Video Game / BanG Dream! Girls Band Party!

Due to its nature as a tie-in Video Game to the BanG Dream! franchise, spoilers partaining from the anime series and specials will be unmarked ahead. You Have Been Warned!

"Let's start our band life!"

BanG Dream! Girls Band Party! is a Rhythm Game for iOS and Android, as part of the BanG Dream! multimedia franchise. It was originally developed by CraftEgg and published by Bushiroad, released in Japan in 2017 and in the rest of the world in 2018. As of 2024, the game is exclusively developed by Bushiroad. A Nintendo Switch version of the game was announced on the game's 6th anniversary and released on September 16th, 2021.

Like with many idol rhythm games for mobile, the game has you arranging a deck of cards into a band, with each card showing unique art of one of the game's 25 main characters and having its own power rating and skill. The band's total power rating influences the maximum score that the player can earn on a song, while skills activate upon hitting yellow-colored notes and have different gameplay-related effects such as temporarily raising the amount of points per note, converting off-beat hits into Perfect hits, and restoring the player's health.

Unique to this game is Multi Live mode, a Co-Op Multiplayer mode where the player gathers in a team of up to five players, each of which only uses the center member of their current band, to play one song together. When any player triggers their card's skill, the skill applies to all players, allowing players to help boost each other to a high score or save each other from failing out. All players' scores are combined into a single total team score, with more emphasis on playing well as a group over who gets the most points.

The game also expands on the series' lore, having a main story campaign where you, along with the rest of the staff of Live House CiRCLE, try to get five bands together for a big multi-band event.

The game itself has a tie-in mini animation series in BanG Dream! Girls Band Party!☆PICO, which involves the five original bands (with Morfonica and RAS also appearing later in the series).

See also Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!, a Vocaloid Licensed Game spinoff of the Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA series that is also developed by CraftEgg (in collaboration with Sega) and features extremely similar gameplay.

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Examples:

• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If you have Live Boosts remaining, you have to use them to play songs. But if you are at zero Live Boosts, you can still play. While you obviously won't get reward multipliers, this is extremely useful if you are focused on practicing or going for the one-time score and combo rewards (which are not affected by Live Boosts).
    • A practice mode was added in the v4.0 update of the JP version, which enables you to freely practice a song regardless if you have flames or not. Dropping the life bar to zero won't kick you out of the song, but there will be 90% reduction of points earned.
    • An update was made to the Japanese version in 2021 that allowed the player to retry a song without losing any Live Boost. Further updates eventually changed the Live Boosts consumation: you will not lose any if you fail or retire the Live Show, and you can play without Live Boosts anytime even when you still have them remaining.
  • The game has an "Auto Set" feature for area items and each of your teams; it will set items and members for you based on your attribute and band preferences. This is very useful in events, which heavily encourage using the correct characters and attributes in order to earn Event Point multipliers.
  • You cannot use a card for Skill Practice or exchanging for Michelle Stickers if you only have one of it, preventing the issue of using up a valuable card by accident.
  • In many other games with similar mobage structure, there's a gacha for low-rarity cards that are paid for with "friend points". Friend points and low-rarity gacha don't exist in this game; instead, all of the 1* cards in this game are obtained simply by reading chapter 1 of each Band Story.
  • In FULL songs, to cushion the overall very long (and generally difficult) track charts, the amount of lifebar damage you take from a BAD or MISS are halved, essentially doubling your lifebar (and also effectively doubling life gain from Life Boost skills).
• Anti Poop-Socking: Downplayed. Live Boost, this game's rough equivalent of stamina in other mobile "free-to-play" games, only influences rewards. You can always play songs without Live Boost.
• Anti-Rage Quitting:
  • In multi-lives, a Fever gauge appears in the measures leading up to the refrain for all players and each player fills their gauge up by hitting notes. If all five players fill their Fever gauges up in time, all players will earn double points from notes hit during the refrain. This is partially to discourage players from just force-exiting in mid-song just because they ran out of health early (the x0.1 score penalty for draining out doesn't affect filling the gauge).
  • If you constantly disconnect in mid-song, or even in the pre-song menus after the party is locked in, you'll be temporarily banned from Multi-Lives for a while. So, no ragequitting just because you have to play "Guren no Yumiya" for the ten millionth time!
  • Originally, during a "VS Live" Event, stamina is spent once you get to the song selection menu, meaning you already lost your stamina before getting to pick your song ^note Nowadays, stamina is only spent after you clear the Live Show instead. You also don't get to see the songs others picked until you pick your song. This discourages people from rage quitting because they have to play a song they hate. Also, should anyone disconnect in spite of that, or because of a bad internet connection, it won't force the other players to go back to the first VS Live menu, meaning they won't get punished because someone else decided to rage quit.
• April Fools' Day:
  • For April Fool's Day 2020 (and the surrounding time), the English server added a temporary Regional Bonus song... children's novelty song "Baby Shark," the popularity of which was petering out and which the target audience was likely to be thoroughly sick of. ^note  When region exclusive songs were announced due to the fact that certain songs from the JP server had licencing issues, the feedback survey released soon after was spammed with joke requests such as Baby Shark, Despacito and Darude - Sandstorm
  • For April Fool's Day 2022, Craft Egg released a web-based Dating Sim named "Girl's Blossom Project ~Unbelievable True Love~", in which you play as Himari Uehara who attends Garupa Private Academy. At this academy, there is a legend that a cherry tree blooms once every 10 years, and if you wish for happiness together with someone special to you underneath said tree, the wish would come true.
• Arrange Mode: In addition to the standard Free Live and Multi-Live modes, the game has the following for some events:
  • VS Live, which is similar to Multi-Live except players gain additional rewards based on their score ranking at the end of the song. Furthermore, to discourage ragequitting and to avoid creating an inconvenience for other players, players who quit before the song begins will not cause the room to be disbanded. The song plays and scores like in Free Live, meaning that there's no Fever and your own party member's skills activate instead of you and the other players' leaders, but like in Challenge Live (see bellow), using the correct members gives you an additional Band Power boost.
  • Challenge Live, a variant of Free Live that requires event-specific currency to play (which is acquired by playing normal Free Lives and Multi Lives). Your song pool is limited and you gain event point boosts not only based on Band Power and Area Item buffs, but you also gain an additional boost if you have the correct members in your deck.
  • Team Live, a mode added in the Japanese version in July 2021, which is similar to Multi Live except there are two teams of 5 players instead. Players can choose one of the event's two groups, and you will be matched only with players in the same group. Your team can play against a team for other group or from your group.
• Artistic License – Medicine: In the "Don't Leave Me, Lisa!!!!" event, the members of Roselia have ice cream during their practice break. While the others can do this with no ill effects, vocalists are advised to stay away from dairy products while they're singing or in the time leading up to it, since it messes with your vocal cords. The fact that Yukina, who is so serious about music that she renounced fun for years and had to re-learn how to make friends only after she finally realized that she was being a hypocrite about everyone else's emotions in their band story, eats her ice cream without protest and goes right back to singing seems a little out of character.
• Big Sister Worship: This is actually a point of conflict between the twins Sayo and Hina, and in Roselia's band story, ties into how much Ako looks up to her older sister Tomoe, as she drives Ako to look for her own sound instead of following after Tomoe.
• Breather Episode:
  • The "Umbrella in the Autumn Rain" event story is when Sayo's Character Development reaches its peak, and she and Hina are able to patch up their relationship. The following event, "Tearful Smile Anchor Runner", is a light-hearted event focusing on Hanasakigawa's sports festival.
  • "Girl's Anthology", a silly Afterglow-oriented event focusing on the girls attempting to come up with some ideas for a manga (many of which are quite ridiculous), is sandwiched between "Double Rainbow" and "Neo-Aspect", both of which contain some pretty heavy moments.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Stars are used to refill your Live Boosts, continue after failing a song in single-player, and most importantly, drawing from the gacha, and can be obtained through various means such as login bonuses, mission and event rewards, reading stories, and purchasing them with real-world cash.
• Cap: Cards are level-capped based on rarity. For 1* cards, the cap is fixed at 20. For 2* cards, the maximum level is fixed at 30. For 3* cards, it is initially 40, but can be raised to 50 after using up resources for Training the card. For 4* cards, the initial cap is 50 and can be raised to 60.
• Clark Kenting: Michelle, as always, but it's not just her. The Happy Phantom Thief, also known as Seta Kaoru, is terrible at keeping her identity hidden, by still using words like "fleeting", which Kaoru is literally the only character in the cast to use. Both Misaki and Kanon quickly realize who it is, but Kokoro and Hagumi think Kaoru missed the ship and the Happy Phantom Thief is a completely different character all together.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: How multiplayer works. Everyone's score is combined into a single team-wide score. Each member uses only the lead member of their current main band, but when anyone activates a skill, it applies to all players. Notably, while other idol games often have this mode as a time-limited event, Multi-Live in this game is always available, and playing it regularly is highly encouraged due to giving out more rewards than playing solo.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: An optional toggle lets you color notes depending on whether they fall on an eighth-beat or not.
• Commonality Connection: Misaki tries this with Arisa in the event "Sakura Blooming Party," perceiving that Arisa is likewise boggled and infuriated by Kokoro's dumb rich antics. Arisa responds by shutting her out because she's trying to hide her negative reactions and put on an unflappable Yamato Nadeshiko persona instead to be polite.
• Cover Version: The mobile game has the bands performing songs from various popular anime series such as Lyrical Nanoha, K-On!, and Attack on Titan.
  • There's a cover of Masayoshi Minoshima's Bad Apple!! (ft. Nomico), from Touhou Project, sang by Roselia.
  • Various VOCALOID covers appear in the game, like Romeo and Cinderella & Karakuri Pierrot.
• Damager, Healer, Tank: This is how the three types of card Boosts are framed:
  • Score Boost is Damage, focusing on maximizing score, the rhythm game analogue to damage in other game genres).
  • Life Boost is Healer, restoring the band's health.
  • Note Boost is Tank, converting off-beat hits (up to a degree, depending on card rarity) into Perfects; Note Boost on a 3* or 4* card can "block" note judgements that break the player's combo and damage the lifebar (3* can block Goods and 4* can block Bads). This is similar to how tanks in other game genres soak up hits that would've otherwise injured teammates.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: In multiplayer, if your own lifebar empties out, instead of the song ending for you, you can continue to play, only with a 90% reduction to points earned.
• Depending on the Writer: Even in the game itself. The one-panel comic version of Aya is more narcissistic, revels in her fame, and seems to focus on the cutthroat competition of the music business. In the stories and roaming conversations, while she's still always dreamed to be a successful idol, she's nothing like that at all.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: You can use up to three Live Boosts at a time; using two and three Live Boosts changes your Event Point multiplier to x10 and x15, respectively, as opposed to x5 for using one Boost. However, whereas using one Boost applies a x5 multiplier to EXP and item drops, two Boosts at a time applies only a x6 multiplier to those, and three Boosts makes it x7, meaning that using more than one Boost on a song actually penalizes your EXP and item gains.
• Early Game Hell: Like with other mobile idol-based Rhythm Games, don't expect a rank higher than a C until you get higher-rarity cards and level them up.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Usually 4* cards features two characters that has the most focus in event stories. In early Season 1 stories, there was only one 4* card for characters who had lesser roles, while characters with the primary focus somehow only featured in 3* cards. One of the most glaring examples is the “Umbrella in the Autumn Rain” event story, where it is a Sayo-centric story that is critical to her Character Development, yet Yukina who only appear briefly to give Sayo advice is the only 4* card in the event.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Ran's father doesn't support her musical ambitions, wanting her to leave Afterglow and inherit his flower-arranging school. Afterglow's band story in the game is about Ran's troubles with this and her eventual resolve to change his mind.
• Featureless Protagonist: The player is occasionally addressed by characters, sometimes by name, although you're never depicted.
• Flawless Victory:
  • Achieving a Full Combo (no Goods, Bads or Misses) will be acknowledged with a "FULL COMBO!" banner after the chart ends, and, if it's your first time getting an FC for the chart, a reward such as Coins or Stars along with a pink star for the chart (as opposed to a yellow one for merely clearing it)
  • Getting all Perfects on a chart won't get you any unique rewards, but it will be recognized with a rainbow star. The later versions added a rainbow-colored "ALL PERFECT!" title both at the end of the live show, replacing the "FULL COMBO!" message, which also is shown above the best score in the song select on the difficulty where the All Perfect is awarded, just like a Full Combo.
• Genre-Busting: The game goes this route with each band's band story 1. Roselia's begins with a shonen manga-like storyline, Afterglow's has a dramatic flair, Hello Happy World's starts off with a Widget Series vibe, Pasupare with a "traditional studio-created idol" storyline, and Popipa as a slice-of-life story. Three of these stories are origins (though Roselia's actually takes place both before and after the main storyline, with a Time Skip to when they're more established), but Afterglow's Origin Story is saved for a Flashback Episode event and Poppin' Party has a "Band Story 0" as their origin story.
• Harder Than Hard:
  • Expert difficulty, above Hard. Notably, unlike in many other games of its ilk, Expert is available immediately from your first song, instead of having to be unlocked or requiring more resources than what you have at the start.
  • Special difficulty, above Expert; in other words, Harder Than Harder Than Hard. It was introduced in an update and is available for select songs. The fourth anniversary update added flicks and new slide hold note variations in select songs.
  • The level goes on a scale originally from level 5 to 28; however, a Roselia cover song, Roku Chounen to Ichiya Monogatari, also known as Six Trillion Years and Overnight Story, introduces a level 29 Expert chart. Later, added Setsuna Trip as a Level 29 song in special difficulty.
  • RAISE A SUILEN's "HELL! or HELL?" has a Special difficulty with a level of 30.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Characters refers to you by the name you give in the first prologue chapter, which can be changed any time afterwards.
• Hitbox Dissonance:
  • The Note Boost skill will temporarily expand the Perfect timing window to overwrite those of lesser timing judgements. A Note Boost from a 2-star card will override Greats, 3-star Note Boosts will override Greats and Goods, and 4-star Note Boosts will override Greats, Goods, and Bads (i.e. hitting the note at all will get you a Perfect).
  • Flick notes have up arrows, indicating that they're meant to be swiped up. However, they can be triggered simply by swiping in any direction. Later Special charts would introduce a directional flick note that must be swiped in a specific direction.
  • Because the hitbox for a note actually extends around halfway into its surrounding lanes, narrow zigzag slides (such as those in "Senbonzakura" and "Don't say 'lazy'") can actually be hit by holding just one lane and treating them as vertical hold notes.
• Hypocrite: Minato Yukina specifically says in Roselia Band Story Chapter 10 that feelings and personal problems have no place in Roselia, despite the fact that this is exactly why she founded Roselia in the first place, something she does, in fact, acknowledge. (“I’m not one to talk, though...”)
• Hypocritical Humor: In one of the random dialogues that can be read, two of the girls are out for coffee, and one starts by claiming that coffee has to be black, because it’s the best way to enjoy the bitter taste properly. The other then says “I kind of want to agree with you... But didn’t you just put a small mountain of sugar in your cup?”
• An Interior Designer Is You: You can purchase items to place in the cafe and inside CiRCLE. Placing an item will apply stat boosts to characters of a specific type or band, depending on the item placed, and will also unlock side conversations that award player and band EXP. Note that you cannot place all of the items you have, so you need to decide which item boosts will be of most benefit to you.
• Kaizo Trap: Quite a few songs appear to end with a long hold note, only to do a sudden outro of a few notes. So if you're not paying attention and low on health, those last few notes will finish you off.
• Male Gaze: In a manner akin to Love Live! School idol festival and Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS, some of the art in the game focuses on certain angles.
• Marathon Level: A select few songs have full-length maps which are treated as separate songs from their game versions. ^note For the record, the longest of these is FIRE BIRD, which clocks in at 5:22
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • Even though the game has several shops for purchasing area items and songs, the Shopping Mall area does not contain any shops that the player can use.
  • Like in many other mobile idol rhythm games, the judgement rank of Good is harmful, as it will break your combo (which is necessary for Scoring Points and for the combo milestone and Full Combo rewards), although it will not deplete the lifebar.
• Origins Episode:
  • Pastel*Palettes', Roselia's, and Hello, Happy World!'s Band Stories show how they were formed.
  • The "As Evening Clears" event is this for Afterglow.
  • Poppin'Party has a Season 0 band story, which covers the events of the anime and their formation.
• Orwellian Retcon: The "Do It Ourselves" event revealed that Lisa had a little brother who was never mentioned beforehand. This caused a lot of backlash among the fandom because this reveal was too soon so any mentions of him were eventually removed.
• Permanently Missable Content: As of the 2nd Anniversary update, birthday conversations in CIRCLE and certain area talks have been removed. The only way to view them at all is if you had obtained them prior to the update.
• Play Every Day: You get a reward for every day that you log in. There is also the Premium Happy Box special, which gives you 1,000 Stars right off the bat and then gives you 80 Stars for every day that you log in. You'll continue to get Stars every day until you've collected them 25 times or 30 days from the time you purchased the deal, whichever comes first (up to 3,000 Stars in total).
• Power Equals Rarity: The higher a card's rarity (1-4 stars), the better stat tables it will have and the more powerful its skills will be (for example, Score Boost gives you a higher multiplier at higher rarities, while Note Boost will further expand the Perfect window).
• Regional Bonus: "Legendary" from Roselia, and "Excellent (Hey, Let's Go!)" from Poppin' Party got English version exclusives to the global version. These charts are even unavailable in the Japanese version of the game.
  • And there are miscellaneous stamps exclusive to each regional version of the game, mostly tied with respective holidays.
• Remixed Level: Special Difficulty gives a song an entirely new Expert beatmap. Some Special maps ramp up the difficulty, such as Tear Drops whose Special map is rated 27* compared to its Expert map's rating of 25*. Meanwhile other Special maps, such as Sugar Song and Bitter Step, significantly tone down the difficulty (with the aforementioned song's Special map being rated 25* compared to the original's 28*).
• Repeating Ad: Ads for the game are very common on Twitter, usually appearing every five ad spaces. The Miku Hatsune collab exaggerated it, with ads for that appearing every three ad spaces.
• Ship Tease: Many, many pieces of official art, plus gacha or event cards are rife with this, but in-story Kaoru all but blatantly ships Misaki and Kanon in the Hello Happy Phantom Thief event.
  • Any event story featuring Kaoru in any serious capacity will contain relentless ship tease with her and another girl, no joke.
• Silent Bob: Even though you don't get any proper lines in this game, some characters will ask you questions and it's implied that you do give an answer.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Poppin'Party's band story in the game involves them "fighting" against the realistically minded town officials who are scrapping the town's annual festival for budget reasons. They're told multiple times by the adults that that they're just kids who don't understand how the world works.
  • This is also the source of Chisato and Aya's conflict in Pastel*Palettes' story. When Aya expresses thankfulness that their hard work paid off and got them a gig, Chisato, The Cynic of the group who knows how show business works, bursts her bubble and her view of the world by telling her that Hard Work Hardly Works and her dedication had nothing to do with their fortunes.
• Socialization Bonus: Multiplayer allows you to earn more rewards, both through special lobbies that award more of a particular type of item than usual and the co-op mechanic allowing you to be carried by other players to ranks that you currently cannot achieve in single-player with the members you have.
• Sound-Coded for Your Convenience: The sound upon hitting a note will differ depending on the judgement rank you got for it.
• Stat Overflow: Stamina-boosting cards can heal up to 200% of your stamina meter, granting you extra buffer for later, more difficult parts of a song map.
• Temporary Online Content: Each event has two cards (one 2* and one 3*), event story chapters, and a Rare Stamp that you can earn with Event Points. Missed cards can be earned later from the gacha, missed event story chapters can be unlocked later after a period of time if all bands are at rank 5 or higher, but stamps are a once-in-a-lifetime (per region, anyway) deal.
• Weird Crossover:
  • The Persona 5 event surprised a number of players who had expected the games to be fictional in-universe and the event story to be about cosplay and cover songs. Instead, Himari is inspired by the Phantom Thieves of Hearts (at this point considered an urban legend) to get Afterglow to copy their website and use it to do good deeds. None of the Persona 5 characters appear, save for a cat that may or may not secretly be Morgana, but establishing that Bandori takes place in the game's world got people talking.
  • Chainsaw Man. That is all.

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Trope-tan

Guren no Yumiya

fleet if gay: Fuee...
25k stars no aya: Full Combo is easy!
Moca Latte: Happy! Lucky!
PLS NO GUREN lost connection. Returning to room select.

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