News

K-Pop Academy lets you live out your idol-management fantasies, available now

K-Pop Academy is Hyperbeard's new musician-management simulation game

K-Pop Academy lets you live out your idol-management fantasies, available now
  • K-Pop Academy is a newly-released game from Hyperbeard studios
  • It lets you manage and train up your own K-Pop supergroup
  • That includes building your own custom training facility, planning meals and more

If there's any major cultural force of the last twenty years that most people wouldn't have seen coming, it's the near-outright dominance of K-Pop. Whether it's girl groups or boy bands, the South Korean musical style and industry has come to define a whole generation of fans. And for those of you who follow the genre, maybe Hyperbeard's new management simulation game, K-Pop Academy, is what you've been waiting for?

As you might be able to guess by the title, K-Pop academy is all about recruiting and training your own musical supergroup. That means, naturally, building up your own training facility, playing minigames and even creating your talent's favourite meals to level them up.

While it may be bog-standard as far as management simulations go, that's not necessarily a bad thing. And not having the baggage of a real group or musicians does mean that it offers the chance for more innovative aspects; like being more LGBTQ+ friendly, as the game's description attests. This is something infamously image-conscious music corporations would likely never agree to include in an officially licenced game.

yt
Subscribe to Pocket Gamer on
Big on branding

Of course, that may also be its weakness, as most K-Pop groups tend to have loyalist fans almost to a fault. So would they be attracted to a game filled with original characters instead? Well, K-Pop Academy is out now, so we'll have to wait and see exactly how it's received.

But if you're not a K-pop fan then don't fret, because there's plenty of games on offer for you to play in the world of mobile. Why not check in on our massive, constantly-growing list of the best mobile games of 2024 (so far).

And if you need other games to pick from, why not check in on the latest entry in our regular series of the top five new mobile games to try this week? Including all of our top picks from the week's latest releases!

K-Pop Academy icon
Download now!

Iwan Morris
Iwan Morris
Iwan is a Cardiff-based freelance writer, who joined the Pocket Gamer Biz site fresh-faced from University before moving to the Pocketgamer.com editorial team in November of 2023.