THE iDOLM@STER: Shiny Colors is the fourth original mobile game in the The iDOLM@STER franchise and the seventh mobile game overall. It launched on April 24, 2018.
The game focuses on the idols of 283 Production, originally boasting sixteen idols to raise un four different idol groups: the "main" unit Illumination Stars, the rock-themed L'Antica, the sentai-themed Houkago Climax Girls, and the classic girlish unit Alstromeria. Starting from the second to the fourth anniversary, the cast gradually expanded, adding Straylight, noctchill, and SHHis into the roster, with a total of twenty-five idols.
In 2023, a spinoff titled THE iDOLM@STER Shiny Colors Song for Prism launched on November 14. In addition to including all of the idols from the main game, it also introduced a new unit named CoMETIK. They were added to the main game on December 11, increasing the roster to 28 idols.
A 12-episode anime
by Polygon Pictures debuted in theatres on October 27, 2023 before starting its television broadcast on April 5, 2024. A second season was announced to screen in theatres on July 5, 2024 before airing in Fall of the same year.
Shiny Colors provides examples of:
- Action Commands: The only skill/reflex-based gameplay aspect. After selecting an appeal and a target judge, a cursor will slide along a bar with different sections, and your goal is to hit the white section for an Excellent. The Good and Excellent sections shrink and the Bad second grows as your idols take Mental damage, all the way until Excellent requires pixel-perfect timing...though if you get to critically low health, the Excellent section suddenly grows large again.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Link Appeals for the five-member units (L'antica and Houkago Climax Girls). By the time you get to the fifth round of appeals, the live performance has likely already gotten a decisive winner whose lead cannot be overcome, if the live performance is even still going by turn five at all. This can be averted in certain content with very high HP judges such as GRAD finals.
- Cast Herd: Much like THE iDOLM@STER: SideM before it, the cast of this game can be easily sectioned off into their idol groups.
- Combination Attack: Link Appeals, triggered when an idol uses her personal appeal skill after the rest of her unit has already done an appeal recently (or in the case of Noctchill, just specific other members of the unit). Pulling off one is usually enough to clinch a given judge.
- Continuity Cameo: If one looks closely at the magazines for Vocal, Dance, and Visual, one can see references to rival idol groups in other continuities; the Dance stat takes from Red Queen of The IDOLM@STER.KR, while the Visual stat features the 765 anime's Shinkan Shoujo.
- Crossover: Received one with Oshi no Ko in 2023. That manga's main idol unit, B-komachi, becomes a trio of playable units and get their own story.
- Epic Fail: Your idol's training sessions have a chance to fail based on her current stamina. If you have a particularly high chance to fail, the possibility of the Failure being upgraded (downgraded?) to a Catastrophe rears its ugly head. Catastrophes instantly set your Tension meter to 0 and cause your idol to lose stats in the double digits, frequently more than if you had succeeded. A single Catastrophe is often reason enough to instantly quit that production run and start over.
- Golden Ending: Only present in W.I.N.G., an idol's True End can only be unlocked by winning the grand finals with a total of at least 500,000 fans accumulated. Doing so rewards you with a final cutscene to finish the story of that idol's production card and a rather large amount of Feather Jewels.
- Jiggle Physics: Song for Prism uses 3D models for the idols, and one cutscene featuring the Illumination Stars during dance practice shows Mano and Meguru's chests noticeably bouncing.
- Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Comes in no less than three flavors:
- The bond level between the producer and the idol in a production run. Increasing the bond level improves the efficacy of their Memory Appeal. Bonus points for five actually being the maximum level.
- The bond level between the idol and her support members in a production run. These bond levels increase the likelihood of an Excellent training session happening.
- Finally, the trust level is one that carries over between production runs. Increasing an idol's trust level usually rewards you with items.
- Limit Break: Memory Appeals. They get stronger as you increase your idol's affection towards you. They can also be further bolstered by a Link Appeal.
- One Stat to Rule Them All: Zigzagged in a rather heavy-handed way. Auditions and Fes Lives will almost always have a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place popular stat amongst the three (Vocal, Dance, and Visual). The judge for the 1st place stat is worth significantly more stars than those in 2nd and 3rd place, such that obtaining both the Last Appeal and Most Appeal for the 1st place judge is an immediate victory or at least a tie for first place. The zigzagging part comes in due to the game consistently rotating which stat is the 1st popular appeal. So while there will always be a OStRTA, which particular stat that is at any given moment is in constant flux, by design.
- Set Bonus: You are highly encouraged to build Fes teams out of idols from the same unit rather than mixing and matching haphazardly. Idols get a bonus to all their stats with other members of their unit present, and Link Appeals requires the other members to have used appeals before them. Certain Fes seasons will increase this bonus even further.
- Shout-Out: Kaho actually strikes the Kamen Rider OOO Henshin pose in an animation.
- Super Move Portrait Attack: Depending on the rarity of your Center idol. Rares simply have a cut-in of their talking sprite. SRs have a cut-in of their Fes art with a bit of animation. SSRs get a several-second-long animated video, which culminates in their Fes art pose.
- Trapped in Another World: A few events have the Producer get stuck in worlds with spooky residents that look and act like the idols he produces:
- One of the Halloween events has him in a world with L'Antica lookalikes,note only to later find himself in a world with Illumination Stars lookalikes.note His goal for the former has him simply trying to find his way back home, while the latter has him help Mano and Meguru's counterparts rescue a captured Hiori's.
- Another event has him in a flying train with counterparts for both the Houkago Climax Girls and Alstroemerianote . Here, he has to help Tenka's counterpart protect a small pegasus.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Some stronger appeals use your idol's Mental to be used. They do recover after the live performance ends, though.
