning once you get the controls down is pretty slow with only incremental developments as you struggle to get to ~6 singles for your first concert, all my runs begin that way with just working to a concert with singles that aren't really markedly more popular than the last one or very helpful to the finances situation, they're just a means to the end of getting to concerts, which are profitable.

The "mid-game" is the part I had the most fun with, where you can afford to take on more idols, start upgrading the copies of your singles/venues for your events and have a bit of freedom to decide how you'll both get out of debt and how you will continue making money on top of that

The "late-game" by contrast was my least favorite part to play, where your fame is rising very quickly and the singles start printing money because of how powerful having a large hardcore fanbase is (And then add in handshakes!). Even by the time the update restored salary dissatisfaction and I adjusted them to bring everyone to a reasonable level, those expenses (~1.5M) were a drop in the bucket compared to my coffers at that point (600M). Concerts grossed 80M, singles also did 80M: I had gotten to a higher fame level with several popular stars but it resulted in a snowball effect that wiped any  difficulty via being restricted by money. I could take several more expenses without worrying about it. I was turning down Deals Lvl 10- contracts without even thinking about it as they weren't ever going to be more profitable than a one-off single. And this is with about 150k fans in around two days of play on that game.

So if I had to chart pacing: it'd be like:

Early (No stars-2): very slow

Singles don't have impact, probably need alternating loans from Fujimoto and the bank to not stay in debt over a month. Fujimoto's loans having conditions after taking them was a nice touch that added difficulty/an element of planning and timing.

 Mid (2-6): good

First concert, starting to become independent from loans, singles show noticeable growth and change depending on your choices, exhaustion/injury and idol selection/recruitment start mattering

Late (7-10): over-accelerated

Releasing a single/concert just prints money and makes any expenses you have 0

While difficulty is;

Early: high w/o tutorial, autopilot w/ mechanics mastered

It feels like a lot of the game doesn't properly start until the first concert happens

Mid: challenging

Late: low

Seems like there's nothing left to conquer after your fourth concert or so, I hadn't even had enough time for girls to graduate at this point

This is getting kinda long so I'll make another post detailing some features I think would be cool to see!

Things I'd like to see in-game

Additions:

I did find it weird how at one point I released a single coming off of a 100% fan satisfaction one, got 8% fan satisfaction, but suffered no consequences for it as the sales between the two singles increased, leading to my next few ideas:

Subgenres and music trends

I saw in an early demo from 2016 that there was an idea to have the current in-game major genres like Pop, EDM, Rock, R&B etc. behave more like skill trees which progress through subgenres/genre families rather than solely increasing in efficacy through the research points. Like EDM would be an umbrella for Tropical House, House, IDM, etc. and these individual subgenres could be either trendy during the time of release or rising trends. I thought this was a great idea and was sad to not see it in Beta. The people I discuss this game with share this opinion, some noted there's no real incentive/push factor to change up what type of single you produce unless you're a completionist who wants to do all the genres. Some genres will ALWAYS be unattractive to casuals, core, etc. Doing the same love>cute>pop progression will ALWAYS sell well with hardcores, even on the 20th iteration of that combination. So why think about the singles production anymore after you hit a certain threshold of fame?

With the trend+subgenre system, I could see more engaging game play, and gameplay that evolves your tactics: making your single a subgenre that's a rising trend could boost its sales and appeal among casuals+teens/YAs, and usher the subgenre into being a current trend. Current trends could increase that boost even more but over-saturate that sound and push it into being a "past" trend which might cause fatigue and penalty/decreased appeal and sales and encourage players to explore other subgenres and try to either chase or predict the next trend.

Fan feedback/SNS feed

I also saw this in the demo and thought it was a great idea: Fans giving indications of what styles might be upcoming, if they're getting bored with the group's current image, which idols are on the rise/descent, current events etc. Imagine if there's a political election coming up in-game, so releasing a political single might have more efficacy than usual, or the hardcore base is under a lot of stress as of late so an anxiety single has more potential.

Subgroups/Sister groups

Thought of this because it's difficult to A) look at the girls when they're all on one menu, especially as you add more B) it's hard to organize the girls and evaluate who should be in what single C) I want to use all my girls and produce different types of singles but with frequent release penalties it's difficult to build them up.

I think adding in a system like how AKB has SKE, NMB, HKT etc. or 46 has Nogi, Keya, Hina etc. would be very useful: Players could have all idols under one group, but sort them in established subgroups/sister groups for convenience AND in-game bonuses.  For example, I could make a subgroup where I put my girls with high Sexy stats, and another for girls with high Pretty stats, and have the first group release singles targeting men while the second targets women. An in-game bonus could be that these groups still need a month between their OWN singles to avoid a fatigue penalty, but releasing within this period of another sister group's release wouldn't trigger it. To balance this out, maybe hardcore fans would be less willing to buy each subgroups' singles/only their favorite subgroup, but would combine for the full group singles depending on team composition. 

Additionally, maybe girls could form cliques/relationships based around their sister group as well? Fans/casuals could associate certain lyrical styles, dances, and genres with certain sister groups and find it off-putting if a sister group suddenly changes its style. The fullgroup could have combined appeal metrics/demos but negative/positive opinion of subgroup could possibly not have a direct influence on another sister group, enabling experimentation. And if there had to be a distinction between what constitutes a full group single vs a sister group single, it could be that any single composed of girls from more than one group/girls who are groupless become fullgroup by de facto.

Rival Groups

I think I've read something about this being implemented? I think it would be a great addition. Possibly siphoning fans and contracts/casuals away, forcing your group to change up their image to compete: I'm really looking forward to that if it's happening. I also thinking groups already existing when you show up could help spice up the early game and require you to employ different tactics in each playthrough if some semi-randomized groups of various levels of establishment were there to beat and/or also on the rise all the time. (For example casual attention is already on a randomized "sexy group who does energetic pop songs" so you either have to beat them at their own game or specialize and outdo them at something else if you want casuals/contracts).

Changes/Suggestions:

Producer role/points

I've seen a few people bring up how the Producer is a major bottleneck right now: Every project and socialization has to go through them meaning they can't accumulate research points for media and lyrics at the rate every other role does. Similar problem with how the Manager can't accumulate points if you're searching for business deals and pretty much requires two, but you obviously can't hire a second Producer. I think either making a new role that works on Lyrics OR allowing the Producer to gain Research points even if they're working.

Estimated sales/concert changes

With concert prices, I wish there was a button to just immediately set price for maximum profit OR maximum attendance, since I imagine these are the only two prices relevant to a player, rather than having to fiddle around with it. I also feel like concerts might be a bit too OP in how quickly they start doubling their production costs if you just up the ticket price. I was able to score 20-30M on my second/third concert despite having 33% attendance. I think having a negative effects for trying to abuse concert pricing/going to too big a venue could be good, like having an expensive price or a concert with only a 1/3 of the seats filled could give groups a hit in buzz and bad press?

Additionally the songlist available for organizing the set starts getting overwhelming very quickly, a different menu style might help. I also think there's really no incentive to use your oldest songs at the moment, when in real life several old songs continue to live on in setlists. Maybe there could be bonuses for including older songs such as "fan favorite" for the debut single, the first single to sell 100K, the first single/center appearance of a popular member, etc., to give the old songs some use.

Relationships/events/conflict

Not sure if it's just my playthroughs (Because I do not use the dating options at all) but in all of them I only get some fight events with not very noticeable effects other than sometimes a slight ding to the relationships. I think some insertion of qualities like jealousy/rivalry between current top idols, between rising/pushed idols, and between old guard and new guard could add some interesting dynamics. (I noticed how in the demo it wasn't just moving a girl to a farther back position that makes her disappointed, but ALSO bringing up/adding a newer girl or a girl who was behind her can sour her mood, which I didn't notice in the Beta.)

I think it's great how public spats/resentment can put your contracts at risk, that bad chemistry and bullying can take idols out of commission and lower the efficacy of singles. I'd like to see more of that kind of thing, both in ways you've currently implemented and in new ways.

Elections/Senbatsu

Lastly, I think the elections are my favorite part of the game, concurrently organizing a single and concert and seeing how the girls' ranks change is challenging and a lot of fun. I think what would be a great addition is emulating what AKB does, where the senbatsu election members lead a special single after the election. Maybe in-game you could do something like the Top 10 instantly (Or on a 2-week timer) releasing a fatigue-free/frequency penalty bonus-free single with increased hardcore appeal or a stamina-free marketing plan/a special marketing plan reserved only for the post-election single? Or some kind of special benefit only reserved for the post-Election single.

I would love it if the income/expenses tooltip includes the current week's income and expenses from activities, like Performance and Spa. Seeing a huge negative no matter how hard you're working is very disheartening. But if we see that our five Performances this week at least made a dent in the losses then at least it's something, right? Even more when we finally see that this week, we finally break even.

Grouping system really needed. 

I have been playing this game for a long time and felt the need for a grouping system.

With more people to manage, chemistry is hard to find when planning new songs or shows. 

Currently I'm solving this with nicknames but it's still hard because it's not sorted.

Also small QOL/worldbuilding feature, but do you think it'd be possible for the game to track formations beyond the last 10, and outside of just the formation page for the creation of a new single? I was on the Stage48 wiki and thought it was cool how the single pages track who was in that single and who was center, as well as how the member's individual pages also show what single they were in/centered. Maybe the released singles tab could also show what the formation was when you click on it, and each idols'  profile could have a section listing what singles she's been in and whether she was center? I'm just particular in that it'd be really satisfying to click on a popular idol and see all the singles she was in be listed, lol.

Aesthetic ideas?

I love the artstyle of the game and was wondering if there were plans to make the general visuals more varied/dynamic? The twilight lighting looks great but after playing for a while it gets a little repetitive, I think changing  it up with midday/night versions of the cityscape would really take it over the top (Maybe even seasonal variations like rain/lightningstorms, snow, and fog scenery over the city and under the lighting as you move through the year?) 

Also this might count more as a bug, but I think the projected buzz for formation creation, the fame levelup bar upon single release, and the fame percentage on the taskbar should stop adding more stars/more bar length/more percentages after you hit fame/buzz level 10. Visually it does kinda start looking ugly when you've already got a 10-star group/several big idols and the game tries to put 20-25 stars on your projected buzz for the formation, stretches off the side of the screen to show your fame upon single release, and reads 13000% completion on the fame level in the taskbar.

Also (sorry to double post, but it's not really the same topic), I'd REALLY find a manual option for typing salary+a "set all salaries to [number]" button useful. It's a lot easier than clicking and getting jumps in the number+since the girls' satisfactions change in relation to what others are getting paid the more senior girls start approaching 0 as newer girls start having their salary bumped up, so being able to quickly bring everyone's salary to a base level again would be a godsend rather than clicking upwards of 15 arrows 10-20 times each.

A small thing: It would be nice to see how much of a loan still needs to be paid back and how many weeks are left. It's kind of important, I think

can you make idol male please make it all we want to have male idols please make it for the whole community please

I'm not 100% sure what you guys have in mind for the final release, so my bad if some of these are what you're already working on! Super fun game btw, I can't wait to play the released version :)

I know you guys are working on more relationship stuff between the idols and player, but I love drama and think it will really flesh out the game so here's some ideas:

-Idols gossipping about the group to the press or releasing secrets, either while in the group or after graduating. For example, if they're overworked and underpaid in the group, or if one certain member is known to be a bully, they might go gossip about it to the press after leaving. I feel that this is something that happens with idol groups in real life and will make the way you treat your idols extra important. Also it seems to me like the girls are basically irrelevant after they graduate, so it'd be cool if they still matter somewhat. 

-More of a minor nitpick but they all seem to go onto pretty average things after graduating, like becoming an office worker or teacher. I think it'd add realism if their fame level impacts what they do after graduating. If an idol graduated with 10 star fame I'd imagine her to go on to become an actress, author, solo artist, etc. rather than have an office job or working at a hostess club. (My bad if this is already a thing, maybe I haven't graduated enough high-star idols to notice.) 

-Events relating to the fame and safety of idols. For example, idols having stalkers, or being attacked by a fan at a fan meet. While it's sad, this is also something that has certainly happened in real life. It might cause an idol to have depression, or take a hiatus. 

-I know a lot of people have mentioned this but having subgroups would be cool, or even solos. 

-Maybe more tangible repercussions for idols being bad singers or dancers. An idol can have a singing and dancing level of 1 and she can reach 10 star fame and no one will say a thing about it. I think in real life, an idol would get made fun of if they were unskilled. Might be even worse if the entire group has poor singing and dancing skills.

-Idols leaving the group on bad terms. Certainly not everyone has a happy and peaceful graduation in real idol groups!

-I think it'd be nice to have more rewards in the late game. Maybe sending idols on a really nice vacation, buying them really nice houses, etc. I know this is just the beta so I'm sure I'm missing out on a lot but as of now once I have 1,000,000+ fans and a bunch of money in the bank, it's like, "Now what?"

Anyways I love this game and the beta is already addictive! Thank you guys for working hard on this game, I'm always looking forward to the next update. 

From my experience I have to disagree on the game being too difficult in the early stages: on this latest update I’ve gotten out of debt faster than I ever have, and with fewer singles (6 months and 5 singles). Started with staffed Manager office, 2 offices, dance and recording studio, spammed performances and did digital releases, had the office workers working on photoshoots and then switched one to advertisements as soon as they were available. Took out max loan from Fujimoto over 6 months to build a break room. I dipped into the red essentially every Monday with a 200k loss each week but I had a lot of high cute-stat idols and set my preferred deals to cute so I’d have have at least a couple of windfalls each week. Debt was always manageable in the 5digit range at this point. Digital singles also started making about 100k+ each release with the third single. Now I’m working on my first concert and first physical release with 1500000 in the bank, and it’s the fastest I’ve ever gotten to this point. What strategies are others using to start the game?

so I’ve gotten to the first awards show: It was extremely well done, the hosts’ conversations and jokes were very funny and I read through all of them, the speeches were also nice. The hosts have a good character dynamic, but the only issue I saw is I think the hosts’ names were occasionally swapped? (ie one host would get addressed with a Ms. prefix but then the host had a masculine given name/the character with a masculine given name had dialogue the female character would probably say “Soandso would probably enjoy this Gravure Idol” etc.) Maybe speech bubbles or portraits or a small animation would help clear up which host is which? Anyways I hope the hosts have a lot more conversations I didn’t see!

Also when my idol won an award and thanked one of the staffers, and then that staffer the next day thanked me for hiring them and talked about how their mom saw them get recognized: that was a great moment, and I hope the final game might have lots of moments like these.

In my opinion, the thing that makes it hard in early game is that there is very few and very particular starting strategies just to not fail, let alone succeed (must have x number of offices, must research this first, must work your idols to the ground without any salary increase etc) This is like chess but any play that doesn't start with the Queen's pawn moving exactly 1 step and then the King's knight to the space in front of the Rook's pawn (or something) is doomed to fail. It discourages exploration and experimentation at the very start of the game, making players hesitant to do any later on, even when they do have the money.

One starting move to not fail, all others are dead ends. That's not a game. That's a visual novel.

I suggest something like a safety net, a once-in-a-playthrough cash infusion the first time you touch negative balance. Most (every?) Kairosoft games, for example, have a sort of "oh, you're in the negative, here's some money to get you back up, but this is only once" kind of deal. Maybe the landowner decides to invest another 1M into the group. Maybe you bought a winning lottery ticket. Maybe you get some inheritance from a dead uncle.

Also I'd love to have some faster way to tell idol's relationships to you. Maybe a "Sort by influence" button or something? It's hard for me to use the socializing aspect because I don't feel like individually clicking through everyone's profile to see who I have high influence with, even though I KNOW I have high influence with some of them.

Had an single/concert/election cycle conclude at the start of July before the awards: game froze upon loading awards sequence. Loaded the autosave which was 15 minutes ago (despite setting mine to 60 seconds.). Landed after the single release but before the concert: concert never triggered after that, and therefore no election either.

Posting here to add that this is the second time this election bug has happened to me, and like I suggested last time, I really think the player should just trigger the concert+election themselves rather than trusting the game to do it so this bug is avoided entirely, it really quashes any enjoyment to play anymore when it happens since you lose progress and you're penalized in game for cancelling the election.