Love Live! School Idol Festival

Love Live! School Idol Festival is a free-to-play classic music-rhythm game enriched with adventure elements. Players follow the fate of Japanese high school girls. They set up a large pop band to save their school, which is threatened with closure. The title debuted in 2013 in Japan and has since attracted more than 40 million players worldwide. In 2015, the game also received a special version available in Japanese video arcades.

The production, created by KLabGames studio, is a part of a very popular multimedia project Love Live! which was launched in 2010 by several large Japanese companies in the entertainment industry. In its centre there are two nine-person girlsbands called µ's' and Aqours, whose fictional fates have been presented in comic books, several seasons of anime series and cinema films. Both groups have also released many singles, albums and performed at concerts all over East Asia.

Plot

Love Live! School Idol Festival was loosely based on stories told in the following seasons of the anime series Love Live! and Love Live! Sunshine! Sunshine!. The players follow the girls band, which sets up their school to increase the popularity of their school, which is threatened with closure due to a small number of pupils. Together with their team, they then take part in a national competition with other school groups of idols.

Love Live! School Idol Festival has a number of scenarios that focus on each of the several main characters in the bands µ's' and Aqours, as well as other schoolgirls. The plot of the title is completely linear and has been prepared in the form known from visual novel adventures. Players observe mainly dialogues and interactions of characters accompanied by animated portraits.

Mechanics

Love Live! School Idol Festival is a classic music-rhythm game, similar to many other games of the genre available on mobile devices. Players can choose from more than hundreds of original songs from the series. In order to start the game we complete a nine-person team using collector's cards depicting individual heroines. The cards are grouped according to their rarity and usefulness of special bonuses and power-ups activated during the game. We receive them randomly, spending virtual currency and resources gained while playing or bought for real money,

Control is based entirely on the use of the phone's touchscreen. The playing field is divided into several vertical lines. In the rhythm and tempo of the music, round icons move along them, which we have to touch at the right moment. Without making any mistakes we build a combo that multiplies our score. Each song is available in several difficulty variants. The higher it is, the bigger the prizes are waiting for us after passing it.

Technical aspects

Love Live! School Idol Festival has a high quality two-dimensional audiovisual setting. A large part of the dialogues were dubbed by Japanese actresses, including members of µ's' and Aqours.