January 1st Update

Happy New Year!

I’ve prepared a new build for you with various additions, improvements, and fixes! Also, since it’s the first day of a new year, I today feels like an appropriate time to elaborate on what I plan to accomplish this year, and what I’ll be focusing on in the immediate future.

To read a list of everything that changed in the latest update, scroll down past this beautiful New Year artwork of Ayano by unknown_ANN0, shared with permission!

A Look Back At 2024

I feel like there were a massive number of major additions to the game in 2024!

• Custom Mode
• An alternate timeline / alternate ending for 1980s Mode
• The ability to leave gifts and notes as Senpai’s “Secret Admirer”
• Difficulty options
• Sandbag murder method
• Numerous updates to the school environment
• New system for socializing with students
• Mission Mode in 1980s Mode
• Yakuza Mode
• New inventory screen
• Lust Demon and Death Demon Easter Eggs
• Dreams
• The ability to gender-swap students
• The ability to walk around the protagonist’s home
• The release of Amai
• The ability to purchase things from the hardware store and have them appear at your home
• Homu’s Task and the Robot Elimination Method
• A new basement tape
• The ability to cook meals at home
• Unique Tasks for Cooking Club members
• Social Media feature
• Massive “1980s Mode Revamp” that drastically changed most of the cast of 1980s Mode
• Updated designs for the Basu Sisters and the ability to discover what is underneath the legendary cherry tree
• Ability to customize Ayano’s appearance
• Ability to kidnap male students
• Numerous updates to Custom Mode

I feel like so many things were added to the game over the course of 2024 that I’m probably forgetting to list a few of them here!

The most important addition to the game was the addition of a second rival to Ayano’s story mode – Amai. However, I have to be honest: Amai’s initial release was plagued with various problems. There were a lot of bugs to iron out, some of her eliminations were too derivative of 1980s Mode eliminations, and the lack of voice acting and unique animations for her events made her week feel “cheap.” She seemed more like a fan-made mod than an official addition to the game.

Fixing Amai

After Amai was released, my focus shifted to fixing every problem with her; I fixed all of the bugs that were reported, I gave her a completely unique “get her expelled from school” process, I added the social media feature to give the player a more compelling and interactive way to learn her secrets, etc. However, I’m not done; there is a checklist of things that I want to improve about Amai’s week before I move on:

1. During the event where Amai speaks to her clubmembers outside of the Cooking Club on Monday, Amai should speak to each club member individually, and they should all respond to her with at least one line of dialogue, so that it feels like she is actually interacting with them instead of just standing and talking.
2. The students who are positioned throughout the hallways to serve as “Living Security Camera” should perform personality-appropriate or club-appropriate animations instead of just sitting and reading books.
3. At the bake sale, Cooking Club members should interact with one another when customers are not present, but should turn their attention to customers when someone shows up to buy food and eat it.
4. Cooking Club members shouldn’t begin preparing food in the Home Ec room until Amai is present. This will prevent situations where Amai is alone and vulnerable inside of that room.
5. During Amai’s week, Amai and her clubmembers should clean the Home Ec room during Cleaning Time instead of cleaning at their usual locations.
6. Throughout the week, Amai should interact with other characters aside from Senpai and members her club.
7. There should be advertisements/posters for Amai’s bake sale around school.
8. Amai’s current hair mode should be replaced with a new hair model.
9. The dialogue in some of Amai’s events should be adjusted.
10. “Schemes” need to function during Amai’s week.

And then, of course, there is one more thing: Adding voice acting to Amai’s week. This one will be tricky for a variety of different reasons. Because of the numerous factors that will make this a very complicated and difficult task, I will be saving it for last. I will not begin proactively seeking voice actors for Amai’s week until after I have completed all of the “checklist items” listed above (and also the ones listed below). Essentially, I won’t turn my attention to the matter of voice acting until I’ve taken care of every other task I could possibly work on. I may choose to elaborate on my reasoning in the future, but I won’t be doing so at this point in time.

Planned Features for Custom Mode

Before I start focusing on making improvements to Amai’s week, I first want to wrap up the task I’m currently working on: Making a series of additions and improvements to Custom Mode.

Now, I can’t promise you that all of the below features will prove to be feasible, but these are the features most-requested by players, which I plan to work on in January:

• Ability to let the player import custom hair models into the game using an “asset bundle” system.
• Ability to assign “Player Hairstyles” to students, and “Student Hairstyles” to the player.
• Ability to decide what a rival’s Persona will change to after she has been eliminated.
• Ability to decide which traits do or don’t get randomized when randomizing students.
• Ability to change the game’s color scheme to whatever color the player chooses.
• Ability to give students different routines for every day of every week.
• Ability to write the dialogue of rival confession speeches.
• Improved interface for selecting a character’s hair style.
• Ability to choose which Tasks are offered by rivals.
• Ability to write the dialogue of club leaders.

Once these tasks are done, I’ll be moving on to the Amai-centric tasks listed above.

When’s The Next Rival?

At the beginning of 2024, I felt extremely confident that two rivals would be released in 2024 – in fact, I felt 100% certain of it. I would have bet my life on it.

However, because Amai’s week was released with numerous problems, I decided to completely postpone any work on subsequent rivals until I could bring Amai’s week up to the standard set by Osana’s week. The most important thing that Amai’s week requires is voice acting. Unfortunately, I don’t know how long it will take me to find voice actors for all of the characters who have speaking lines during Amai’s week.

If I find them quickly, I can wrap up Amai and begin work on Kizana in the first half of 2025. However, if it takes me a massive amount of time to find appropriate voice actors, then perhaps work will not begin on Kizana until the second half of 2025.

I’m sorry, but I just can’t give you a concrete answer at this point in time.

Custom Mode Update

Okay! With all of that stuff out of the way, it’s time to move on to the “changelog” part of the blog post. We’ll start with my current focus: Custom Mode!

This screen of Custom Mode now has many more options:

• It is now possible to decide a student’s reputation!
• It is now possible to decide which Task a student offers the player!
• It is now possible to decide whether or not a student’s club accessory is enabled or disabled!
• It is now possible to decide if a student will react strongly to a specific student’s death! (If they see you murder this student, they will attack you. If they see this student’s corpse, they will drop to their knees and cry beside it.)

Also:

• It is now possible to “invert” a character’s hair – you can now flip a student’s hair horizontally to give them a new look! (Maybe you want a student’s hair to cover their right eye instead of covering their left eye, etc.)
• It is now possible to add voice lines to Senpai-Rival interaction events!
• Randomizing students will now randomize their reputation and their task!

Improvements

• Because some laptop touchpads don’t have a “left click” feature, Yandere Simulator was updated with the ability to take photographs using the left ctrl key instead of the left mouse button. However, this information was not mentioned in the game’s tutorial, causing some laptop players to get stuck in the tutorial. The tutorial text has been updated to let laptop players know about this.
• The “I brought an adult magazine to school and the student council confiscated it, please get it back for me” Task was created for male students, but was mistakenly assigned to several female students in 1980s Mode. 1980s tasks have been shuffled around to make sure that this isn’t the case anymore.
• 5 new “Schoolday” tracks have been added to 1980s Mode! 5 tracks, each with 9 variations for every possible combination of sanity and atmosphere – that’s 45 new tracks in total! The new tracks are numbered #7 through #11. (The track that was previously labeled #7 has been changed to #12.)
• The 1980s Mode light music minigame now features illustrations instead of black silhouettes! (They will still appear as black silhouettes in Custom Mode, since the player may have customized them in any way.)
• When LoveSick Mode is enabled, the “stalking Senpai as he walks to school with the current rival” cutscene will now feature darker visuals and a new spooky background track.
• When socializing with a student, the player will now get a “Persona Bonus” if using the same idle animation as the student they’re interacting with.
• When LoveSick Mode is enabled, the town will now feature darker visuals and a new spooky background track.
• Updated the stockings that Amai uses in the “Taro meets Amai” cutscene.

Fixes

• If the player pays the Yakuza to abduct a rival, a cutscene plays. Updating this cutscene to reflect your rival’s customized appearance in Custom Mode would be a huge investment of time that wouldn’t really pay off, since it’s an extremely brief cutscene that very few players will ever actually see. So, from now on, this cutscene will be audio-only in Custom Mode.
• On the Calendar screen, the player can see stats such as “the total number of times that the player has alarmed their classmates.” Spooking Senpai does not count as an ‘alarm’, but was being counted here, causing the number to be inaccurate (and inconsistent with the number displayed on the player’s save data on the title screen). This has been fixed.
• When any male character sees Chigusa get killed, they instantly turn into a Heroic student and attack the player. However, student council boys would react to Chigusa’s death by entering a physical struggle with the player instead of using pepper spray, which was illogical. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player sent Osana to wait at the rooftop and then sent a robot to kill Osana and then activated the “Offer Help” prompt while Osana was being murdered by the robot, Osana would begin talking to the player while being murdered by the robot. This bug has been fixed.
• If a rival’s suitor was following them at the moment that the rival put a note into the suitor’s locker, the suitor could teleport straight into their locker, change shoes, and leave school, preventing a rival-suitor confession from taking place. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player triggered the Genocide Ending without first allowing Sakyu/Inkyu to have their morning conversation, the player would hear Sakyu/Inkyu’s voices speaking while the game transitioned into the Genocide Ending cutscene. This bug has been fixed.
• In Custom Mode, if the player created a student with a Heroic Persona and “Invincible” Strength, that student’s “takedown” animation would not be properly synchronized with the player’s “takedown” animation. This bug has been fixed.
• In 1980s Mode, if the player rushed to class and advanced time forward before their rival had even changed their shoes, their rival’s leg texture would be incorrect for the rest of the day. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player gave Raibaru a bag of chips to get her away from Osana and then killed Osana, Raibaru would return to the spot where Osana died and just stand there indefinitely. This bug has been fixed.
• At the school gym, the doorways were not flush against the school building, allowing the player to see little gaps between the building’s walls and the doorways. This oversight has been corrected.
• 1980s Mode rivals were supposed to get textures for their faces/bodies that would make their skin color more accurate to their official artwork, but it didn’t work. It should be working now.
• If the player enabled Blood Censorship, blood would not be censored when a mind-broken slave committed suicide, or when a teacher was being stabbed to death. These bugs have been fixed.
• In Custom Mode, if the player gave loose socks to their protagonist, those socks would not be updated when the player toggled rimlights or outlines on or off. This bug has been fixed.
• In Custom Mode, if the player designed a female Senpai and then achieved the Genocide Ending, their Senpai would have a male body in the kidnapping cutscene. This bug has been fixed.
• In the “Details Options” menu, if the player changed the game from Windowed Mode to Full Screen, the text for “Windowed Mode Yes/No” would not be accurate. This bug has been fixed.
• In Custom Mode, if the player designed a female Senpai and then completed a playthrough, their Senpai would have a male body in the confession cutscene. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player put a bloody club uniform into a washing machine, the club uniform would not be clean when it popped out of the washing machine. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player cut the rope holding up the sandbag, saved the game, and loaded that save, the sandbag would teleport back into the air. This bug has been fixed.
• The Gym Leader’s likes/dislikes didn’t include a like for “Sports,” despite the fact that she’s a professional athlete. This oversight has been corrected.
• If the player electrocuted a female student while she was holding a note, the note would not disappear from her hands. This bug has been fixed.
• The Foreign Studies Room was still named the “English Classroom” in the ventilation menu. This bug has been fixed.
• Missing Posters would not appear for kidnapped students. This bug has been fixed.

Investigating the Feasibility of an Android Port

For years, people have asked me to port Yandere Simulator to Android. I have always said, “No! I won’t do it. Yandere Simulator requires 16 buttons and 2 control sticks to play. It’s not feasible on a touchscreen. Also, I strongly doubt that any mobile device is powerful enough to run it at a playable framerate.”

Well…

Mobile devices have gotten a lot more powerful over the course of the last 10 years, and a lot of players have expressed that they really wouldn’t mind seeing 16~18 buttons onscreen, as long as they get to play Yandere Simulator on their device of choice – it’s kind of the norm for certain genres of touchscreen games, anyway.

With that in mind, 2025 will probably be the year that, for the first time, I export an Android build of Yandere Simulator, test it on a few devices, and see just how feasible it actually is. If it’s unplayable on the highest-end Android device, then that’s that. But, if it actually runs smoothly on some devices…well, perhaps it’s worth investigating after all.

I’m just going to let you know up-front that, if I port Yandere Simulator to mobile, there’s a very high likelihood that the mobile version will always lag behind the desktop version in features, because maintaining two separate versions of the game would slow down development. Also, please prepare yourself for the possibility that I may decide to include ads in the mobile version. Why? Because, after 10 years of labor, I think it’s fair and reasonable for me to begin making some sort of profit from my work.

Anything Else?

Yeah! One more thing. I said it once up above, but I’d like to say it again:

Happy New Year!!!