It was only a rough start to me tbh. Try to keep laziness low by going to the gym, it gives you more actions as well as helping with stress a little bit. Also try and sneak in a couple acting training and do mukbang shows, they help a ton with money after you start getting some fans. You have to strike a balance at first and you can get unlucky with RNG but after that it snowballs pretty easily
2 Likes
After playing this game for a bit, I think it’s pretty neat but I think it could use more variety. It seems like all the stuff that’s going to get added later is just more skills to practice (like making a song or dancing) which I don’t think will help the game as it stands, right now it feels difficult to build up skills while managing the idol’s stress. Adding random events or having more things change as the idol gets bigger would help a lot, as it stands it almost feels like her gaining weight is an afterthought. Also, it seems like the 3 vertical bars don’t update at all? Like the red one updates for the idol’s weight but the weight acceptance thing never changes no matter how many fans she has (or even if you use the social engineering thing to increase fat acceptance.)
2 Likes
I’m sorry if the game feels aimless right now, but it’s (hopefully) just because the intro isn’t done yet. I’ll make sure that it gives some pointers in the right direction during the intro though. As for the pointers themselves, while it may seem run against what you want to do right away, the best way to balance money and stress is to: Make a salad, work at the restaurant, order a burger, then go workout (you can use 2 frozen meals instead, and it is cheaper, but it raises laziness). The next, do pretty much the same except instead of work, I’d watch TV at home (especially now that I rebalanced that job to only add 15 stress, instead of 20. it was 20 before because I didn’t add the commercial yet, so at the time that was balanced). Potato chips can be your best friend since they also lower stress without taking time. During summer (first month), the beach also isn’t a bad place to lose stress since it’s free (though not as time efficient as television). Just remember to make time for the commercial, and DON’T use the commercial as a means to make money, think of it as an obligation you have once per month that you can earn a bonus from. I’d also make some time to play video games on your own time, since streaming is a good way to make quick cash and fans without much effort. The main way to get fans isn’t in yet, and it’s what I’m working on today (releasing singles using singing, dancing, and writing skills or by just doing whatever the corpos tell you if you fall short in one of those areas). Also, don’t store energy unless you need to, since this raises laziness (and having 0 or less energy at the end of the day lowers it).
The last 3 sizes aren’t implemented just yet, I’m adding one per day/release of the demo.
@Muffintopmanor1 I’m not sure what you mean by “restaurant gluttony” since there are a few places where gluttony affects something there. What specifically caused the soft lock (which meal, part time job etc.)? Also I fixed the clinic bug now, but the current build that’s available doesn’t have anything there anyway.
@Skinny_Guy I took your advice and while the cursor thing is still in the game, I did make it so all the locations with only one thing to interact with will just bring up that menu instead. My plan was to have more things to interact with in each location, but for the jam I just don’t have time to do that.
Fixed the acting course from displaying the total acting score as well as it taking you to the library.
The overall goal of the game is that is basically a sandbox game, but if you want a decent ending you need to raise 200,000 in corporate earnings (the debt). Main way to do this is the commercials and singles once you have enough acting, eating, (or singing, dancing, and writing respectively) and fans to do it well. You can also hand over cash in lump sums of 10,000 from other sources at the corporate offices.
Idol-chan (place holder name, sort of, you’ll be able to change it as well as your own once the intro is place) will say more if she’s stressed or at weight level 2 (pudgy). I will have her say more eventually (might be for the jam, might not be, depends on time). An extra option on the stats button for a help section’s a good idea, I think I’ll add that if there’s time 
Random events will be a thing, bur right now I just need base functionality to be ready before I add some additional details.
The weight tolerance feature takes time before it really takes effect, if you want it to move faster you
need to run another few campaigns.
5 Likes
love it so far! would love to see a full release post jam!
2 Likes
Those tips help a lot, if the intro gives some pointers on what to do then I think the final product (for the Jam at least) will be a lot easier to play. Also, the “restaurant gluttony” thing is referring to how with some of the meals, if the idol is gluttonous enough to ask for seconds she’ll ask for them infinitely and if you say no eventually the various action buttons stop appearing in locations. I think this only happens with all of the burger meals after the first two, at least from my experience. Looking forward to further updates, this has a lot of potential and is already pretty fun.
3 Likes
The gone platinum meal glitches the game so if you enter another place on the map, your icons disappear and lose functionality.
2 Likes
Did some rebalancing, main thing was that I made stamina better at giving you energy and stress isn’t as cruel as it was before.
4 Likes
Also had to nerf the hell out of streaming. I know it was a nice source of income in the early game, but once you got around 100000 fans, it just became a money printer. So now it’s more reflective of how it should be where it’s rough going at the start in terms of money, but you still gain the same amount of fans as before. If you want to know how absurd it was, once you had the max amount of fans the meter expects you to potentially get (2 mil.) you could earn 400000 grand from a single stream.
There’s also now a cap on it, 1k for mukbang and gaming, 1.25k for lewd.
The restaurant now pays more to compensate for the early game
1 Like
I didn’t know stamina gave energy too, i tought that just having laziness under ~10 made it so that you have full energy bar
2 Likes
Yep, Stamina (used to be intervals of 100, now I changed it to intervals of 50) gives energy. Low laziness also gives it. Being lazy or fat takes it away.
So basically there’s long term benefits to working out that you don’t lose. So if you do it a ton in the early game and then never again, you could still have +4 stamina or so from just the stamina points alone.
2 Likes
Ok, then how much energy does every weight level take? Wouldn’t +20energy(if you reach 1000 stamina) be too much. I’m at the start of the week 3 of November 1st year and i already have 178 stamina
2 Likes
each weight level starting from 2 takes 1 energy, laziness at 75 or higher takes (for every 5) takes 1 energy.
every 50 points of stamina and low laziness starting at 25 (and every 5 points lower than that) gives 1 point of energy.
If your energy at the start of the new week is higher than 10, it will be set back to 10. If it is lower than 3, it will be set to 3.
3 Likes
Idol Maker: Refined Palette by failmuseum (itch.io)
Version 3 is up now, main things that got changed were balancing changes, weight stage 8 has clothing now, and the majority content surrounding making singles is done (only thing missing is a way to reliably increase the “image” stats, but just raise one of the other skills more to compensate, since they are equally important).
Corporate offices (needed for turning in the singles) unlocks after becoming pudgy or the end of December, which ever comes first.
if you are wondering why she sucks at everything when making singles, it’s because you need to have at least 251 in that respective stat before she can do it herself (basically, you need to be better than the average industry professional first. Whenever the corpos do stuff it’s always as if you have 250 in that skill)
2 Likes
Hey man, enjoying the game. Just here to report a small issue with the acting courses: The text implies that you gain that much acting score, when in reality it’s telling you what that score’s now set at. Functionally the same thing but players could come away with the wrong read.
2 Likes
And I also seem to have run into an issue where clothing won’te quip properly. Not sure what the deal with that is.
1 Like
I was thinking that for a project made quickly for a jam, this one is an extremely good one. I honestly believe it would be worth expanding (no pun intended) onto, refining gameplay, possibly adding different looks for the idol or different idols entirely. The art is also not bad considered the cartoony, goofy style chosen and could be even better with a little bit of work. For example I did some grinding (doesn’t really take too long honestly) to see what the bigger stages look like and while I like the double belly choice, I think the fat could be improved. I’m no digital artist and can’t paint to save my life, but I have tried my hand at making a more natural spare tire making it look less Michelin-man style:
A more talented digital artist could do infinitely better and the quality would likely improve tenfold. I think it’s worth considering making the effort, because this is a pretty fun game to play already, much more so than many that have taken far longer to develope
4 Likes
Not sure if it’s a major bug, but when i take singing lessons, the dancing stat increases instead of the singing stat.
1 Like
Honestly thinking of making 2 more idols for the post jam version, one for each of the 3 “classes” you choose from at the start of the game. The current one would probably be the Charisma focused character, so I’d have to make one for the Stamina boosted start, and one for the Intelligence boosted start. Whenever I choose to do that, they’ll probably start as just skins before I give them more personality.
6 Likes
I noticed two bugs while playing today. One was that acting lessons actually take 4 actions instead of 2 like it says, and a bigger one where if you end the week with a finished set of lyrics and choreography for a single, you end up in a minor soft lock where you can’t release a new single or create new lyrics/choreography. I like what the song stuff adds to the game, though I unfortunately ended up locked out of it kinda early on lol.
1 Like
found the first bug myself and I got that one fixed.
did you record the lyrics too? Because to make a new song it’s a three step process before you turn it into to the corporate office. You have to write it, sing/record it, and make the choreography.