This update adds a new building type: theaters! You can build one theater for each group that you manage. (For example, if you have one sister group, you can build two theaters: one for the main group, and one for the sister group.) Each theater can seat up to 300 fans.
Once you've built a theater for idols to perform in, you can set up a schedule for each day of the week. When planning the schedule, your options are "Performance," "Manzai," "Day off," and "Auto."
Performance: The typical song and dance routine trains idols' "vocal" and "dance" attributes
Manzai: The classic two-part comedy act trains idols' "funny" and "smart" attributes. It consumes less stamina than a regular performance, but is also less appealing to casual fans.
"Day off" and "auto" should be pretty self-explanatory: you can give your idols a day off to recover their stamina, or set it on auto-pilot and let the game decide the performance schedule for you.
Ticket prices
You have control over the price of theater tickets and can change it at any time. Setting a low ticket price will entice more fans to show up. Setting the ticket price too high will make fans more reluctant to show up. The more fans your group has, the higher you can set the price without hurting attendance. If your theater is hitting maximum capacity, you can probably get away with charging more!
Online viewers
You can also set up theater performances to be streamed online: fans can pay a monthly subscription fee to get access to a livestream and VODs of all theater performances. To unlock the ability to stream performances, you'll need to do research (spend office manager research points) and purchase equipment (spend money).
You can set (and change) the subscription fee: much like ticket prices, low subscription fees will entice new subscribers to join, while hiking up subscription fees will make new subscribers less likely to join. (Increasing the subscription price may also cause some fans to cancel their subscription.)
Subscribers expect to get a good value for their monthly subscription fee. If your theater decides to take too many days off, some fans may decide to cancel their subscription.
You can choose which demographic to target with each performance, which will make certain kinds of fans more or less likely to buy a ticket for a live performance, or start/cancel an online subscription.
On the "subscribers" tab, you can find a detailed breakdown on which demographics are contributing most to your bottom line. Hover over any demographic's icon for a more detailed tooltip.
All of your subscriptions will come from people who are already fans of your group. (You can't have more subscribers than fans.) Hardcore fans and adults are easier to convert into paying subscribers than casual and teenage fans.
Improvements
18 new hairstyles and 6 new accessories have been added.
Addeddialog viewingoptions
"Skip" - lets you quickly skip through dialog messages you've seen in a previous playthrough
"Log" - shows all messages from the current dialog scenes
Added tutorialization
Several new introductory dialog scenes have been added to explain the new "scandal points" and "sister groups" features from the previous update.
Tooltips
When producing auditions, the game will warn you if you have a penalty to auditions because of your scandal points
Game will now inform you that you need to research different types of business proposals in order to produce them
Misc changes/additions:
Added new idol trait: "spoiled." Consumes stamina twice as fast, recovers stamina half as fast
Added more names to the name generator
Liability in business proposals increases based on your group's scandal points and individual idol's scandal points
Bug fixes
Fixed: Conflict events can only happen to idols from the same group
Fixed: Game freeze after firing a staffer when the staffer list is in compact view
Fixed: Staff tooltip could disappear after firing a staffer
We look forward to hearing what you think about the new features we've added in the beta community forum. Your feedback, suggestions, and bug reports are what allow us to keep improving Idol Manager, so thanks to the many of you who post in the forum to share your thoughts with us!
Idol Manager beta update #13: Sister groups!
over 4 years ago
– Sun, Jan 05, 2020 at 11:08:41 PM
Scandal points are applied to an individual idol or to the entire group. Events involving a specific idol (e.g. dating scandals) will assign scandal points to the idol involved, while events that don't concern a specific idol can gain scandal points for the group.
Your scandal point total is based on the sum of all of the idols' individual scandal points plus the group scandal points. Having too many scandal points can now result in certain penalties, including:
Higher-tier idols not appearing in auditions
Lower single sales
Fewer new fans from popularity/obscurity
Lower concert attendance
The penalty scales based on your total scandal points: for example, 3 scandal points will result in a 5% sales penalty, while 8 scandal points results in a 8% scales penalty.
You can see the breakdown of your scandal points (which idols have them and how many) and the associated penalties if you hover over the scandal points counter at the bottom of the screen.
Scandal points can be removed in the following ways:
Having an idol graduate will remove all of her scandal points
Scandal points can be spent to fire staffers. The longer that a staffer has been with the group, the more scandal points it costs to fire them. (Costs 1 scandal point for staffers that were hired <6 months ago, 2 scandal points for staffers hired <2 years ago, 3 scandal points for staffers hired <4 years ago, and 4 scandal points for staffers that have been working 4+ years)
Scandal points can be spent to change group policies
There is also a 3-month cooldown on firing a staffer using scandal points and a 3-month cooldown on changing policies using scandal points, so there's a limit to how quickly you can get rid of scandal points by using these methods.
When spending scandal points, you choose whose scandal points are removed, and whenever you take an action that removes an idol's scandal points, you gain influence with her.
Additionally, raising or lowering the difficulty level will affect the behavior of scandal points in the following ways:
"Relaxed" difficulty: idols automatically lose 1 scandal point on their birthday
"Unfair" difficulty: when an idol graduates, 50% of her scandal points will be re-assigned to the group as a whole.
Sister groups
You can now create multiple idol groups! The "sister groups" feature unlocks once you've hired 10 idols, and each 10 idols you hire will allow you to create a new sister group. (For example, if you've hired 20 idols, you can create 2 sister groups.) Sister groups exist in addition to your main group.
You may have noticed that you'll get penalized if you release new singles too often: fewer people will want to buy a single if your group has already put out a single in the past month. However, if you have multiple groups, each of them can release a single in the same month without sales penalties! Idols who are part of sister groups can still also participate in singles released by the main group, but for singles that are released under a sister group, only idols who are part of that sister group can participate.
After creating a sister group, you can transfer idols to the sister group by clicking on their idol card. Under the "group" option, you can change which group an idol is assigned to. (The cooldown on transferring an idol is 1 year.)
Idols can still be friends with idols from other groups, but they can't be part of cliques with idols from other groups and can't bully idols in other groups. Transferring an idol to a different group will remove her from any bullying or cliques that she's part of. If you have a bullying problem and need to solve it quickly, perhaps a transfer might be in order!
Single sales for a group (either the main group or any sister group) are based on the number of fans following members of that group. If you want a sister group to perform better, you can quickly boost the sales of a sister group's singles by transferring a popular idol to that group.
Sister group progression
The way that sister groups gain fans works differently than for your main group. A sister group will gain fans with each new release based on sister group's demographic appeal. The group's starting appeal with each demographic is based on the target demographic you select when creating the group (for example, if you choose "casual teen male" as your target demographic, you'll gain 1 point toward casual appeal, 1 point toward teen appeal, and 1 point toward male appeal), and you can increase the sister group's appeal with each demographic by leveling up attributes.
Your group has cute/cool/sexy/pretty and vocal/dance/funny/smart attributes, just like individual idols. Whenever you release a new single, you'll gain "group exp" for each of these attributes based on the stats of the single's formation. Each time one of these attributes "levels up," you gain 1 point which can be put into a demographic axis. (For example, putting a point into "hardcore" will increase appeal with all hardcore fans, putting a point into "young adult" will increase appeal with all young adult fans, etc.)
Your total appeal with any specific demographic is based on the sum of all demographic appeal points: for example, your appeal with the "casual adult female" demographic is based on a group's total casual appeal + total adult appeal + total female appeal.
There's a "soft cap" on the number of fans in each demographic (per group). After hitting this number, you'll get progressively fewer fans in that demographic.
The "sister groups" feature is still a work-in-progress, and we'll be adding to it in the next update. In the meantime, if you have any feedback on your experience playing with sister groups in this update, or have any requests for features you'd like to see, drop by the beta forum and let us know!
Improvements
You can now release an election single after holding elections. The election single will use a formation based on the election result. (1st place in the election will be the center, etc)
An idol's graduation now negatively affects the graduation dates of her friends. (When an idol leaves the group, her friends are more likely to want to leave too.)
Nerfed daily activities on higher levels
Staffers level up slower
Added an option to disable auto scroll when cursor is on the edge of the screen
3 month cooldown on firing a staffer using scandal points
3 month cooldown on changing policies using scandal points
You can only change the image policy once
Debugging tool (keyboard shortcut/"cheat"): press F4 to remove all scandal points
Bug fixes
Fixed: When planning award shows, the idol receiving the award and the idol being thanked during the award speech could be the same. (Now, you can no longer tell an idol to thank herself.)
Fixed: Idols now hang out in all of your break rooms evenly instead of using the same one almost every time
Fixed: Time freeze caused by media shows with 10 stars of fame
Fixed: Not being able to level up lyrics and media genres if you have a show with 10 stars of fame
Fixed: You now can't quit an audition before revealing any cards. (Prevents situations where players could accidentally end an audition without hiring anyone.)
As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback on the latest update in the beta community forum. If you have any bug reports, feature requests, or anything else you'd like to tell us about your experience with Idol Manager so far, please visit the forum and let us know. Thank you for continuing to support Idol Manager in 2020!
Idol Manager beta update #11: Cafes, difficulty modes, and new events
over 4 years ago
– Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 10:09:34 PM
A new building type has been added: cafes! Cafes provide you with a passive daily income that depends on your Promotion level and number of fans.
You can send idols to work in the cafe, which will attract more customers (if your cafes aren't already full), and also gain new fans (based on your Promotion level). You can send popular idols to work in the cafe to attract more customers and revenue, or send less-popular idols if you'd like them an opportunity to gain more fans. Idols can be manually assigned to work in the cafe, or you can select an option to automatically assign idols to work in the cafe (you can assign stamina limits, and choose whether popular or unpopular idols are prioritized).
If you have multiple cafes, any overflow from cafes that are at maximum capacity will be captured by cafes that are below capacity. This means that if you have one cafe that is full of customers and one that is empty, assigning an idol to the full cafe will increase the number of customers at the empty cafe.
Building more cafes requires you to meet certain thresholds for number of fans. The second cafe can be built when you hit 50,000 fans, a third cafe can be built when you hit 150,000 fans, a fourth cafe can be built when you hit 500,000 fans, and so on.
Difficulty levels
Idol Manager now has 3 difficulty levels:
Relaxed: there is no penalty for going into debt. (You can continue to spend money as you normally would to release singles, hire new idols, and so on even if you have a negative cash balance.)
Normal: The default difficulty (nothing changed from previous beta versions of Idol Manager)
Unfair: Various balance changes to offer a more challenging experience. Additionally, you can no longer borrow money from the bank. (You can still borrow money from Fujimoto.)
Improvements
New random events
14 new random events have been added to the game.
New break room scenes
9 new scenes have been added for the break room. Scenes will play based on relationships between idols. For example, you can see which idols are getting bullied, or which idols are friends.
Misc. improvements
8 new hairstyles
Added several new early-game dialogues to explain activities, business proposals, and rent
Rent now increases for each new floor the player builds on
The election concert now has to be manually launched
Modding: you can now use staff actors in random events
Bug fixes:
Fixed: Blurred screen caused by multiple popups opening at the same time
Fixed: Bug that made all random events affect the same idol
Fixed: Fans counter sometimes not updating
As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback on the latest update in the beta community forum. If you have any bug reports, feature requests, or anything else you'd like to tell us about your experience with Idol Manager so far, please visit the forum and let us know!
Idol Manager beta update #11: Welcome to the award show
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Oct 26, 2019 at 12:54:23 AM
The idol group award ceremony happens once a year, with a variety of award categories that you can qualify for (and potentially win), including awards for groups (like "best single" and "most prolific group") and individual idols (like "fashion icon" and "best debut idol").
Winning awards gives recognition that provides tangible benefits to your agency: each award category provides a different buff that lasts for one year until the next annual award show. As they say, it's an honor just to be nominated, and even if you don't win the award, simply reaching the eligibility requirements to be nominated for a category will you a reduced form of the buff that you'd get for winning.
On the awards menu (which can be accessed from the main agency view), you can view the eligibility requirements for each category, and see how close you are to reaching the requirements. You may even be able to see what it would take to win the category, if you've been nominated for the award enough times (or won the award) in previous years.
While awards (and nominations) have benefits that last all year, it wouldn't be an awards show without pomp and ceremony: getting to appear on stage at an award show is a great honor, and when it comes to accepting group awards, it's up to you to decide who will enjoy that honor.
Any idol who receives an award (either due to winning a solo award, or being chosen to accept an award on behalf of the group) has the opportunity to thank someone in their speech. Idols will follow your instructions on who to thank if you think someone in particular deserves to be thanked in their speech: maybe you need them to thank a sponsor who has decided they want to be recognized, or maybe you want to hear your own name and get the recognition and respect that you personally deserve as a manager. Idols who thank another idol during their acceptance speech will see their relationship with that idol improve, and staffers who are mentioned during an acceptance speech will get a boost to their performance. Of course, idols will appreciate it more if you give them the freedom to write their own acceptance speech.
Improvements
Visual updates
Added 11 new hairstyles and 3 accessories
Updated the sprite of the polka dot idol
Changes to singles
Trendy genres, lyrics themes and choreography styles no longer increase appeal. Instead, you get additional casual or hardcore fans based on how trendy or obscure the single's style is.
Singles now earn more fame points based on the fame of participating idols. It now makes more sense to give good spots in the formation to fresh idols to quickly boost their fame.
Tooltip for released singles lists idols in formation
Idols' profiles now list all singles this idol participated in
Misc changes:
Simulation of rival groups is now more complex. Rival groups will rise and fall in the charts over time, old groups can disband and new groups can appear.
Business proposals now affect graduations (idols like getting jobs and hate not getting jobs)
Idols often graduated from the group after finishing high school. This happens less often now, and you can find out if your idol is going to leave the group for this reason and persuade her to stay.
You now need at least one idol, one stylist and one dressing room to unlock styling.
You can now check your credit history in the loans popup and pay off your loans early.
You can now type in idol's salary to select an exact number instead of using +/- buttons
Business proposal popup now shows how much stamina the idols have (no need to hover over them anymore)
Idols that don't do "sexy" business proposals get increasingly better "sexy" proposals
Idols won't auto train style parameters that have hit the age stat cap
Concerts change: Accident chance can't be lower than 10% (before using a card)
Modding changes
Editor:
Various quality-of-life improvements
Added checks for number of idols and number of released singles
You can now use the "OR" operator (checks and returns positive if at least one condition was met)
You can now add requirements to Choice nodes
Use Meta -> Quit to quit the dialogue early
Use Meta -> Continue to continue the previous text instead of clearing the text box
You can add (or subtract) to variables: Meta -> Variable Math -> variable_name + 2 and then check Meta -> Variable -> variable_name > 1
You can set custom position, rotation and scale of sprites. "Default Position" cancels changes
You can tell the game to ignore certain accessories when generating idols (they will still be available for custom styling), add "ignore_accs": [0, 2, 3… etc] in params.json
Localization changes:
Customizable fonts. You can set the name of the font in info.json. The font must be installed on the player's computer, otherwise the default one will be used.
Vars.json: you can now set colors of variables to blue|red|green. (Will be white if color is unspecified)
Bug fixes
Fixed: Idols incorrectly reporting that they're not interested in men/women when player tries to flirt with them
Fixed: Idols having different portraits after audition
Fixed: Getting stuck on blurred screen after launching audition
Fixed: Sales chart showing singles from previous years
Fixed: Pressing spacebar or enter could trigger clicks on UI buttons
Fixed: Idols getting stuck in rooms with no staffers
Fixed: Overflowing fame bars
Fixed: Styling popup could open with a graduated idol
Fixed: Idol profile card not updating after styling
Fixed: Graduated idols still losing mental stamina because of social media policies
Fixed: Notifications in the bottom right rendering under the scroll bar
Fixed: Elections didn't actually cost any money
Modding: Fixed: Only the first sibling Check node was used, the others were skipped
We look forward to seeing your feedback on the latest update in the beta community forum. If you have a feature request or found a bug, post in the forum to let us know!
Idol Manager beta update #10: Staying stylish and keeping trendy
over 4 years ago
– Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 11:55:00 PM
The music sales chart updates every month with a ranking of the top-selling singles.
The charts aren't just there to stroke the egos of top performers; the rankings are also a valuable source of what sort of music is popular and trending. If you want to stay trendy, watch the musical chart to see what genres, lyrical themes, and choreography styles are currently popular. Trending genres are more likely to appeal to casual fans, while hardcore fans tend to have more esoteric tastes.
Styling
Think your idol needs a new look? You can now change their hairstyle or accessory using the newly-added styling feature. (Click the "scissors" menu icon on the bottom-right.)
Improvements
Added 10 new hairstyles and 4 new accessories. (Maybe you should try out the newly-added styling option to see if any of the new looks suit your tastes!)
Changes to singles
Each demographic now has a certain "soft cap" to how many copies of a single they can buy; after reaching the soft cap, gains for this demographic get exponentially smaller. (If you want to keep increasing sales after hitting market saturation with a certain demographic, you may want to diversify your target demographics and try to appeal to a wider audience.)
Misc improvements
Idol profiles now show idol's dating status based on what the player has learned about them
Updated doctor and manager sprites
Reduced the effect that Hype over 100% has on profits in bigger venues.
Added a tooltip that shows current day of the week when hovering over the date display in the bottom left
You can now use arrow keys and enter key to select dialogue options
Added story characters page and "change sprite" action
Added start_dialogue action
Various quality-of-life improvements
Modding changes
Staff sprites are now moddable
You can now create your own story characters. See JSON/Events/characters.json
Localization
You can now create and edit gendered variables. See JSON/Constants/vars.json
Bug fixes
Fixed: Wrong name used in one of reactions to conflict events
Fixed: Concert status stuck in production
Fixed: Corrupt auto save file breaking save/load popup
Fixed: One of the story dialogues launched in 1440 days instead of 1440 hours
Fixed: Quitting the game in the middle of a substory could break it
Localization: Auto-resizing of some text elements
Localization: "Pushes" tooltip showing English text
Localization: Randomly showing English text in random events
As always, we look forward to seeing your feedback on the latest update in the beta community forum. If you want to request a feature or report a bug, drop by the forum and let us know!
