Hatsune Miku Tycoon Available For Download Now
Readers might be surprised to see yet another game featuring the piapro characters available on the app store, and to be honest, so were we! It seems as though the Crypton Mobile Content Team are pulling out all the stops to bring us more ways to play alongside our favourite characters, huh?
Well, if you’re interested to see what it’s all about, you can read our coverage and review throughout this article. Then if you’re interested to try it out for yourself, the links to download are at the bottom of the page!
Development
We first got wind of a new game that was being developed on May 27th this year:
【Notice】
The mobile content team is currently developing a new game🎵
Looks like Miku and the gang are looking for the next place to play…?!
Make sure to keep an eye out to find out exactly what game it’ll be!✨
Then this was Tweeted on June 10th…
【Notice】
The mobile content team is currently developing a new game🎵
Miku and the gang are enjoying playing a four-player game…!?
And then came another sneak peak on June 14th:
【Notice】
The mobile content team is currently developing a new game🎵
Looks like Miku and the gang are playing “Trump”✨
Stay tuned for more information …!
…And after all this, the game was released on June 24th 2021, when we could finally find out exactly what it’s all about!
Game premise
Unlike with Amiguru Jump and Amiguru Train before it, Hatsune Miku Tycoon is a way to play a card game with your friends! Check out the English trailer for the game here (you can find the Japanese language one here) :
According to the trailer, you can play either against the computer, or with friends via Bluetooth:
And as you can see from the images on the official app store pages, you can apparently use stickers to communicate with other players, and earn points to get “items”:
Exactly what items we won’t know until we play the game though! It says that the game uses a “gacha” system, something which will probably make a few people groan (but one more gacha game can’t hurt, right?).
Full description from the app store:
Play Tycoon with Hatsune Miku themed playing cards!
There are a total of 27 varieties of cards to choose from.
– Multiplayer available!
Connect with friends nearby via Bluetooth to play together!
You can send stickers to each other while you play!
– Earn points to spend on Gacha!
Use points earned by playing the game to get stickers, icons, and other items for the game!
What will you get? Keep playing to complete your collection!
– Exciting Effects
Exciting special effects happen when 8 Flushes and Revolutions happen!
Be sure to pay attention to who shows up!
*Online play not supported.
I was quite surprised at first, since when I hear “tycoon” in relation to games, I tend to think of business simulation games, but “Tycoon” is also the name given to the Japanese card game Daifugō/Daihinmin here. If you’ve ever played that before, then you should be pretty at home in this app!
How to play
So once you’ve successfully downloaded the app, you’ll have to agree to Crypton Future Media’s privacy policy, and you’re ready to start!
After clicking the screen to start, you’ll be brought to the main interface of the game! You might notice that when you leave this screen and return later, which piapro characters shown will change too:
Now, on the interface there are the following buttons:
- Top left hand 𝅘𝅥𝅮 button: Where you can toggle the music settings. You can play a different background song if you want, and you have a choice between “Royal Symphony” by sizimi and “Personality Complex” by Heavenz.
- Top right hand cog button: Options. Change the stickers you want available to use during matches, your icon, your title, “card front” and “card back”. The “record” section shows information about matches you’ve played and there are also credits available here.
- The purple “NONAME” button: Click on this to change your display username! You can only have a max of 6 letters though, so choose wisely.
- The 5 hearts: Shows how much stamina you have in order to play. You use one heart each time you play a game of Tycoon, but if you need more, you can click on the yellowish plus (+) button next to them and watch an advert to receive one. They don’t regenerate with time, only adverts can do that.
- The NO ADS button: As to be expected, this game has ads, and lots of them. If you want your game to run smoother, you’ll almost definitely need to remove ads, which will cost a little money.
- Mission: Shows the missions you can complete as you play the game. When you start the game, you get the following missions – Play the game once, do one gacha pull, send one sticker, watch one video (advert), share the result [of a match] once, change card designs, change sticker settings, and then there are four missions related to your outcome in the card game (“tycoon”, “poor”, etc.). Once a mission is cleared, a new one will appear.
- Collection: Shows how many icons, cards, stickers and titles you’ve earned. There are 48 icons (you get 6 at the beginning already), 27 cards (you start with 2), 36 stickers (you start with 6) and 48 titles to collect.
- Play with somebody nearby: Uses Bluetooth technology to match up with another player/other players locally.
- Play solo: Play against the computer.
- Gacha: Can be used when you get a certain amount of points (500 pts). You can win things for your “Collection”.
- Possession points: The points you earn from playing Tycoon! Click on the yellow plus button next to the points to watch an advert and get more. One advert actually gave me 500 points straightaway, so it shouldn’t be too hard to earn items here (theoretically).
Otherwise, to earn points you’ll need to play the main game a few times! The playing interface looks like so:
- Orange arrow (top left): Exit the game
- Orange [?] box: tells you how to play the game
- Sticker: Allows you to play a sticker (e.g. as a reaction to the game’s progress)
Unlike playing Tycoon in real life, the game won’t let you choose cards that can’t be played (i.e. because of the rules), so it’s rather more simple, and can help you get the hang of rules and whatnot. This was my first time playing Tycoon, so all the rules felt rather daunting, but I definitely feel like the more you play, the more you get used to things.
Once the winners have been announced, you should have a “Double up chance“, where you need to pick one of three cards, and if you choose the correct one, you can double the points you got from the game. Points go towards gacha, so try your luck at getting the right one! Although if you choose the wrong one, you can actually watch an advert to get another chance (up to two times):
And now that I had 578 points, I did the gacha, which looks like this:
It’s a Miku Logic Paint S themed card!
Overall comments about the game
I’d personally say that, especially in comparison to Amiguru Jump and Amiguru Train, Hatsune Miku Tycoon has a somewhat more involved concept and play method, which is actually quite nice. I think Tycoon as a game is a really good choice, since the way it’s implemented means that you can slowly and casually learn the rules, and then even transfer that knowledge to real-life games.
I also feel like the game is far less harsh than most other games featuring similar currencies, since everything is pretty easy to come by if you just watch short adverts. So all in all, Hatsune Miku Tycoon seems like a decent step up from the previous apps we’ve seen featuring the piapro characters. Despite this, I did notice a few problems with the game:
- If you don’t want the game to access your location, it’ll repeatedly ask you until you actually allow it, or click “deny and don’t ask me again”.
- The game is a little buggy, and tends to crash after watching adverts, when switching between apps or when a notification in the game pops up.
- As with previous games, Hatsune Miku Tycoon reuses largely the same pool of artworks for the sake of prizes in the gacha, which can get a little boring for people who’ve also been playing the likes of Mikulogi or MikuColle.
- Other people have also said that they’d prefer having an online matching version of the game, which surprisingly isn’t available at all – you can only play locally via Bluetooth.
As for language settings, I can’t seem to find any, which raises the question of accessibility for fans across the globe, although we’d have to look further into this. Some people have also expressed disappointment that their devices aren’t compatible with the game, which could also be linked to region issues.
Many people in the comments on Twitter have had similar problems where the game hasn’t been working properly, so hopefully the development team will be able to get everything fixed up soon!
So if you’re a fan of card games and the piapro characters, look no further! Hatsune Miku Tycoon is available for iOS Android now from the links below!
Links
Announcement of release on the official Crypton Future Media blog
Announcement on the piapro blog
Hatsune Miku
- Crypton Mobile Contents Team Official Twitter (JP)
- Official Hatsune Miku Twitter and Facebook page (EN)
