Idol Manager
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Idol Manager Trailers
Idol Manager | Release Date Trailer
Idol Manager | "Less than glamorous" trailer #3
IDOL MANAGER | Trailer #1
Critic Reviews for Idol Manager
Idol Manager is a comprehensive and in-depth business simulator that presents its financial data in a format that is both pleasant and digestible. Creating content is fun because of its melting pot approach. Making personalized content would be fantastic if it weren’t so important to follow what the game determines is “cool.” As fun as it is to engage with Idol Manager’s business mechanics, watching a woman’s value reduced to a trading card puts a damper on things.
What starts as a challenging and potentially exciting management sim, Idol Manager fails to keep your attention in the long term. Once you overcome those early financial hurdles and the money starts rolling in, the challenge ends, making for a stale simulated day-to-day experience.
Idol Manager really needs a console release - the scope and design of the game makes it perfect for the Nintendo Switch in particular - but in the meantime, I can see myself spending a lot of time playing this on the PC. I'm not the world's biggest fan of idols (at least, idols that aren't digital and with aquamarine twintail hair), but I do find the culture behind them fascinating to study. Idol Manager is a far more thoughtful take on all of this than I was expecting, and consequently, I've found the whole thing to be fascinating.
If only the game played well. While my review of the PC version has been lost to the Internet ether, I did give it 4/5 and if it played well on the Switch here I would have scored it higher. I firmly believe that in concept and theme, Idol Manager is one of the best simulations I’ve ever played. If only it was not so infuriating to play with a controller. This game deserved far better.
Idol Manager is an enjoyable management simulator with a unique subject matter that hasn’t been seen in the genre before. The story has its moments, and any fan of idols will likely have a chuckle or make a grim nod at least once or twice. Additionally, it has some thoughtful difficulty and gameplay options in its free play mode that adds multiple ways for folks to enjoy a second or third playthrough. It does have some faults, most notably in its UI, but only so far as to be inconvenient. For fans of management sims and/or idol culture, Idol Manager is recommended.
There really is a lot to this game in the way of management and strategy, and you can tell the developers put a lot of time and effort into making sure you always have something to do. Idol Manager has the potential to become the game you ignore other new releases for, and if that doesn’t speak volumes about how good the game is, I don’t know what will.
There’s an analogy to be drawn here from comments made by the in-game characters about the appeal of idols. It’s not just about becoming a fan of someone who’s already talented and successful; it’s about following an idol as she develops her career. As someone who first played Idol Manager as a finished product, I don’t have that kind of emotional investment in the development process. But as in the game, hardcore and casual fans are attracted by different things, and that’s okay.
Glitch Pitch's Idol Manager is an engrossing industry angle on the Japanese idol scene, but stumbles a bit in the spotlight.
