Backstage Pass

[h1]A friend of mine is going to cosmetology school... I told her all the tests will be make-up exams.[/h1] [h3]Storyline[/h3] Backstage Pass is all about Sian Goodin, a makeup artist diving into the world of showbiz. After an unexpected twist in her college plans, she decided to use her makeup skills to navigate the ups and downs of the entertainment industry. As the player, you decide Sian's journey – her friendships, career moves, and even potential romance. The game explores the challenges and excitement of working behind the scenes in showbiz. In the game, you can choose to be romantically involved with Adam, John, Benito, or Matthew. There are also other "romantic" options with [spoiler]Nicole or Alvin[/spoiler], a secret love interest and you can build a friendship with [spoiler]Lloyd[/spoiler]. If you're not into the romance part, different endings focus on other aspects of the story. Some parts of the game, like gender-bending, mental health issues, and the huge age gap between different love interests, felt a bit out of place. Sian is 18 years old. Benito is only 15 years old, it just feels creepy. Matthew is on the other hand 35 years old, I am not sure if that is any better. [h3]Gameplay[/h3] As you play, you'll dive into Sian's work life, taking on various jobs, earning money, and making decisions that shape her character and path. You can also pick from 80+ clothing options to give Sian her own style. The game includes stat-raising elements and some shopping activities. It's a mix of romance, stat-raising, and decision-making, and it took me around 20-25 hours of gameplay to find a bunch of endings (still haven't finished all the routes). My first ending led to me, unfortunately, being friend-zoned, because I raised the wrong stats. Backstage Pass is a nice Otome if you like stories with stat-raising elements and where your choices matter. There are a total of 15 different endings. However after a few playthroughs, I didn't enjoy the game as much because some events repeated themselves in different routes, and working on stats again got very boring. [h3]Graphics & Sounds[/h3] Backstage Pass art and background music are great, the characters are colorful, and you can see their personalities shine through in the way they're drawn. There are more than 80+ CGs in the game that show Sian's journey, and your choices and the clothes you pick change how she looks in them. The animations, done by Studio DEEN, make the characters move and act more lively. It's like watching a little movie as you play. The graphics add a lot to the story. The sounds in Backstage Pass are really good. The voice acting and the background music make the game feel like coming to life. [h3]Final Verdict[/h3] In short, Backstage Pass is a fun Otome game with lots of romantic choices and pretty visuals. Some parts might get a bit repetitive if you play it a lot, and the stat raising can be quite hard to get the preferred ending if you don't know what to focus on, but it's still a good pick for people who like stories and customization, especially in the showbiz world. [quote]Please follow our curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/4680120/]Otome Lovers[/url], if you'd like to see more reviews like this one! [/quote]

It was such a tough decision to decide whether or not I'd recommend this game... But I decided I don't. I love the art and design in general (except, some of the CGs looked a little weird and in a quite different artstyle), and I enjoyed the stat raiser aspect at first. I like planning and organizing in general, so I always figured I'd like stat raisers, and this one was my first. But sadly, I can't concentrate on both that aspect and the story itself; whenever I got to new story parts and had to stop skipping, it irritated me, because my mind was like "soo I'm gonna do exercises next and then.... noooo I don't want to read rn!". Then I got into reading the story but was thrown back to planning. BUT that would probably be the same with any stat raiser, so I don't really blame the game for it. Nor do I blame it for me getting the completely boring, neutral ending (it was just... over, one day) - since it's my first stat raiser. I was trying to get on Johns route, but I never use guides on my first playthrough. I did after and got on Johns and Benitos routes just fine. So the reason I still decided against recommending this game is, because the second I got to the romance scenes on Johns route with the help of a guide, I felt really disappointed. It is partly because of the nature of Johns route [spoiler]he's very distant, which felt sad but it's on purpose, it gets addressed in the story[/spoiler], but even after that issue got resolved, I still felt like "and I did all this work for... this?". And I did feel the same with Benitos route. I think the story part itself is just wayyy too short for me to feel close to the characters; just skipping through dates with all the same text didn't feel like actually spending time with them, I expected more romance scenes outside of the dates you do as a chore. [spoiler] Also, Benito being 15 and fighting with him about whether he should talk to his parents or not... I would've thought the story would be more about how they make a famous blog and work together for his magic career, not me feeling like I'm babysitting him and telling him ditching school and not talking to parents is bad.[/spoiler] There's also other small stuff that irked me; I love buying and assembling outfits, but the images of the outfits in the shop while buying are quite different than what it actually looks like on MC. (Save before buying!) I also couldn't really assemble them the way I want, since I had to wear whatever the character I'm romancing likes (as the guides told me, plus that way you get a small compliment at the beginning of dates). So if you follow that, you can only choose between two patterns / colors. If you love stat raisers, then this could still be the game for you, since the quality is pretty good. I personally wouldn't recommend it though, mainly because there's not enough romance for me. I wanted to play Adams route too, but it felt like a huge waste of time so I stopped.

There REALLLLYYY needs to be a MEH option for Steam Reviews. I felt like I needed to post a negative review to counteract the positive reviews and add balance to the reviews so people can understand that this game is just... OKAY. Not great and definitely not worth the price. Definitely not the worst game I have played. But just... OKAY. Definitely worth it when bought on sale, though. Firstly, I want to quote that I think it's funny that they pride themselves on being "the first Otome Game to be fully voiced in English". Because of that, you'd assume that EVERYONE would be voiced. They force us to play as a character (Sian, which we cannot change the look of or name of) yet they do not give her a voice for some odd reason (what, you want us to try to feel like we're in her shoes?) which was an odd choice because EVERY character is voiced except for her, so having random silences while everyone else talked was just odd. Yes, I could have turned off all voices, but I wanted the voice acting. It just made no sense why she had no voice. Also, something that bugged me with a lot of the voices (may have just been because I was wearing a headset) is that quite a lot of the voices were very... wet sounding in the mic and then some lines were louder or quieter than others in a paragraph which was a bit odd. So, I just wanted to point out that its biggest selling point kind of fell a bit flat. Next we'll come to the story versus romance/friendship versus stat raising. Because it's a stat raising game at its base, you lose a lot of the fun and romance of the story, because so much focus is spent on the stats. You have to have 2 stats at a specific amount in order for a character's route to pop which takes away a lot of the fun especially because it can easily be messed up and lead to a bad ending. Then you have the story. To me, for the first fully voiced English Otome game, I would have preferred a much more funner plot/story than this bland makeup artist/college kid in the business industry thing. It's just very slow and boring and honestly not a very good plot. Then when it comes to the romance/friendship thing, well because of the bland plot and the stat raising, you don't really get a lot of either because of how much focus is put on the other, so unless you're lucky to either have lots of time dedicated to fully playing a route or recording the gameplay and then picking it apart, it's not that fun. Speaking of Friendships and Romance routes... there are some pluses and negatives as well. First off, even though I liked the character, Benito's route is awkward because he is a 15 year old boy and Sian is 18, so it was quite an odd choice. I did like the idea of helping him reconnect with family and such but it was an odd route. Matthew was an adorable cinnaroll and my favorite of all the route. His shyness was adorable and he's quite pretty. John may be pretty but he's very disappointing because he's so emotionally dead, so he doesn't really show Sian any real love. He's twice her age and it makes things a little awkward especially when people try to make it out that Sian dating a 9 year old (someone half her age) wouldn't be as odd of a gap as her dating him. Although it's interesting that he is bisexual and it's revealed nicely and not over the top or anything like that, so it's cool to see a bi character portrayed properly. Adam is your cliche stereotypical best friend of your life that you end up marrying. While some people like that type of route, I always find that trope so boring so I just disliked the route and his character is just... meh. Then you have side characters that they don't track but you can either romance or befriend as well. Alvin is by far my most favorite, being the big; friendly nerd who tutors you. He turns out to be Asexual (possibly Aromantic?) which was done wonderfully. His character was great and even though his route wasn't clearly as loved as the others were, I still enjoyed it so much and wished he had gotten an after ending like the main love interests/friendships got, too. Lloyd is a friendship only, being a gay man. He's a fun soul and is a lot of fun to befriend. And then you have Nicole. She can be bratty so I wasn't really a fan of her. But it's cool to see that they offered a female romance/friendship option in this game for Sian. However, romance and friendship isn't forced though and you can go it alone which is cool as well. You're not forced into romance or friendship. There are some cool features like dress up, buying stuff (for fun or to gift to people or to find hidden events), and baking cupcakes as well. The art... is mixed. Character sprites are good. CGs are hit or miss with certain angles and such being odd. The intro and outro videos are great. The music is decent. Voice acting is okay enough. Other complaints: The weird plot with Allison during John's route with how suicide is handled. How Sian just randomly has panic attacks that don't match what she explains for why she has them (stressful situation and crowds.); she seems to randomly get them during the least stressful situations and they seem to be used for plot only or when the story has nothing else going for it. The drama over Sian's father, only for it to turn into something so simple; they act like he was dying or something and it was a bit too melodramatic. Overall, I'd suggest trying it if you like otome games and visual novels, but it just does not feel worth the price. And because of the negatives I mentioned above, I cannot recommend it.

I guess I'm not cut out for stat-building otome. I was playing through a route and everything seemed to be going fine, then suddenly credits roll. I didn't even get an ending, good or bad. It was just over. Clearly some stat or other was too low but there was no indication of what I needed to do differently. Because you need to enter your weekly schedule constantly to build your stats, it would have taken forever to try to figure out where I went wrong so I decided to move to a different route. Exact same thing happened. Credits with no ending and no hint of what to do differently. So I'm done. It's a shame, since I liked the characters and am legitimately interested in what their stories would be, but I just can't make myself enter all those weekly schedules again.

3.5/5。只打了john线但已经觉得好累了。此游包含养成类vn的通病（royal alchemist也是这样），故事太短小割裂太松散，没有连续的叙事；且数值判定并没有明显体现，没有奖励机制，所以模拟经营部分很无聊。角色都没有什么很独特很立体的形象，女主sian缺乏成长轨迹，各ro也都很普通，四个ro里有三个都是十八九岁的无聊青少年，而且心智都像初中生。 女主sian好像是亚裔混血+夏威夷人，她的妈妈叫ling而且用的语气词是aiya（哎呀），平时大家也是在吃pho。制作组有好多亚裔名字。 john的英式英语的音调和咬字都说得太诡异了，查了一下配音演员其实是美国人，都有有全配音了所以为什么不干脆找个英国人认真配一下？john那个[spoiler]好朋友lloyd[/spoiler]居然是他前任，我大惊，此外[spoiler]lloyd[/spoiler]和女主讲他和john的恋爱细节且不赞同女主和john的dating，这一点我总觉得emmmm，感觉就像女主掉进了他俩的play一样。角色塑造也很奇怪，在lloyd的口中john是个只喜欢acting而不在乎身边任何事的人，但故事开始的时候john似乎就已经当幕后producer当了很久了。 成就系统好像崩掉了，照着攻略打了一周目下来居然一个成就都没触发。

не смотря на то, что я НЕНАВИЖУ статрайзеры (потому что не умею в тайм менеджмент), я в каком-то щенячьем восторге от Backstage Pass если брать сюжетные истории, то без базового геймплея их кот наплакал, но зато насколько они приятны и насыщенны на маленькие ивенты! ВСЕ абсолютно ВСЕ персонажи чудесные лапочки, даже те, которых изначально позиционируют как нахохлившихся ежиков. никакой токсичности, никакой проблематичности, все абсолютно адекватны (кроме нескольких сюжетных моментов), все решается словами через рот, что редкость не только в визуальных новеллах, но и в жизни в принципе буквально отдыхала в этой игре играем мы за такую же полноценную героиню, как и нарисованные мужья, и одна блондинка жена, со своим характером, который показывается на протяжении всей игры, что тоже довольно редкое явление для игор подобного жанра имя изменить нельзя, ее по умолчанию зовут Шон, и ее имя озвучено в репликах. она очень взрослая для своего возраста (18 лет), собранная и серьезная, при этом смешливая и добрая. она боится больших скоплений людей и страдает от панических атак, в игре является профессиональным визажистом. не стесняется говорить о своих чувствах, не стесняется говорить о неприятных вещах, не смущается при каких-то околоэротичных моментах. абсолютно прекрасная протагонистка, просто chefs kiss единственная претензия - абсолютно отбитые костюмы, которые можно купить в магазине для примазывания к нарисованным мужикам. из всего, что можно купить, симпатичные лишь пара дизайнов, остальное лютый кринж всего полноценных роутов 4, и есть 4 дополнительных в основных роутах мальчики (и мужчина) с обложки (у каждого есть дружеский роут, романтический и ИДЕАЛЬНЫЙ РОМАНТИЧЕСКИЙ т.е эпилог после титров, никаких дедэндов): Адам (18 лет) - друг детства, вместе с Шон переехал с Гавайи. он начинающий музыкант, и пытается построить карьеру одновременно с учебой и, по выбору, любовными отношениями с героиней. чудесный мальчик, чудесный роут, полный любви, обожания и нежности Джон (38 лет) - менеджер Адама, по совместительству довольно популярный актер, пытающийся уйти от своей роли рыцаря в новое амплуа. сначала показан мудаком мудакеевичем, но по ходу роута становится мягеньким и галантным ухажером. очень любит актерствовать, основной конфликт роута выбор между героиней и работой Бенито (15 лет) - местный вундеркинд-фокусник, просто пытается жить эту жизнь и показывать всем волшебство. все было хорошо, до того момента, как я узнала, что ему 15 лет :) веселый, легкий на подъем, харизматичный - читать роут было очень приятно. возраст отлично показан в концовке, честно говоря словила с него прилично вайбов Мэттью (18 лет) - большая звезда, известная модель. до отвратительного замечательный застенчивый мальчик, люблю его всеми фибрами своей души. по ходу роута привстает с колен и начинает отстаивать свои точки зрения против властной матери. обожаю смотреть, как стеснительные персонажи борются со своей стеснительностью, что бы получить то, чего желают и 4 дополнительных (по 2 концовки на персонажа): Ллойд (38 лет) - известный продюсер/сценарист, который по счастливой случайности пригласил Шон участвовать в съемках нового сериала в качестве визажиста. он ужасно смешной, милый и невероятно заботливый. я до последнего ждала какой-то романтики от него, но в итоге получила концовку не которую ждала, но которую определенно заслужила, лол Элвин (19 лет) - роут максимально удаленный от шоубизнеса, приходишь позаниматься дополнительно со школьным репетитором и остаешься репетиторствовать с ним до конца года. забавный роут с милым гиком, неожиданно ударивший под дых ближе к концу личностной трагедией. есть подозрение, что он в одном из спектров аутизма Николь (17 лет) - очень приятный, романтический ЛЕСБИЙСКИЙ (!!!) роут, который никак не ожидаешь увидеть в этой игре ну и, конечно же, личные концовочки, куда без них. становишься успешной и богатой, но без нарисованного мужика, или блондинки жены, под боком, вариантов несколько игра довольно сложная в открытии CGшек, а так же романтических ответвлений в некоторых роутах. о предпочтениях некоторых персонажей тебе кричит все их естество - Элвину ты с ходу понимаешь что дарить, он гик, обожает игры, обожает сериалы; Адам музыкант, дарим ему музыкальный инструмент. а у некоторых тема подарка вызывает вопросительные знаки над головой: вот как можно было догадаться, что Джон любит готовить и ему нужно дарить трюфели, а Мэттью любит рисовать и дарить ему обязательно масляные краски? то есть я знаю ответ - ты проходишь игру разок кривовато, как умеешь, а потом уже собирая инфу по крупицам, пользуясь сейв/лоад функцией подбирать ответы и подарки как надо. но это такая скука!.. советую не тратить время зря, а сразу проходить по гайдам (которые в сети есть, но немного кривовато оформленные, но их хватает за глаза и за уши) стилистика в игре приятная, хоть и кривоватая отдельно бурчу, что деды мои деды в свои 38 выглядят на 20, но что поделать И ОТДЕЛЬНО БУРЧУ, ЧТО У НАШЕГО ПОТРЯСАЮЩЕГО ФОТОГРАФА ДЕЙЛА ТОЖЕ НЕТ РОМАНТИЧЕСКОГО РОУТА, НУ ЧТО ЗА ПОДСТАВА!!! мой любимый персонаж в общем, советую поиграть, 10 нон проблематик мужей, и блондинки жены, из 10

I really wanted to like the game. The managing of your character is fun, the art style and voice work is beautiful. But. There just should me MORE of everything: characters, plots, scenes, romance, tragedy. Lot of your time is spent clicking endlessly to advance the time with nothing happening to advance the story in any way. Also, the romance drama should be the salt of the game, but truthfully was repetitive and tedious.

[h1]Quite an entertaining visual novel game[/h1] [i]Backstage Pass[/i] is a fun visual novel or dating sim. Where you play the hard-working makeup artist and college student Sian Goodin. A sudden accident topples Sian’s plan for a relaxing college life. And she realizes she must use her skills and knowledge of the industry to make it through the year. You get to choose your character’s future. You can focus on your career in the entertainment industry or your schooling. All while trying to navigate the world of love. The great part about this visual game is not only that it consists of a mini game where you can bake cupcakes or it allows you to play dress up with your character‚ but this game has over 15 endings including men‚ women or no one at all. [spoiler]Yes‚ you can choose to not date anyone and focus on yourself.[/spoiler] It also has over 80 CGs with very good art style. Not to mention‚ the main character named Sian Goodin is quite a very relatable character. If there is anything lacking about this game‚ it would be either some of the stories are a little lacking and the gameplay can be quite repetitive at times. Overall‚ it is quite an entertaining gaming experience. The visual arts are quite stunning and the voice acting within are very expressive and well done. Most of the characters leave great impression. Whether who you get closer with or not‚ or what you are capable of doing and becoming are all depend on which stats you are raising.

I've tried to play this more than once, always having to resort to guides and generally not having a good time. A guide is entirely necessary to succeed in this game and as others have said it doesn't feel like playing -- it feels like following a checklist. The fact that I've spent 11 hours playing this and failed to get beyond the common route is a pretty good indicator of this.

Didn't really grab me when i started playing and I personally can't get over being called "Sian" due to personal associations with the name. I could get over it if all the characters didn't verbally say it but it was too much for me. Definitely should've looked into it more but still didn't really hold my attention in the first place.