Hello!
For months, I’ve been stating that I wouldn’t feel comfortable announcing a release date for Amai unless I felt 100% certain that I would be able to hit that date. At this point in time, Amai is around 90% complete – very little work remains to be done on her. I feel extremely confident that I could announce a release date right now and hit it without a problem…but I want to be extra safe and wait until we’re within, like, 5 days of her release to make the announcement.
In the meantime, I have something to share that some of you might be very excited to see…
Throughout Yandere Simulator’s development, I’ve been asked countless times if it would ever be possible for the protagonist to leave her room and walk around her entire house. For years, I have consistently given the same reply: “No!! I don’t see any reason to do that!! It wouldn’t serve any gameplay purpose!! It would be pointless! I’m never going to add it to the game!!”
Well…
One of the last remaining tasks on my “Amai Checklist” was a feature that I’ve wanted to add to the game for many years: receiving a postcard from Ryoba once per week. While asking myself how the player would actually encounter and interact with the postcard, I realized that the most logical answer was to let the player walk through the protagonist’s home and find a postcard on the floor in front of the front door’s mail slot.
So…
Yeah…I did it. I said “I’m never going to add that feature to the game!!” for years, and then I went ahead and did it anyway. You can now leave Ayano’s room and walk around her home!
For more information about this new feature – and everything else that is new/different in the latest build – click Continue Reading!
Walkable Home
Currently, there is only a little bit of functionality in the new “walkable home.” There are only three reasons to leave your room and walk around your home, and they all relate to the new postcard feature:
- Once a week, Ryoba will send the player a postcard from whichever United States city she is currently in, and give her daughter an update on how her “overseas vacation” is going. You can find these weekly postcards on the ground near the front door’s mail slot.
- Ryoba felt guilty about abruptly leaving her daughter all alone, so she stashed some money in hiding places around the house. It’s only possible to uncover these hiding places by reading Ryoba’s postcards.
- I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but you might learn something very important by reading all 10 of Ryoba’s postcards!
In the future, it’s possible that the home might get more features:
- Perhaps the “take an item from home to school” window will be replaced by the act of actually walking through your home and manually picking up the object(s) you want to bring with you to school.
- Perhaps it’ll be possible to grow emetic/sedative/lethal poisons in your garden and bring them to school.
- Perhaps it’ll be possible to customize Ayano’s appearance using the vanity desk outside her room.
- Perhaps it’ll be possible to adopt a pet and play with it in the living room.
None of these features would be a high priority, but now that the house is “walkable,” the potential for these features to be added to the game finally exists.
The house environment was modeled a long time ago. Although I’m very grateful to the 3D artist who created it for me, there are a lot of improvements that I’d like to see to the visuals. Currently, a 3D artist is preparing some new models and textures that I feel will drastically raise the quality level of the house environment! I’ve posted a preview of his work to my Patreon page, if you’re interested!
Some notes:
- It’s only possible to walk around Ayano’s home at nighttime.
- It’s not possible to walk around Ayano’s home in 1980s Mode.
With that out of the way, it’s time to describe what else is new in the latest build!
Improvements
- Re-balanced the difficulty levels of the Martial Arts Club’s practice minigame. The highest difficulty level (Very Hard, Budo) was moving at 2x the speed of the actual delinquent combat minigame. It was pointless to allow the player to “practice” at a level that is 2x faster than anything they would actually encounter during gameplay, so the various difficulty levels were re-balanced.
- The delinquent combat minigame (whether you’re fighting a delinquent or just practicing with the martial arts club) will now become slower if you have leveled up your Physical Education stat.
- Updated the appearance of Ryoba’s kerchief and apron when she joins the 1980s Mode Cooking Club.
Fixes
- If the player was carrying a car battery when they were shoved by a student council member, and the car battery fell into a puddle that the council member was staring in, the student council would enter the “being electrocuted” state and then immediately exit the state and continue walking around as normal. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player designed a routine for a character in Custom Mode that involved sleeping in the infirmary multiple times per day, that character would sleep in a different infirmary bed each time, and would eventually run out of beds to sleep in and become unable to advance their routine. This bug has been fixed.
- It’s weird to see Osana’s “cat accessories” appear on 1980s Mode rivals, but I don’t have a unique set of accessory models for 1980s Mode, so, for now, gift accessories will no longer appear on rivals in 1980s Mode. Maybe this feature will return if I ever get unique gift accessories for 1980s Mode.
- If the player started the “tie weight around Osana’s hair” animation, was attacked by Raibaru, and killed Raibaru, Osana would freeze in the “being dragged into pool” animation, causing her to appear as though she was floating in midair. This bug should no longer be able to happen.
- In Week 6 of Custom Mode, the light music club members would always perform “standing and playing instrument” animations instead of “sitting and playing instrument” animations, even if they were told to sit in chairs. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player was giving the game directional input (attempting to make the character move) on the 1st frame of gameplay, the camera would rotate wildly for a moment before settling into the correct position. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player tried to use an emergency shower to change out of a bloody school uniform and into a clean gym uniform, the player would step out of the shower wearing a school uniform instead. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player played the dance machine minigame before Otohiko had arrived at school, playing the minigame would cause Otohiko to magically appear at school earlier than he was supposed to. This bug has been fixed.
- If the “End-of-Day Police Investigation Sequence” began while the player was in a towel, the player would be wearing a towel during the police investigation and also while walking home. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player photographed a student who was in the middle of being electrocuted – but had not yet fallen to the ground – the photograph would be labeled as “Sleeping Student.” This bug has been fixed.
- If the player stood in a specific location in either of the school’s Zen gardens and entered first-person-view, they could clip into the fenced-off areas of the gardens. This bug has been fixed.
- From now on, if the player gives their Custom Mode protagonist the same idle/walk animations as Ryoba, that protagonist will also get Ryoba’s running animation, as well.
- In Custom Mode, if the player tried to assign the “Light Cigarette” action to a male student, they would walk in place perpetually. This bug has been fixed.
- In Yakuza Mode, if the player attempted to pick up a corpse while they were being chased, they would freeze in place permanently. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player disabled bloom and then saved and loaded the game, bloom would automatically re-enable itself. This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed bug that caused the game to believe that any mission mode ID that did not specify a murder weapon was an invalid mission ID.
- In the insane asylum, it was possible to step on top of a chair and use it to step on top of a table. This bug has been fixed.
- The bucket of red paint in the Art Club was causing pathfinding issues for some NPCs, so it has been re-positioned slightly.
- The “witness reacting to murder” camera was unable to render some of Gema’s facial hair. This bug has been fixed.
- Fixed bug that caused Osana to be wearing the wrong shoes during the “Walking To School with Senpai” cutscene.
- Fixed bug that caused the “Custom Mode” button prompt to appear on a save file that had already been created.
Amai’s Week
If you enter the 2nd week in the current build, you’ll find that Amai won’t be functional at all. I don’t think it’s even possible to complete the Amai Challenge in this build. The actual, official Amai is almost done, and is going to make the Amai Challenge completely redundant anyway, so please just wait for her to be released. If you want to hear more details / specifics about how far along Amai is and what remains to be done, you can check out my latest post on Patreon!
