Bandai Namco has revealed more details on The Idolmaster: Pop Links through a live stream held on November 8, 2020. This title is a casual puzzle game with a robust customization system for characters and idol units. As hinted by a prior teaser, it will feature characters from five ongoing franchise brands: The Idolmaster, Cinderella Girls, Million Live, SideM, and Shiny Colors.
The game’s producer Nao Kitajima provided a rundown of the gameplay features at the stream:
- Producers will be able to form a unit of 3 characters from The Idolmaster metaseries. In addition to Gacha, characters can also be scouted directly with Offers.
- The main gameplay segment is a 60 second-long puzzle game of linking same-colored boxes. You can also link boxes in a loop to remove more same-colored boxes included within. When a Fever Time occurs, the game will play the Producer’s favorite song from the series.
- Each idol can be equipped with score-enhancing skills that can be set to the Producer’s liking.
- Idols in the unit will see their friendship stats improve with each performance. The Producer can also use the ever-expanding Coaching menu to raise their stats and levels.
- Producers can even create and share their own music cover images by combining assets and frames provided by the game.
- Pop Links will launch with over 70 characters from The Idolmaster, Cinderella Girls, Million Live, Shiny Colors, and SideM. 15 songs—including the 15th Anniversary song “Nandodemo Waraou”—will also be available at launch. Many more characters and songs will be gradually added to the game.
Bandai Namco has also uploaded the first official trailer for the new mobile game. You can watch it right below:
[tnm_video layout=”mnmd-post-media”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYeqLT9Lihs[/tnm_video]
The Idolmaster: Pop Links will be available for Android and iOS mobile devices in 2021. An open beta test will be held on Android devices sometime within 2020.
