Sorry for the delay! The new build is finally ready.

To read a list of everything that was added/changed/fixed/improved in the latest update – complete with videos and screenshots of the new features! – please scroll down past this artwork by @theamoraceleste:

New Intro Hands

For years, the game’s intro animation began with this camera shot:

This looks really bad. You can see individual polygons on the hands, the texture is obviously mirrored, and the “animation” – if you can even call it that – is just moving in a straight line directly from one pose to another pose. Yikes. It looks very, “The developer doesn’t care at all, and only bothered to put in the bare minimum amount of effort.” So, I decided it was time for a change:

Ahhhhh, much better! A smoother model, a unique texture for both hands, and an animation that looks far more natural! Huge improvement, in my opinion!

Unique Suicide Cutscene for Amai

Amai now has a unique suicide cutscene (complete with voice lines for Amai’s mother) instead of simply being a duplicate of Osana’s suicide cutscene.

I don’t want to jumpscare you with morbid visuals that you don’t want to see, so I’ll post a screenshot that only hints at the content of the cutscene:

…and if you want to see it in clearer detail, you’ll just have to play the game!

This is the first step towards giving all rivals a unique suicide cutscene, instead of duplicating Osana’s cutscene 10 times.

New Info-chan Voice Lines

Info-chan’s voice lines have been replaced with lines recorded by a new actress. Also, Info-chan now has voice lines when telling Ayano about Kizana!

If you notice that some of Info-chan’s lines seem louder/quieter than the preceding/subsequent lines, don’t worry about it too much – I fully intend to address that in a future update.

Heat Distortion

When Amai boils water for her Thursday post-Cleaning Time event, there is now a “heat distortion” effect over the cooking pot that Amai uses to boil water! The effect also appears over the pot of water that Ayano boils in the post-Amai cutscene.

You might be thinking, “Huh?? What?? Why does this matter?? Who cares??”

Well, think about the hands in the intro animation. The old hands looked cheap, low-effort, and like I just didn’t care at all. The new hands look high-quality, and are a much better reflection of how committed I am to giving you a high-quality product.

Yeah, shimmering air isn’t absolutely mandatory, but it says, “this developer cares about making his game look good,” rather than, “this developer does the bare minimum.” Some of these adjustments are important to me; a personal goal that means a lot to me, even if it doesn’t mean much to you.

Plus, in a game that involves fire as a gameplay mechanic (murdering students by setting them on fire, burning evidence with the incinerator or kiln, an event about a rival Moeko lighting a fire in a trash can, etc) I think it makes sense to invest a bit of time into creating and implementing a heat distortion effect.

Pose Mode Search Bar

Pose Mode allows you to lock a student in place and make them play any animation of your choosing. However, Yandere Simulator contains a massive number of animations – over 760! – and searching for a specific animation in that giant list can be a real headache.

Recently, a fan of the game created a mod that adds a “search bar” to Pose Mode, allowing you to filter animations by name. This mod blew my mind!

If someone had come to me and requested a feature like that, I would have said, “No!! I won’t do that!! Do you have any idea how difficult and time-consuming that would be?! I refuse!!” But, after seeing a fan mod it into the game, I had absolutely no excuse. “If a fan can do it, then I should be able to do it, too!”

So, last night, I added a search bar to Pose Mode:

It was tricky, but wasn’t anywhere near as hard as I assumed it would be. I bet that a lot of other frequently-requested quality-of-life improvements are also not as difficult as I imagine them being – so, maybe more improvements like this will come to the game in the near future!

Replaced Assets

Sometimes, a 3D artist who contributed to Yandere Simulator in the past will contact me and ask me to remove their work from the game. The reasons for this can be varied; for example, sometimes they don’t feel proud of their old work from 10~11 years ago, feel that it doesn’t represent their ability anymore, and want it gone. When I get requests like this, I honor the wishes of the artist who is asking me to remove their work, and replace their models and/or textures with new ones.

As a result of a recent “please remove my ancient work” request, the following models have been replaced with new models:

• Photography Club’s Camera
• Bulletin Board
• Folding Chair
• Circular Saw
• Small Locker
• Tall Locker
• Chalkboard
• PA Speaker
• Whiteboard
• Bookshelf
• Table

More assets will be replaced in a future update, as well.

If you’re thinking, “I miss one of the old assets! I preferred the way it looked!” don’t panic too much. The exact appearance of an asset can always be tweaked until it feels right.

In addition to the above assets, another part of the game that has been replaced is…the entirety of the Cooking Club! This isn’t a bad thing, though, because I’m actually really thrilled with how the Cooking Club’s new models look! Take a peek:

Before you scroll down to the comment section and write a comment saying something like, “We don’t want a new Cooking Club! We want a new rival!” Please keep in mind that I didn’t choose to replace the Cooking Club or any of the other models that got replaced today; I was obligated to by a former volunteer.

I don’t wake up in the morning and say, “Ahhhhh, what a beautiful morning! Today, my top priority will be to replace a texture from 10 years ago!” Rather, I wake up desperately hoping that I will be able to get through the day without someone creating new problems for me that suck away time that I could have spent making progress towards my goals. However, that is rarely the case.

Often, the tasks I work on don’t represent my priorities; they represent my obligations. Please keep this in mind before writing nasty comments below.

AZERTY Workaround

When I upgraded from Unity 5 to Unity 6, the game benefited in multiple ways, but an unfortunate side-effect occurred: the game stopped automatically remapping AZERTY input into QWERTY input, meaning that the game stopped being compatible with AZERTY keyboards. This appears to be happening at the level of the game engine itself; and is not something I can fix by ticking a checkbox or anything like that. (I already tried, and it didn’t work…)

Well, I’ve been informed of a workaround that will permit you to play Yandere Simulator as intended on an AZERTY keyboard:

1. Download and install AutoHotkey from this website: https://www.autohotkey.com/
2. Download Yandere Simulator and double-click the “AZERTY.ahk” script found in the same directory as YandereSimulator.exe

Now, when you play Yandere Simulator, your keyboard will automatically switch your Z, A, and Q inputs into W, Q, and A inputs!

When you’re ready to stop playing Yandere Simulator and revert your keyboard input back to normal, press the F1 key on your keyboard.

Additions / Changes

• Tiny detail that 1% of players will notice or care about: When walking through a torii gate, you’re not supposed to walk through the exact center, because the center is reserved for deities. You’re supposed to walk slightly through the torii gate slightly off-center. I’ve made an adjustment to student pathfinding so that they will now try to avoid walking through the direct center of a torii gate.
• The delinquent beat-em-up minigame, the 1980s Mode cutscenes, the Mission Mode menu, the title screen menu, the loading screen, the calendar screen, the “living room scene”, the senpai creation scene, the Kokona tutorial cutscene, phone text message cutscene, and the the “Ayano chooses her Scheme in her room” screen are now all compatible with 16:10 aspect ratio monitors.
• The pause menu in 1989 is a notepad rather than a smartphone, but smartphone sound effects were playing while the player used the menu. This oversight has been corrected; the 1989 pause menu now uses “thumbing through paper” sound effects. (Also, the sound for opening/closing the pause menu is now a “woosh” sound that suits both the smartphone and the notepad menus.)
• Removed the animation for making Octodogs in the Cooking Club. Now the game just fades to black and fades back in. I’m fine with this, because the “make octodogs” animation was one of the worst animations in the game (it was made by me in 2015) and also lasted way too long.
• When Pippi Osu was first added to the game, she had short white socks. I’ve restored these socks.
• It is now possible to select the chainsaw as a weapon when designing a Mission Mode mission.
• Replaced Bankotsuko’s model with a new one that is more accurate to her character artwork.
• Updated the eye texture used in the Magical Girl Pretty Miyuki easter egg.
• Improved Kencho’s “spying from the distance with binoculars” animation.
• Improved the textures for the fountains around the school.
• Slightly adjusted Shiromi’s list of dislikes.
• Amai now has hair physics.

Fixes

• Every time the player loads into the protagonist’s bedroom, the game takes a screenshot of the protagonist and updates the “Stats” screen with this screenshot. When taking this screenshot, the game puts a pink background behind the protagonist. Due to a bug, for some players, this pink background never disappeared, and just floated there forever. This bug should be fixed now.
• If the player killed a student with electrocution while they were checking their locker for a note and then tried to dump the student’s corpse into the incinerator, the student would rotate and face the opposite direction of the incinerator during the “placed inside of incinerator” animation. This bug has been fixed.
• If a student witnessed the moment that the player dropped an item on the ground, then, when the student reached the point in their code where they were supposed to walk over to the item and investigate it, they would instead fire the “ignore dropped item and return to routine” code. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player wore any type of clothing, got it bloody, put it into the washing machine, and cleaned the blood off of it, the clothing’s outline would still be “orange” (murder evidence) in Yandere Vision, instead of cyan, like it was supposed to be. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player approached a gossiping student, the player would learn that student’s opinion on gossip. However, the notification that popped up at the top of the screen would not display properly. This bug has been fixed.
• It was sometimes possible for a student to “teleport” just outside of the school walls, leaving them permanently inaccessible to the player, which could interfere with genocide / ABC Killer runs. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player used electricity to killed a student who was checking their locker for a note, the student would continue saying their “found a note in my locker” voice lines even as they died. This bug has been fixed.
• I rarely fix bugs that are only caused by third-party mods, but I made an exception: I’ve fixed a bug that prevented Yandere Vision from working if you were using “Pose Mod” to transform the protagonist into your OC.
• If the player tried to play a 1980s Mode Mission Mode mission about poisoning Sonoko’s suitor, the mission would be impossible to complete because the boy would never eat lunch. This bug has been fixed.
• In the “Cyborg Mode” easter egg, it was supposed to be possible to remove the cyborg helmet by pressing the “P” key. This functionality broke at some point. This functionality has now been restored.
• In the “Ayano stalks Senpai and Rival while they walk to school together” cutscene, Ayano’s head wobbled back and forth instead of looking directly at Senpai/Amai. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player used the “Pass Time” feature and then immediately stopped without entering the 8-bit minigame, the game’s background music would mute itself. This bug has been fixed.
• When the player opened the pause menu, the “making selection in pause menu” sound effect would play on top of the “opening pause menu” sound effect. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player destroyed all knives in school and then activated SNAP Mode, it would be impossible to proceed forward with SNAP Mode. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player damaged a car battery, saved the game, and then loaded the game, the car battery would not show signs of damage. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player activated the Empty Demon easter egg, male club leaders’ skin would not change to grey, as it was supposed to. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player used debug commands to speed up the game’s credits, the post-credits scene would be sped up, as well. This will no longer be the case.
• Osana and Amai were not using their unique walk animations during the “walk to school with Senpai” cutscene. This oversight has been corrected.
• If the player stole Amai’s bento on Monday morning, she would still eat her bento at lunchtime. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player wore a raincoat, the protagonist’s outline would turn white in Yandere Vision. This bug has been fixed.
• Amai was not wearing her apron during the “walk to school with Senpai” cutscene. This oversight has been corrected.
• If the player disabled outlines, outlines would not disappear from Raibaru’s socks. This bug has been fixed.
• Some of the walls in the gymnasium were not properly casting/receiving shadows. This bug has been fixed.
• Fixed inaccuracies in the subtitles for Osana’s rooftop conversation with Raibaru.
• Fixed inaccuracies in the subtitles for Osana’s “Befriend/Betray” cutscene.

Known Bug

Amai’s bake sale table is using the wrong texture. Please don’t bother to report this bug. I already know about it. It’ll be fixed in the next build.

By The Way

Today’s bottom-of-the-blog-post fan create spotlight goes to this video by the incredible hatluk, who has been modding the game in all kinds of crazy-impressive ways for 4 years now!