I’ve been making a lot of progress on Amai! You can read all about it on my Patreon.
While implementing Amai, I’ve also been making improvements/fixes to various aspects of the game. To see a list of everything that has been improved/fixed over the past 2 weeks, scroll down past this fantastic artwork of the Light Music Club by omious1!
Improvements
- For a long time, rival characters would simply refuse to talk to the player if they hadn’t put their shoes on yet, or hadn’t put their bookbag on their desk yet. This was an attempt to prevent “kill rival early” exploits that involved befriending a rival and asking her for a Favor before she had even walked into the school building. However, it was an inelegant solution, since it just resulted in frustrating the player and making the player feel like rivals are almost never available to talk. From now on, it will be possible to talk to rivals and even accept Tasks from them before they’ve even walked into the school building – but they will still refuse to do Favors until after they’ve changed shoes and put their bookbag on their desk.
- In order to join the delinquents, the player needs to meet a set of criteria. One of those criteria is to use the “Tough” Persona. However, the “Tough” Persona and the “Edgy” Persona both use the same stance, so a lot of players were failing to join the delinquents because they were using the Edgy Persona instead of the Tough Persona. From now on, the player can use either the Tough Persona or the Edgy Persona in order to meet the “correct Persona” criteria for talking to the delinquent leader. (The other criteria must still be met.)
- New players couldn’t understand why the woodchipper wasn’t shredding dead bodies placed into it. Nothing inside of the game was informing them that they need to place an empty bucket in front of a woodchipper in order to activate it. So, from now on, a little notification informing the player to place an empty bucket in front of the woodchipper will appear when the player tries to use the woodchipper without a bucket.
- If the player stands too close to a student, that student will feel uncomfortable and will begin deducting reputation points from you. This was too harsh. From now on, students will verbally express that you’re bothering them a few times before they start deducting points.
- “Discord Rich Presence” has returned; if you play Yandere Simulator on a device where you are signed in to Discord, your Discord status should update to “Playing Yandere Simulator,” along with an icon representing the game.
- During the “hair stylist recognizes you as a fellow serial killer and steps closer” moment, the pitch of the background music now shifts downwards over time to make the moment more unsettling.
- When using the Flame Demon easter egg, students are now incapable of fighting back. This allows the player to enjoy the easter egg without worrying about getting a game over.
- From now on, if you give Senpai the “Evil” Persona in Custom Mode, he (or she) will never give you a game over, no matter what he (or she) witnesses you doing.
Fixes
- If a student council member becomes alarmed by the player while investigating a dropped object and sends the player to the guidance counselor, the student council member is meant to return the dropped object to its proper location while the player is in the counselor’s office. However, due to a bug, student council members were returning all weapons to the faculty room, even ones that do not outwardly appear suspicious (such as the scissors from the sewing club). This bug has been fixed.
- If a character was in the middle of investigating a dropped/suspicious object at the exact moment that the player was caught misbehaving and sent to the guidance counselor, and the dropped object was returned to its rightful place while the player was in the counselor’s office, the character would walk over to the object (even if it was on the other side of the map) before resuming their routine. This bug has been fixed.
- In 1980s Mode, if the player joined the Photography Club, took a picture of someone’s face, and pressed the “F” key, they would be able to view that student’s profile. However, the button prompt for doing so was not appearing at the bottom of the screen. This bug has been fixed; the button prompt now appears when it’s supposed to.
- I can’t easily create a male equivalent for the female “get pulled into van” animation, so in Custom Mode, I can’t show an animation of a male rival being abducted. To address this, the screen now turned black during the abduction cutscene. (You can still hear the van pulling up, performing the kidnapping, etc.)
- During the Alphabet Killer Challenge, if a student council member was running towards the player to pepper-spray them, and the player used an Amnesia Bomb to stop the student council member, the protagonist would become locked in place and unable to move, leading to a softlock. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player used Week Select to start their 1980s Mode playthrough ahead of Week 1 and set any of the rivals to be eliminated through bullying, those rivals would still show up at school, even though they were supposed to have stopped attending Akademi. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player was caught by a student council member while in the middle of the “Sneak Panty Shot” animation, the animation would not be able to fully complete the next time the player attempted to perform a sneak panty shot. This bug has been fixed.
- In Custom Mode, if the player told a member of the Occult Club to sit in their “Club” Destination, they would walk to a chair, but would sit in midair a meter away from the chair, instead of actually sitting in the chair. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player held a bottle of bleach and then picked up a bucket without dropping the bleach first, the “pour bleach” option would appear over the water bucket even though the player wasn’t holding the bleach anymore. This bug has been fixed.
- In Custom Mode, if a student was told to follow the protagonist around, that student would complain that the protagonist was standing too close, and would deduct reputation points. This didn’t make sense, so this oversight has been corrected.
- When Osana is waiting at a matchmaking spot to speak with a suitor, Raibaru is supposed to back off and stand a short distance away. However, this wasn’t happening if Osana was waiting at the matchmaking spot. This bug has been fixed.
- In the tutorial of 202X Mode, during the tutorial where the player was taught how to win the Struggle minigame, the player was automatically winning the minigame instead of being required to press buttons. This bug has been fixed.
- If a mind-broken slave attacked their target while their target was investigating a suspicious object on the ground, the target would not enter the “being attacked by mind-broken slave” state properly. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player met the criteria for reporting a corpse to a teacher, but was also armed with a weapon, both the “Attack” and “Report Corpse” prompts would appear simultaneously above a teacher’s head. This bug has been fixed.
- When navigating through the save file menus, sometimes the button prompts at the bottom of the screen would not update properly or accurately reflect the actual options available at any given menu. This bug has been fixed.
- If a mind-broken slave attacked their target while their target was breaking up a fight between two characters, the target would not enter the “being attacked by mind-broken slave” state properly. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player used Custom Mode to create a character with the Protective Persona but a Strength less than 9, the character would not be able to enter the “Struggle” minigame properly. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player joined the Gardening Club and then spoke to Budo and highlighted the “spar with martial arts club” option, the word “Seeds” would appear instead of the word “Practice.” This bug has been fixed.
- After completing a student’s Task, the game was failing to perform the check that confirmed that the player had gained enough social points with that student to reach Friend status. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player learned a rival’s likes/dislikes through their diary, their Student Info page would fail to update to reflect the fact tha tthe likes/dislikes had been learned. This bug has been fixed.
- In the Alphabet Killer Challenge, activating/deactivating the cloaking device would sometimes cause the protagonist’s face/body/clothing to turn solid white. This bug should now be fixed, I hope…
- If the player was sent to a guidance counselor while an event was occuring, the player would lose the ability to interact with the students who were involved in that event. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player deactivated the security system, saved their game, and then loaded their game, the game would forget that the security system was supposed to be deactivated. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player was spotted committing murder by a Teacher who had any Persona other than the default teacher Persona, the player would freeze in place permanently. This bug has been fixed.
- The “students pick up garbage bags and dump them into the incinerator at cleaning time” feature was not working. Oops! It should be fixed in the latest build.
- In Custom Mode, if the player designed a gender-swapped Gardening Club Leader, it would not be possible to pickpocket them. This bug has been fixed.
- In the Inventory screen, the graphic for “currently selected menu” was covering up the name of the currently selected menu. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player used a knife to cut the rope holding up the sandbag, the “cut rope” button prompt would not disappear. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player committed murder in front of a female Senpai while wearing a mask, the game would soft-lock. This bug has been fixed.
- Cooking Club students would sometimes try to deliver food to people who were inside of locker rooms. This bug has been fixed.
- Due to a bug, Ryoba’s bust was much larger than intended in the street scene. This bug has been fixed.
- When Gema moved his chin, the hair on his upper lip would move downward. This bug has been fixed.
A note about the Amai Challenge
In order to implement Amai, it became necessary to remove a lot of code related to the “Amai Challenge” so that it isn’t interfering with Amai being added to the game properly. From this build onwards, playing the “Amai Challenge” no longer provide you with any kind of meaningful or interesting “challenge” at all. Now that Amai (and other characters) are no longer following a routine designed to make her tricky to kill, she can be killed with extremely little effort. I’m not going to take this very seriously, or make any sort of effort to change/fix it. (I don’t see any point in maintaining the Amai Challenge when I could be using that time to implement the actual, real Amai, who will offer a better experience than the Amai Challenge ever did.)
Also – starting from this build, you’ll be able to encounter weird bugs in the 2nd week, such as a male voice coming out of Amai, finding Moeko’s diary in Amai’s bookbag, not seeing the bake sale table in the plaza, etc. Don’t bother reporting any of these bugs. None of these bugs will be present when I’m done implementing Amai for real.
In short, just forget about getting a meaningful experience out of the “Amai Challenge” right now. It’s all being replaced with an actual, real week for Amai.