It was the fourth anniversary iM@S event in Japan today, which contained the official announcement of the iM@S Dearly Stars game we all already know about. The game announcement section, part of a much longer event which probably isn’t going to be of huge interest to anyone who doesn’t follow the drama CDs, was actually broadcast live over NicoNicoDouga. Attempting to watch it was, admittedly, something of a frustrating experience – demand far outstripped capacity, with the number of people watching reaching around 21,000 people at one point, meaning that freeloaders like myself were constantly getting the boot as more and more people willing to pay for their smiley videos jumped in.

Still, I managed to see the interesting stuff. The voicecast for the new characters was revealed for one. As implied by the title, it’s a little Kannagi-tastic in so much as Hidaka Ai is being voiced by Tomatsu Haruka – Nagi from Kannagi – whilst Mizutani Eri is Hanazawa Kana (Zange from Kannagi). Akizuki Ryo is being voiced by Sanpei Yuko, who, other than Elliot from S.ifr and a role in one of the Pretty Cure shows, seems to have mostly voiced young male characters like Eureka Sevens Renton.

As for the game, they are being careful to refer to it as an adventure rather than a simulation game like the others. Whilst the game flow looks to retain plenty elements from the other titles, the significant twist here is that the game is played from the PoV of the idol you select rather than that of the producer, presumably making it a far narrative-driven title. Auditions looks to be an event of far more dramatic significance than in the other titles, possibly the climactic linchpin of the games story “episodes”.

3D has been absent – as expected, all the character art seen thus far has been traditional visual novel style 2D character slates, admittedly with animated eyes and mouthflaps. It’s probably better than trying to render that stuff with the DS’s hardware. It does beg the question as to what the performances are going to look like – they’ve already shown that the game has a part edit menu in it, so I guess they are in there in some fashion. New song “Hello” was relatively catchy, if nothing particularly distinctive.

There’s not much else to say about the game right now, really.