Big January Update

SenpaiJanuary 5, 2024084 views

Today’s update is huge – possibly the biggest update that the game has ever had, aside from the Osana update and the 1980s Mode update. This might also be the longest blog post I’ve ever written, simply because of all the new content I need to describe!

To see a list of everything that was added / changed / fixed / improved in the latest build, please scroll down past this gorgeous New Years’ illustration of Aoi by unknown-ANN0! Why Aoi? Because 2024 is a “Year of the Dragon” in the Chinese Zodiac!

Table of Contents

Custom Mode

The most significant new addition to the game is Custom Mode – a feature that allows you to design a 10-week story mode.

In Custom Mode, you have access to an interface that lets you design the protagonist, the Senpai, the rivals, and the rest of the school population – everything from their appearance to their name to their daily routine.

You even get to drag-and-drop markers around the school map to denote where you’d like students to stand, and what direction you’d like them to face. You can use this feature to make sure that there will always be plenty of witnesses around the places where your rivals will be walking.

By dragging and dropping images, text, and audio files into the YandereSimulatorAssetsStreamingAssetsCustomModeCutscenes directory, you can create cutscenes that will play at the beginning of each week.

By editing the text inside of the Yandere Simulator Git DirectoryYandereSimulatorAssetsStreamingAssetsCustomModeEvents directory, you can change the dialogue that will display during Senpai/rival interaction events.

At the end of Custom Mode, you get to watch a cutsene where your yandere confesses her love to her Senpai.

Whether or not the boy accepts the girl’s love confession will depend on various factors.

Some relevant information:

Currently, Custom Mode is only available for 1980s Mode.
You’re supposed to be able to change a character’s name or profile, by clicking it with your mouse. However…
I’ve just learned that the mouse cursor appears invisible for many players in Custom Mode. I’m sorry about this. I’ll fix that bug in the next build.

Custom Mode is accessed by pressing the button displayed at the bottom-right corner of the screen when you’re at the menu where you select a new save file. (In 1980s Mode.)

After designing a 10-week story mode with Custom Mode, it’s possible to share it with others. After you’ve finished designing everything, go to the first menu in Custom Mode and use the “Save” button. After that, you can share your 10-week story mode by handing out the following files:

YandereSimulatorAssetsStreamingAssetsCustomMode (the entire directory)
YandereSimulatorAssetsStreamingAssetsJSONCustom.json
YandereSimulatorAssetsStreamingAssetsJSONCustomTopics.json
YandereSimulatorAssetsStreamingAssetsJSONMisc.json

If you send those files to someone and they drag-and-drop replace their files with your files, then they should be able to play your Custom Mode story by accessing the Custom Mode screen, selecting “Load,” and then advancing through the Custom Mode menu and starting the game. (I haven’t actually been able to test this out, though! If it doesn’t work, there will be a bug-fixing build soon.)

There is also a “Randomize All” feature that will instruct the game to randomly generate a cast of characters for you. For a challenge, tap “Randomize All” until you see “Routines: RandomPatrol” appear at the top of the screen. This will make all students at school (including your rival and Senpai) walk around school at random, making it much more difficult to commit murder without being spotted.

By the way…killing each rival by just walking up to her and stabbing her is a bit boring, so I suggest using the Rival Editor screen to assign each rival a “Canon Elimination Method” and then activating “Force Canon Eliminations” on the Miscellaneous Options menu. With that option enabled, you will be required to eliminate each rival a specific way, and you’ll get a game over and be forced back to the beginning of the week if you don’t eliminate the rival the way you’re supposed to. This makes each play-through a lot more interesting than just waiting until a rival is alone and running up and stabbing her.

In this initial release of Custom Mode, certain features only exist in a very basic state:

It is not possible to change any character’s gender (no male protagonist, no female Senpai) and some customization options are unavailable for specific genders (for example, you can change male skin color, but not female skin color).
Student routines do not change from week to week. You can customize any student’s routine, but all students will repeat their “Week 1 Routine” on every week.
All Custom Mode rivals share the same “sabotagable events” as the 1980s Mode rivals. You are able to edit the dialogue between Senpai and the Rivals, but you are not able to dictate the exact criteria for sabotaging their interactions. If you want to eliminate a rival through sabotage, you need to avoid changing their routines in ways that would prevent the 1980s Mode rival events from taking place.
Giving a character a weird combination of traits (like giving the “Coward” persona to a Teacher) may result in the game encountering circumstances it has no instructions for, which could potentially cause the character to just freeze in place or run in circles forever.
When you’re in Town – and during stealth missions – your custom protagonist won’t have the appearance you gave her; she will appear as Ryoba. Sorry about this. It’ll be addressed in a future update.

As with every major new addition to the game, please understand that the initial release may be buggy and may lack some of the functionality you’d like to see. In future updates, I’ll fix any problems that get reported, and will consider adding features that are frequently requested.

1980s Mode Alternate Timeline

It is now possible to achieve an “Alternate Ending” for 1980s Mode where Ryoba avoids going to trial and gets to confess to Jokichi.

To jump from the canon timeline to this alternate timeline, the player has to perform an action at the very beginning of the 1980s Mode tutorial. I want you to figure it out yourself, but I’ll give you two clues:

202X Basement
1989 Faculty Room

It’s straightforward. You’ll figure it out.

This “Alternate Timeline” has different circumstances from the main timeline. For example: the Journalist never shows up at school, the student council does not push Ryoba when she walks nearby them, and Ryoba must eliminate 9 rivals instead of 10. There are other differences, too, but I’ll let you discover the “Fun” for yourself.

“Secret Admirer” Feature

For years, it has been possible to leave gifts and notes on Senpai’s desk. However, there was never any functionality attached to that feature. As of now, though, that feature finally has a purpose.

From now on, leaving gifts and notes on Senpai’s desk will make him more and more curious to learn the identity of his anonymous secret admirer. He’ll gradually go from “apathetic” to “interested” to “enamored” with the idea of meeting the mystery girl.

After Senpai finds a note or gift on his desk, information will appear onscreen to tell the player what Senpai found and how he feels about it.

Increasing your Literature stat and reading romance manga will increase the effectiveness of the notes that you leave for Senpai.

Gifts for Senpai can be bought from the Gift Shop in town. The Gift Shop will now restock gifts every day. There is no limit to how many gifts you can “carry” at any one time.

Leaving a single gift box on Senpai’s desk will automatically give him all of the gifts you’ve purchased. (You could theoretically purchase 5 gifts every day for 20 days, and then give him 100 gifts on one day, if you wanted.)

Currently, this feature is only meaningful in the “1980s Mode Alternate Timeline” and “Custom Mode” – but it will serve a purpose in 202X Mode in the future.

Difficulty Options

The player can now customize the game’s difficulty when starting a new save file.

A lot of players disapproved of my decision to make Raibaru invincible, so it is now possible to choose whether or not Raibaru can be physically attacked.

I regret giving the player a “weapon case” for free at the start of the game, since it feels like it’s something that is way too useful to just give away to the player for free. I want to take it away, but I know that a lot of players rely on it and would be upset if it was removed, so I’ve made it optional.

Up until now, students have not been able to see through the chain link fence around the incinerator area. A lot of people reported this as a bug. However, it was an intentional design decision. To appease the people who believe that students should be able to see through the chain link fence, it is now possible to toggle whether or not students can see past it.

When I watch people play the game, almost everyone uses long blunt weapons exclusively, because of their unique trait of being able to perform a bloodless stealth kill. This trait is probably TOO useful; almost nobody uses any type of weapon other than long blunt weapons! To balance long blunt weapons, I wanted to remove their unique trait and make it so that the only way to perform a bloodless stealth kill is with strangulation weapons. However, I knew that a lot of players would be upset if I made this decision, so I made it optional.

A lot of players questioned why a student’s reaction to being splashed with water was to run away and take a shower. To me, it makes sense: The student doesn’t know what was in that water! It could have been dirty sewage water! Better take a shower, just to be safe. However, a lot of players still felt that students’ reactions to being splashed with water was too extreme. So, I’ve provided you with the option of being required to add brown paint to water before it becomes “valid” for a trap.

I felt that forcing the player to craft garbage bags into body bags was an important step to make the game’s difficulty more balanced. However, a lot of people really hated this change. So, I’ve given you the option of reverting things back to the way they were before.

If long blunt weapons are nerfed by removing their ability to perform bloodless stealth kills, what advantage do they have over small weapons? Well, how about this: Small weapons break after 1 use, and long blunt weapons don’t. Sound good? …yes? …no? Well, since this would be a pretty drastic change to the game, I’m making it optional. You can decide whether or not you’d like to play the game this way or not.

Sandbag Murder Method

I’ve begun to do some preliminary work on adding more rivals to 202X Mode. As part of that process, there is now a sandbag hanging in the air above the gym stage.

It’s possible to use a knife to cut a rope and drop the sandbag on anyone standing directly underneath it. To allow for the testing of this new feature, the 202X Drama Club members now stand in slightly different places when performing on the stage.

Updated School Environment

Over the years, various fans have created “New School Environment” mods that significantly improved the exterior of the school. I was extremely impressed with these mods; they inspired me to make various additions and adjustments to the school:

1. I'm no longer over-relying on that "small pink tree" model and using it absolutely everywhere.

2. There is now a lot more variety in what kind of props you see throughout the school.

3. The "hedge archways" now appear all throughout the school, rather than just in a couple of locations near the south side of the school. This turns it into a visual motif of the school, rather than just a novelty that is only found on one side of the school.

4. There are now a lot more "big pink trees" spread throughout the school.

5. Some parts of the school interior - the plaza, the stairways, the library, the faculty room, and the announcement room - also got some additional props and feel much less empty now.

It’s refreshing to see so many changes throughout the school environment! It almost feels like a completely different place now! I really hope that everyone is going to approve of the changes!

New Socialization System

When speaking to students, the “Socialize” option was kinda lame. You simply picked a conversation topic from a list of 25 topics, and chose whether to say something positive or negative. It was not very fun or engaging.

The latest build drastically changes the “Socialize” feature. Now, instead of simply picking a topic to talk about, you are brought to a new interface that resembles a visual novel, and presented with 5 options.

You may recognize the general layout of this interface; it’s the same interface as the Matchmaking minigame, but with a few adjustments.

There are 4 parts to this new interface:

Friendship Bar: Each student at school now has an individual opinion of you (instead of every student sharing the same opinion, determined by your “Reputation” bar). You can “level up” your relationship with a student from “acquaintance” to “friend” by gaining “Friendship Points” through positive interactions. There are two ways to gain Friendship Points: Doing a student’s Task and using the new Socialize menu to have a successful social interaction with them.

Active Bonuses: There are 5 things that can increase the number of points you get from interacting with a student; the panties you’re wearing, whether or not you’ve used the Gaming club’s benefit to give a bonus to your social interactions, the Persona you’re currently using, how high you’ve raised your Seduction stat, and how much you’ve increased your Psychology stat. All of the currently active bonuses are visible on the left side of the screen.

Interaction List: On the right, you’ll see the most important aspect of this screen: the different ways you can interact with the student that you’re currently talking to. The option to “make a positive/negative remark about a topic” is still present and available. “Compliment” brings up a list of 18 possible compliments to give the student. The correct compliment depends on the Persona of the student. (For example, a Teacher’s Pet would want to hear you compliment their intelligence.) “Show Off” allows you to impress the student with your knowledge of one of the 5 school subjects – Biology, Chemistry, Language, PE, or Psychology. Choose the one that you’ve leveled up the most. Your last option is to simply give the student some cash and tell them to buy themselves a nice treat. Ideally, this would be replaced with a “gift” system where you have to give students gifts based on their specific interests, but that would require a lot of additional work and assets, so it’s probably not going to happen.

Student Reaction: At the bottom of the screen, you can see the student’s reaction to the last thing that you said to them. For example, if your compliment totally backfired, you’ll see a bored and lukewarm response down there.

Most students will become your friend after you’ve surpassed 50 “Friendship Points.” Doing a Task for a student gives you 50 points (plus a bonus). So, in most cases, all you need to do in order to befriend a student is simply do their Task. However, for a handful of students, the criteria is slightly different.

In one of my old YouTube videos – “Yandere-chan’s Childhood” – Ayano was shown socializing with Midori and Kuu Dere when she was younger. Since this video established that Midori and Kuu were acquainted with Ayano as children, their “criteria for friendship” is a bit lower. You can befriend them after earning a mere 25 friendship points.

All rivals – after the first rival – will have a higher “Friendship Threshold” than normal students. For example, Amai will require you to surpass 55 friendship points, and Megami will require you to surpass 95 Friendship Points.

I feel that this new system has the potential to be used in a lot of different ways:

• Perhaps, if a student sees you misbehaving, you should lose Friendship Points with them in addition to losing Reputation Points.

• Perhaps friendly students will have a lower threshold for friendship, and grumpy students will have a higher threshold for friendship.

• Perhaps a student at 100/100 Friendship Points will refuse to gossip about you or damage your reputation, even if they see you splattered with blood.

• Perhaps asking a Student for a "Favor" will cost Friendship Points, which means that if you want the student to do another favor for you, you'll have to score some more Friendship Points with them.

• Perhaps, after a successful social interaction with a student, your overall reputation goes up. Maybe the exact extent that your reputation goes up should be determined by the Friendship Points you have with that student, rather than factors such as your panties/persona/seduction/psychology, etc.

• Perhaps the game keep track of which students are friends with which other students, and your interactions with one student should impact your relationship with that student's friends. For example, if Student A and Student B are friends with one another, and you have a successful social interaction with Student A, you'll gain a few Friendship Points with Student B.

The ideas written in the bullet-point list above have not yet been made to the game. However, depending on player feedback, changes like this might come to the game in the future.

By the way – while playing Custom Mode, you might encounter a student task that seems impossible. (completing the photoshoot task when that student doesn’t have a photoshoot as part of their routine.) If this happens, befriend the student using the new Socialization feature instead.

Mission Mode in 1980s Mode

It is now possible to play Mission Mode in 1980s Mode. It’s an alternate timeline where Ryoba became an assassin working for the Yakuza!

There is no “Nemesis” in this mode (because Hanako wasn’t born yet), but there is an extra difficulty option you can select:

Yakuza Mode

In “Yakuza Mode,” you arrive at school wearing an outfit that makes it clear you’re an intruder. Anyone who sees you will instantly get alarmed and run to tell a teacher. These circumstances are meant to encourage stealth gameplay.

With this mode active, you arrive at school with a katana, which you must use to kill your target. Also, you’re not allowed to leave school unless you’re holding the katana.

In Yandere Simulator, you’re usually not allowed to run away when someone is chasing you. However, in Yakuza Mode, you are permitted to run when a teacher, student council member, or heroic student is pursuing you. Also, Student Council members will no longer try to pepper spray you if they’re currently chasing you, which allows you to fight back against them (as long as you have a short sharp weapon to fight with).

One last thing: Yakuza Mode comes with its own “dynamic soundtrack.” During Yakuza Mode, the music at school will change based on the current situation:

Nobody knows you’re there.
You’re within 5 meters of a student, but he hasn’t noticed you yet.
A student has noticed you.
A student is running to tell a teacher about you.
A teacher is investigating the report.
A teacher is chasing you and trying to apprehend you.

I hope you enjoy the soundtrack – it really enhances the experience of playing this mode!

New Inventory Screen

The inventory screen has been completely redone. There are now icons for each item!

Also, to prevent the inventory screen from getting too cluttered, it is now divided into 4 categories: Task Items, Elimination Items, Crafting Items, and Other Items.

Lust Demon Easter Egg

The “Lust Demon” is now finally functional.

Activating her powers is simple: simply speak to her while your Seduction stat is maxed out.

Death Demon Easter Egg

That’s right – the Lust Demon is not the only demon to become functional in the latest build!

The “Enlightenment” stat was implemented in 2015, but has lacked any sort of functionality for 8 years. The purpose of that stat was to activate an easter egg that would reference the next game that I was planning to develop after releasing Yandere Simulator. That easter egg is now functional. To activate it, speak to the Death Demon while the Enlightenment stat is maxed out. (While it’s active, try walking nearby students with Yandere Vision active, and see what you learn!)

Dreams

Have you ever played a sequence in a video game where the protagonist is walking through an empty void and seeing creepy visions and hearing creepy voices? Like this scene from God of War 3, for example. I’ve always been a big fan of these types of sequences, perhaps because they felt “attainable” for me; they felt like something I could actually achieve myself, despite being a solo developer, because of their relative simplicity.

For years, I’ve wanted to implement playable dream sequences in Yandere Simulator that would provide information about the game’s backstory and lore…and I finally decided to do it:

At first, I considered the idea that dreams would be random. Maybe there would be a 1% chance that, every time you go to bed, you have a dream. However, this would annoy players who are trying to do a speedrun and don’t want a random event to interrupt their playthrough. So, I decided that dreams would have to be something that the player deliberately instigates. But, how do you induce a dream? As far as I know, there are no guaranteed methods to elicit dreams in real life…

I’ve heard that the food you eat before bed can affect the quality of your sleep. So, perhaps making the protagonist eat a specific meal is the most logical way to let the player deliberately induce dreams. And, lucky me – there was a restaurant in the street scene with no functionality associated with it. So, I made the decision to add some interactivity to the ramen shop in town: It is now possible to order special meals that result in dream sequences.

There is currently only one “dream” available. It focuses on the earliest parts of the game’s lore – events that pre-date the Aishi Condition. Stuff that the player has no realistic way of ever learning, unless it’s revealed within a dream sequence. Putting it into the game was an experiment to determine if dream sequences were even feasible, but I actually had a lot of fun making it! It only took 1 day of work to implement, so I feel confident that adding more dreams will be easy!

I was originally going to include dialogue in the dream (subtitles at the bottom of the screen explaining what various characters were saying and thinking), but I was afraid of the dream giving away too much information and completely killing all potential for fun speculation and theorizing, so I decided to not include any voices or words in the dream. I’ll look forward to seeing players try to figure out what events the dream is depicting!

Placeholder Hair Models

You may notice that some of the characters in 1980s Mode now have different hairstyles. These models are not necessarily going to be their final models; you could think of them as placeholders. A big “revamp” is planned for 1980s Mode student appearances, so please don’t judge their current hair models too harshly just yet.

Improvements

Previously, if any student heard the sound of another student being electrocuted, they would not investigate the sound. A lot of players reported this as a bug. It wasn’t a bug – it was intentional – but, since players believe that the sound should be investigated, students will now investigate the sound of electrocution.
Reducing the draw distance below 250 meters would prevent the camera from fully rendering the clouds around the school, resulting in a “circular hole in the sky.” To prevent this, clouds are now disabled when the draw distance is less than 250.
From now on, when you get spotted by someone in Mission Mode, the identity of the person who spotted you (Coach, Nurse, Student, Teacher, etc) will be displayed next to their name, to give you a better idea of who it was that spotted you.
Gardening Club students are meant to carry watering cans that match their hair colors, but the watering cans they carried didn’t match their hair very closely. The watering cans now have more accurate colors, in both 202X and 1980s Mode.
If the player kidnaps Osana during Week 1 (before she cuts her hair) her hair will remain long in the basement. If the player kidnaps Osana during Week 2 (after she cuts her hair) her hair will be short in the basement.
Some of the 1980s Mode rivals shared the same idle/walk animations. I’ve changed their animations so that they all use animations that are unique from one another.
The “Standing in front of corkboard, planning how to eliminate next rival” sequence now has unique music that isn’t heard elsewhere in the game.
A Physical Education stat of at least “1” is now required to shove a student into the iron maiden and kill them by slamming the doors shut.
Raibaru and adult characters can no longer be shoved into the iron maiden; they’re strong enough to resist Ayano trying to push them.
From now on, if the player goes to class while the kiln is burning a corpse, the corpse will be finished burning when class ends.
The 1980s Mode diary entries have been updated to sound more natural and less like a straight-up list of likes and dislikes.
Adjusted Ichirou Saikou’s year of birth in the timeline sequence that appears after the 1980s Mode post-credits cutscene.
A Physical Education stat of at least “1” is now required to break the glass cases in the Foreign Studies room.
The protagonist is now required to obtain a Fake ID before they can purchase romance manga in 1980s Mode.
Students now say something other than “Hmm…” when they see a mind-broken slave walking through school.
Improved the little “Friend” icon that appears on a student’s portrait after you have befriended them.
The protagonist now has more “Personas” to choose from at mirrors – a total of 20.
Improved the “casual wave” animation performed by shy or laid-back characters.
Yandere Simulator now supports up to 4k resolution.
Added drop shadows to the pause menu icons.

Fixes

If the player pushed a student from the school rooftop, disposed of their corpse, and then pushed a dumpster over the location where the student had struck the ground, any student who was investigating the noise would not be able to pathfind to their destination. This bug has been fixed.
If the game detected that the player was playing the game with a gamepad and updated its button prompts to depict gamepad buttons, those button prompts would change into keyboard button prompts as soon as the player transitioned into a new gameplay scene. This bug has been fixed.
If a corpse was on the ground in front of the Iron Maiden, the game would consider the corpse to be a valid “student that can be pushed into Iron Maiden” and would allow the player to perform the “push into Iron Maiden” animation. This bug has been fixed.
If the player killed Chigusa and hid her body at lunchtime, her “simps” would not be aware of her death and would enter the “stand around impatiently, waiting for Chigusa” state after advancing past lunchtime. This bug has been fixed.
If the player spammed the inputs for “Open” and “Close” on the Corkboard menu while walking away from the corkboard, the corkboard would become accessible from any position in the protagonist’s room. This bug has been fixed.
If the player electrocuted a student while that student was in the process of finding a lost phone, the student would exit the “being electrocuted” animation and return to their normal routine. This bug has been fixed.
After Otohiko tripped, fell onto the ground, and stood up, taking a photo of Otohiko and sending it to Info-chan would satisfy her bounty criteria, no matter what day of the week it was. This bug has been fixed.
If the player tried to shove a victim into the Iron Maiden while a corpse was in the process of falling out of it, the “opening doors of Iron Maiden” sound effect would play repeatedly. This bug has been fixed.
If the player activated all challenges in 1980s Mode, the challenge icons that appeared at the end of 1980s Mode would not accurately reflect which challenges the player had activated. This bug has been fixed.
If the protagonist was dipping a mop at the moment that the police arrived at school, a mop would appear in the protagonist’s hands during the Police Investigation sequence. This bug has been fixed.
If the player used the Week Select menu to set their rivals as “Betrayed,” the rivals would appear in the basement as kidnapped victims, but would also appear at school. This bug has been fixed.
If the player killed a student with the Iron Maiden during the ABC Killer Challenge, the student’s corpse would not be able to fall out of the Iron Maiden afterwards. This bug has been fixed.
If the player attacked a student who had been “Sent Home” with an alarming text from Info-chan, the student would fail to perform a “being attacked” animation. This bug has been fixed.
Fixed bug that could cause the game to detect that the player was playing the game with mouse+keyboard when the player was not touching mouse+keyboard at all and was using a gamepad.
If a teacher dropped a scythe into the “weapon box” in the faculty room, the scythe would float in the air at a strange angle. The scythe now looks correct when sitting in that box.
If the player disposed of Ryoba’s tutorial rival using the Art Room kiln instead of the incinerator, the player would not be able to complete the tutorial. This bug has been fixed.
If the nurse picked up a dropped object and tried to return it to its original position, it would appear on the ground instead of appearing in her hand. This bug has been fixed.
If the player received a “Low Rep Game Over,” the protagonist would be teleported to their classroom as the screen faded to black. This was a visual error, and has been fixed.
If the player took a photograph of the grandfather clock, the pendulum would keep swinging even though time was meant to be frozen in the photograph. This bug has been fixed.
If the player put a corpse into a chest, saved the game, loaded the game, and then removed the corpse from the chest, the corpse would be invisible. This bug has been fixed.
It was possible to pickpocket Uekiya while she was dying of poison, and failing the pickpocket minigame would cause Uekiya to stop dying of poison. This bug has been fixed.
If the player opened the “Trail Destination Window” while Yandere Vision was active, it would become possible to walk around with the window open. This bug has been fixed.
If a student was alarmed by a radio while their bento was sitting on a bench, their bento would teleport to their position and float in midair. This bug has been fixed.
The “Rich Girl” achievement would fail to trigger if the player crossed the $1,000 threshold using part-time job other than the maid minigame. This bug has been fixed.
If the player paused the game while the “Death Cam” was on screen, the Death Cam would render over any menu that the player tried to navigate. This bug has been fixed.
One of the “Spy on Senpai / Rival event” cameras was using the wrong post-processing effect settings, causing it to look weirdly bright. This bug has been fixed.
If the player crafted a makeshift knife and dropped it where it was crafted, it would float in midair instead of falling to the ground. This bug has been fixed.
If the player tried to disable hair physics specifically by using the “Set All To Lowest” feature, hair physics would not be affected. This bug has been fixed.
If the player entered and exited the counselor’s office in Mission Mode, Senpai would appear at school wearing a solid white uniform. This bug has been fixed.
Fixed bug that would cause Mission Mode to interpret a mission ID as invalid if it involved any of the newest weapons and disposal methods added to the game.
In 1980s Mode, on Friday of Week 9, two students were attempting to sit in chairs that were already occupied by other students. This bug has been fixed.
When using a PlayStation controller, the “Advance to next step of scheme” button prompt displayed the incorrect button graphic. This bug has been fixed.
After getting expelled by the counselor, the “Continue” button at the bottom of the screen would fail to light up all the way. This bug has been fixed.
If the player angled the camera so that a homeless man’s head was out of frame, the man’s body would stop rendering onscreen. This bug has been fixed.
If the player killed a student while a “Must Befriend Student First” prompt was displaying, the prompt would never go away. This bug has been fixed.
When using a PlayStation controller, the “How To Earn Info Points” button prompt displayed the incorrect button graphic. This bug has been fixed.
If the player electrocuted a student who was solving a “Puzzle Cube,” the student would not enter their death animation. This bug has been fixed.
When using the “Spy” feature to spy on a Senpai / rival event, it was possible for the spy camera to clip through walls. This bug has been fixed.
When using a PlayStation controller, the “Hint Available” button prompt displayed the incorrect button graphic. This bug has been fixed.
If a student was electrocuted while vomiting, the vomiting sound effect would continue looping and never stop. This bug has been fixed.
When using a PlayStation controller, the “More Info” button prompt displayed the incorrect button graphic. This bug has been fixed.
If the player created an electrified puddle of water and then mopped it up, the electricity would remain. This bug has been fixed.
After removing a male corpse from a locker, the male’s eyes would be pointing in opposite directions. This bug has been fixed.
When using a PlayStation controller, the “Exit Tutorial” window displayed incorrect button graphics. This bug has been fixed.
If the player crawled underneath the gym stairs and then stood up, it was possible to become stuck. This bug has been fixed.
Fixed bug that would cause two students to attempt to sit in the same chair during Cleaning Time on Week 7 of 1980s Mode.
Fixed bug that was causing the game to not set the player’s “Numbness” correctly upon loading into the school scene.
Fixed bug that could cause the player to get trapped inside of the locker room when certain easter eggs were active.
The war hammer was erroneously referred to as a “morning star” in the Mission Mode scene. This bug has been fixed.
Fixed bug that would cause the game to display weapon names with incorrect grammar (“a axe” instead of “an axe”).
If the player looked up Ryoba’s skirt in town, a weird shadow would appear on her legs. This bug has been fixed.
Fixed bug that would cause students to get stuck pathfinding near the camera equipment in the Photography Club.
Fixed bug that prevented the player from attacking any female student sleeping in the school infirmary.
Fixed bug that would cause some textures to flicker inside of the pump room underneath the school pool.
Bullies’ bookbags were clipping into their bodies in their student portraits. This bug has been fixed.
Certain female students in 202X Mode held their smartphones incorrectly. This bug has been fixed.
Fixed bug that could cause the game to soft lock when being pepper sprayed by a council member.
If the player took a photo, the game’s FPS would appear in the photo. This bug has been fixed.
Adjusted positions of props in the Drama Club that were clipping into one another.
Fixed bug that could cause the game to soft lock when performing a club activity.
Ayano now uses the correct face shape in the town scene at night.

Note #1

Some former volunteers asked for their assets to be removed from the game. I believe that I have removed all assets that were marked for removal. If I forgot to remove something that I was instructed to remove, I apologize. Please e-mail me and tell me what asset needs to be removed. (If you contact me regarding the removal of an asset you made, you will have to prove your identity somehow. This is to avoid situations where people try to impersonate former volunteers and make bogus requests on their behalf.)

Note #2

If you previously had a “plushie” representing you in the game, and you are comfortable with the plushie continuing to be featured in the game, please contact me and let me know!

What’s Next?

This update required hundreds of significant changes to dozens of the game’s systems. I anticipate that, after adding so many new features and changing so many mechanics, there are going to be some bugs. It’s likely that I will be releasing several bug-fixing builds over the next few days.

After I released 1980s Mode, a lot of players submitted suggestions for the game. I documented all of those suggestions, and turned them into a checklist of tasks. My plan was to complete the checklist, return to making YouTube videos, launch a crowdfunding campaign, and use the money to hire animators and voice actors to make the animations and voice lines requires to add the 202X Rivals to the game.

However, after the controversy last year, I’m no longer certain whether or not a crowdfunding campaign is still feasible. I can no longer guarantee that the rivals will have voice acting or unique animations. A lot of things about the game’s future are uncertain right now.

For now, I’m primarily going to focus on fixing bugs and making quality of life improvements requested by players. After some time has passed – a month, maybe – the future of the game will probably be much more apparent.

Thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!