Just wanted to say that I would also love to see this kind of developmeant for the Idol her slowly growing more and more gluttonous and demanding as the game goes on if you take that route. I know this is “just” a jam game so it’s very understandable that the mechanics are not that deep, but I see the dev wants to add more to it and a route like this would be dope.
4 Likes
After playing about 10 hours and having believed to have cleared the debt within 2 years. The thought of playing another 100 weeks/turns of the game have somewhat cooled my jets. My thoughts thus far!
It’s a very solid and respectable life sim. Stat bars go up. All good.
Interface and Stats
Hoo boy. Some of it's good, and some of it could use a revision. Those vertical bars? I really didn't like their design, sorry. For the screen real estate they take up, they are woefully underused. The changing gradients of the bars are uneven (why?) and the tiny, obtuse iconography (find the red dot on the red bar..) were all unnecessary. The important stats they do represent should have their own dedicated page in a stat menu.The most important menu in the whole game, the stat page, should definitely be reworked. The scrolling text and the needing to pick out and memorize multiple three digit numbers in each scan soon wore very thin. Simple stats like money should be ever-present on the screen.
Some of the stats felt less useful than others. Gluttony, Laziness and Affection probably don’t need to be ever-present on screen - the most relevant bits of information to the player in the gameplay loop are: Energy, Stress, Hunger and Money. All the rest can be relegated to a stats menu. While I do admire your dedication to unusual secondary stats, some of them were a bridge too far having very little impact or were just underbaked - things like Academia, Speech and the whole image thing while a cute idea, didn’t feel it made too much of an impact. I do like the idea of your image affecting your stream revenue and singles sales. If I could redesign this game I would lean into this more, with your actions having a push-and-pull effect on both your image as well as how your fans are distributed within this image matrix.
Skill Tests and Feedback
With the granularity of the skills and stats going all the way from 0-1000, the actual utilisation of those values feel very opaque. Now I don't mind some fuzzy logic and obfuscation, but some of the skill rolls/outcomes do feel quite arbitrary and the lack of feedback as to why, compared to how much the information is front loaded from the outset, ultimately feels incongruent and dissatisfying as a result. Match like for like; have fuzzy stats and fuzzy outcomes, and concrete stats with controllable outcomes.Follow the above, the opacity is exacerbated I feel by the lack of useful feedback when training skills. Yes, you’re told how much you accrue, but as one user posted above being told you gain +X isn’t as useful when you have to keep referring to a menu to seeing what the new value of the skill is and whether it levels up.
The Weight Gain Premise
One stat that continued to stick out to me was the Weight Tolerance. I did like how it set up some resistance to the Idol Girl (IG) gaining weight and that the player could be expected to meet increased resistance the more they deviated from the ideal image. That the stat was incredibly hard to shift (though this was probably in-part due to the very slow burn of the game's pacing) seemed to support this. While this all makes sense, the actions of the IG being able to glut herself on junk food seemingly in spite her fans feel a little loose of a narrative detail to me. The corpo presents the opportunity to capitalise on the IG's weight gainwith the social engineering gimmick, but it doesn't really address why the IG chooses to overeats or is gluttonous to begin with.A simple fix would be that either the player’s character as the manager or the IG herself have a desire of seeing IG as the first plus-sized idol and so the IG enacts this goal (eith her own or thrust upon her by the player) in direct challenge to her fanbase. Establishing that confrontation more from the outset with the IG and her desire to gain would make this a more satisfying premise that better justifes the weight gain tolerance mechanics.
It was easier with Draconic Expansion - dragons like to be greedy and self-indulgent. Harder to justify for regular folks who have an image to maintain haha
Things I Liked
So a whole slew of nitpicking aside, there were things I did enjoy! The thing that made th grind so much more bearable was the music! Top marks from me when it came to the music choices as they fit the bright and fun tone of the game to a tee! One detail I did like was when moving between locations that shared the same bgm (the office and the gym for example) the same piece of music would seamlessly play during that transition without restarting. A very neat touch!The IG’s personality, latent feedee feelings aside, was characterful and amusing. Your character writing is a strength so I’m looking forward to what the other IGs will bring to the table ala Draconic Expansion!
I also enjoyed the somewhat cynical commentary on the Idol industry as a whole. The need to grind out single after single, making the decision to cut corners and not caring or noticing the impact, and just the faceless nature of the fanbase does feel like a refreshing satire if you were to lean into this more.
Honestly, there’s a lot of potential here, more so here than with DE. And even though for me DE currently is my preferred game of the two for more of the novelty it brings to the management sim it doesn’t have to stay that way. With some polish and refinement of what’s been presented, you could have a cracker of a game on your hands.
5 Likes
Really cool game, liked the art, gameplay and all. The only thing that bothered me a bit was that the weight gain content is kinda like, just there to say? Yeah you can gain weight and there’s the tolerance thing, but for a fetish game the only real mention about the idols weight is when you go to the doctor, the first time that the idol gains weight and when she’s at the last 2 stages where she has a hard time getting out of bed, so I kinda missed more flavorful content, like the PC commenting on her weight, or other characters mentioning it.
2 Likes
In regards to Idol-chan’s desire to gain weight and from what I can tell from the story, her initial worry about her weight was in regards to the possibility of her getting fired from the company. Once the company rep told her they didn’t mind her gaining weight and in fact encouraged her to gain weight in order to help to promote a body positive image, she was happy to be allowed to indulge her love of food, which is why she gets affection bonuses when you feed her burgers at high gluttony. I suppose that it could have been made more clear in the cutscenes but I seemed to understand it pretty easily. I would also have liked to see more cutscenes of her reacting to getting bigger, but I’m sure there wasn’t enough time in the jam.
In regards to the Weight Tolerance mechanic, I think there’s some miscommunication or unimplemented mechanics going on. I was originally under the impression that simply being at a slightly higher weight than was tolerated would help push the tolerance up, but on further testing it looks like the only thing that effects Weight Tolerance is how much money you’ve put into the fat acceptance campaign ($5000 for 5000 immediate tolerance +100 extra per week).
2 Likes
I viewed weight tolerance as what the fans considered “upper limit” and would quickly leave once they realized idol-chan were over the threshold since idol culture is about the whole of their lives rather than just singing
1 Like
I love the game thus far can’t wait for more stuff on it to be working like the pop button challenge or ask what she wants to work, etc. love the content and look forward to updates on this game.
2 Likes
Can there be an update where you can choose what measurement your idol weighs? By the way I’m American no clue kilometers kilogram is either
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tbf, all that matters is the number goes up
1 Like
probably not, since RPG maker variables don’t store decimal points (unless there’s a plugin for that I’m not aware of). I decided to use kilos this time because I felt that using imperial measurements this time would be strange for a game loosely based on the japanese idol business.
If this helps, the general conversion rate for kilos to pounds is: 1 Kilogram = 2.2 pounds. So whatever your weight is, double it and then add a little to that.
do you want it in football fields or hotdogs per square mustard stain
2 Likes
Haha very funny Make fun of me because I’m American and doesn’t know what a kilometer is.
2 Likes
a yard is about a meter, so 1000 yards is close to 1KM
Some unorganized and probably unwarranted thoughts on this, since I’ve gone through it with one of my own projects:
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The concept of an integer doesn’t really exist in Javascript, where all numbers are floating-point numbers. RPG Maker ignores this by simply flooring, or cutting off anything to the right of the decimal point, but a plugin that works around this is only a few lines of code. I wrote up something for MV/MZ with a hardcoded list of variables not to floor, but I could easily spin that out to a full plugin with settings for a user-defined list of variables, the number of digits to the right of the decimal to store, and even a choice to round the last part of the decimal value rather than floor it. If anyone’s interested in such a thing, let me know.
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If the weight is stored in kilos you can still multiply out by 2.2 and let RPG Maker floor it anyways - absolute worst case, you’re undercounting the weight by just under a pound. If you’re doing this calculation through Control Variables rather than a line of scripting, you’d have to put 2.2 as a Script rather than a Constant under operands, because RPG Maker doesn’t seem to like people putting decimals there. You can also cheese it a bit by multiplying by 22 and then dividing by 10 if the Script box scares you.
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If you really want that extra bit of accuracy you can go a bit further with the magic of the modulo command, at the expense of an extra variable slot. For example, in some pseudocode that should translate well to Control Variable commands:
var001 = 54 //weight in kilograms var002 = var001 //this will eventually be the weight in pounds var002 *= 22 //54*22 = 1188 var003 = var002 //var3 will eventually be the 'left over' weight var003 %= 10 //1188 % 10 = 8 var002 /= 10 //1188/10 = 118.8, which RPG Maker will floor to 118 show text: "Idol-chan weighs \V[2].\V[3] pounds." //expected output: "Idol-chan weighs 118.8 pounds."
So yes, it’s feasible, but it’s definitely a bit much work for a small benefit, especially for a game jam project where it doesn’t necessarily fit anyways. Still, I’m interested in seeing where this project goes if you continue to update it!
2 Likes
I seem to not be good at this management system type game because choosing the endurance idol and then I after several weeks my idol got too stressed and she left and I got fired and it was game over, but I needed to do a commercial every month or else I would get fired as per the contract. Anyone have a good optimal strategy? Also for some reason I couldn’t change the names of the characters.
1 Like
well, you don’t get fired if you fail to shoot the commercial every month, but the debt does increase by 20k if you forget.
As for a strategy, having her watch movies at home, in the theater, playing video games, going to the beach in the first month, an exercising when you have low laziness are all ways to remove stress. Basically, just don’t push her too hard at the start. You have to tread water a bit at the start, learn how to cook to earn more at the restaurant, with that extra money you start needing to work less which allows you to build up skills, which will then earn you more money and actually start progressing on what you need to do.
For the beginning of the game, you really do just need to focus on keeping her not stressed and doing the commercial once per month. Once money starts to pour in, the game opens up a bit more. Just don’t focus on academics for the current build, since the main use of it is bugged at the moment.
3 Likes
Working on a new update for the game.
Will have some new events, rebalancing, bug fixes, reworked art, new idol selections, and NPC artwork.
@Mr_Goufats_X has very kindly offered to help with art assets, as seen with the new art for Ms.Blake, and of course, she’ll be able to gain weight too now.
Biggest rebalancing I have done so far, is now the game is only 3 years long instead of 4. I felt the game was too long, and after my playthrough I ended up nearly maxed out stats before year 4 even started.
27 Likes
Great game! 
Thanks for working so hard on it!
For those curious yes there is an immobile ending but… it isn’t as exciting as it sounds.
I didn’t notice much of a change and was a pretty short event but still cool.
Love the art too! Excited for the manager part to be added
1 Like
yeah, the endings were very much a victim of being done on the last day
Glad you liked it though
2 Likes
This game looks super promising. You have very unique game ideas and they are always a pleasure to play. I think a finished game from you would easily top my favorites list
4 Likes
Please tell me the third idol choice is a goth girl, that would be the grand slam and complete the gaining trio with the spoiled princess and the gym bunny.
Love to see this is still being worked on 
3 Likes