Genre: business sim
Engine: Unity
Platforms: pc, mac, linux. ps vita is possible
Idol Manager is a semi-realistic idol management sim with a strong focus on controversial issues that real life Japanese producers have to deal with.
You can start managing an existing group or create your own from scratch. In order to make them a #1 group in Japan you’ll need to successfully balance Business and Relationships.
Business:
- When making decisions, producing singles, tv shows, etc., you have to think of what audience this will appeal to: 40 y/o hardcore guys are happy to spend a lot of money on your group, but appealing to them might alienate the larger casual audience
- Working, training and doing promotions are important, but don’t overwork your idols!
- Want to help the girls to improve their singing skill faster? Upgrade your studio and hire a vocal teacher.
- Unlock and hold special events like big concerts, tours and popularity voting.
- Scandals and accidents will bring a lot of attention to you group. Your decisions will determine if you gain anything from it or make it a PR disaster.
- Dozens of teenage girls in a highly competitive environment is not an easy thing to deal with. They can become friends and enemies, form cliques to plot against someone or even start dating.
Example: you just held an audition and found this super talented girl. You immediately start promoting her and give her a center position in the new single. Some girls will hate it and as a result they’ll start hating her and/or you. - Talk to the girls on the phone. Sometimes they want to discuss their problems, sometimes they just want to have a chat. You’re their boss, but eventually you can become friends.
- Sometimes they’ll try to move past friendship, but keep in mind that you’re still their boss, and they can be quite young, so dating them can lead to.. interesting results. Or not.
(the text and the pictures are placeholders)
About the development
I’ve been working on this game for the last 9 months and I’m at the point where I’m confident enough to get other people involved.
The game is at the ~12K lines of code, which doesn’t seem much for 9 months, but I’ve been cutting and changing stuff a lot.
Most of the systems already work, we just need to fill the game with content and balance it.
I’m satisfied with the UI for now, but maybe I’ll want to change it later.
No art or writing has been done yet.
The plan is to make enough content for a kickstarter and launch it around March. If it’s successful, then we should be able to finish the game in another ~9 months.
About me
My name is Max, I’m a 23 Russian freelance web developer. As you could guess, I’m pretty into Japanese idols, lol
About your work
Most of your work will consist of writing “events” and “dialogues”.
Event: scandals, accidents, etc. There’s a description of the event and a bunch of options on how to react to it.
Dialogue: branching conversation with a girl on the phone.
Both events and dialogues can be triggered by something (e.g., if a girl has too many obsessive fans, then there’s a chance of triggering a “stalker” event) or be completely random. You can get creative with the effects of decisions too, I can program pretty much anything.
The biggest challenges are coming up with the ideas (you’ll probably have to do some research on idol-related scandals, news etc), and writing interesting branching dialogues in the format of text messages.
It’s also important to write without penalizing “evil” decisions. Playing as a greedy asshole should be a legitimate strategy.
You’ll also be in charge of blog posts and a trailer script.
If you’re interested, post some info about yourself in this thread, or you can send me an email at sadambober@gmail.com The important points are:
- Do you know anything about real or 2D idols? It’s ok if you don’t, but if the idea of watching hours upon hours of cute girls doing cute things seems horrifying to you, then you’ll probably won’t have a fun time developing this game
- Examples of your work
