What’s currently being worked on? What’s next? When’s the next rival?

Hi! According to this roadmap, we are currently in “Stage 4” of Yandere Simulator’s development, moving towards “Stage 5.” But, what specifically am I working on right now, what are the next updates / videos going to be about, and when will the next rival be released? In this blog post, I’ll answer all of those questions in as much detail as possible!

To get started, scroll down below this adorable artwork by yukipenguin!

What’s currently being worked on?

When I released Osana on August 31st, I honestly expected that all bugs would be fixed by September 10th, and that a new video would be out by Sept 15th. I definitely did not think that I would be releasing 17 bug-fixing builds within the span of a single month, or that we would arrive at October 1st without a new video! However, when I think about it, it should have been obvious that things were going to turn out this way, and here’s why:

Most builds of Yandere Sim only contain a handful of minor differences over the previous builds – but the Osana demo contained dozens of huge additions, new mechanics, scripted events, long cut-scenes, etc. The number of new bugs in the game has always been directly proportional to the amount of new content that was recently added…and because the Osana demo was the largest batch of new content that ever dropped in a single update, it’s only logical that there would be about 3 weeks’ worth of bugs that would need to be fixed.

When the Osana demo was first released, I was getting around 200 bug reports per day (!), but now we’re down to less than 10 bug reports per day. (It’s also worth mentioning that most bug reports are duplicates!) The demo is quite stable now, but there are still a small number of minor bugs that I want to fix before I’m ready to completely shift focus to the next phase of development…but I anticipate that it should only take about 1 more “Bug-Fixing Build” to reach that state.

So, after that, what will be the next stage? Well…

What’s Next?

Over the course of the past month, a lot of players have shared their feedback on the demo, and highlighted lots of imbalanced mechanics, game design flaws, and features that are simply not any fun. I’ve seen a lot of wisdom among all of the feedback that I’ve been reading, and I’ve composed a list of changes that I want to make to the game, in order to improve the overall experience.

Some of those changes were gradually trickling in over the course of the past month – like the ability to skip directly to the end of the week after eliminating your rival – but the “big” improvements are basically completely new features that will require a few days of work, so I decided not to work on them until we were past the “Bug-Fixing Build” phase – which we’re currently almost done with.

After releasing one more “Bug-Fixing Build”, I’ll get to work on making a series of additions/improvements to the game that should make the demo experience a lot better than it currently is – especially for new players. Once I’ve made those changes, I would like to create a YouTube video talking about the feedback I received, naming the flaws I decided to fix, and showcasing all of the differences between the initial demo and the revised demo.

The purpose of such a video would be to demonstrate my commitment to listening to feedback, acknowledging flaws within the game, and taking action to fix those flaws. I feel that it’s really important for me to demonstrate this, since I want to show people that there are many reasons to have a lot of faith in the future of the project – such as, for example, a developer that is committed to addressing major issues that players have with the game.

What Else?

In 2016, a very talented singer recorded vocals for a song about Yandere Simulator – it was a parody of a very popular song, with the lyrics adjusted to be about murder. The lyrics were great, and the song was catchy as hell, so I planned to create a music video and upload it to my YouTube channel…but I never got around to it. There was always something higher in priority to work on.

Last month, I finally set aside a day to create the music video. This awesome song from 2016 can finally see the light of day; I’m so happy! As of this moment, it’s 100% ready to be uploaded…but, I worry about how the video will be received. I don’t want people to get the wrong idea and say things like, “OMG you spent a whole month working on a music video?? You haven’t made any development progress??” so, I feel like I should upload a progress video first, and a just-for-fun music video afterwards.

The History of Yandere Simulator’s Development

Probably the biggest obstacle to the success of the crowdfunding campaign is the fact that a lot of people have been mislead into believing completely untrue things about Yandere Simulator – things that would prevent them from feeling comfortable with supporting the game financially. For example…

There are people who believe that “all of Yandere Simulator’s assets are from the Unity Asset Store,” or “all of Yandere Simulator’s assets are stolen from other games.” These statements are simply not true. But, sadly, people are going to keep believing things like that, until I make a video debunking the rumors. However, I don’t want to upload a video saying, “You’re all wrong!! Stop spreading misinformation!!” because that just doesn’t feel appropriate for a YouTube channel about game development.

That’s why I would like to create a video talking about the history of the game’s development, from its conception to present day. Such a video would provide me with the opportunity to speak about absolutely every aspect of the game – including the aspects that people are misinformed about. For example, while talking about the history of Yandere Sim’s development, I would have completely valid reasons to talk about the origins of the game’s assets (1% bought from asset store, 99% created by volunteers) without sounding like I am only bringing up the subject in an attempt to address drama and falsehoods. I feel like this is something that is vital to the success of the crowdfunding campaign, since the campaign might not be able to succeed as long as millions of people are misinformed about the project.

New Character Models

Another video I’d absolutely love to make would be a video showing off the new character models that were created recently. They look gorgeous, and can perform all of the game’s currently-existing animations flawlessly! But, it has been difficult to find a character rigger who is available to create a control rig for the model, which would be a crucial part of showing off the flexibility and expressiveness of the new model – so, there has been a roadblock preventing us from moving forward with the models. Believe me, I’d absolutely love to show off the new models, but first we have to locate a character rigger to get the last step done.

Crowdfunding Campaign?

Once I’ve finished fixing the last bugs lingering in the demo, and finished adding new features that improve the demo, and finished making a video about how the demo evolved since its initial released, and uploaded a video about the history of the game’s development, then I will be ready to start planning the crowdfunding campaign.

The process of planning the crowdfunding campaign will involve determining exactly how much money is necessary to pay a team of professionals to work on the game for a period of at least 1 year, and studying successful crowdfunding campaigns to determine how and why they succeeded, and deciding what kind of “backer rewards” should be offered, and preparing to promote the crowdfunding campaign as much as possible during the month it will be active, and potentially launching something really big and exciting alongside the crowdfunding campaign in order to drum up hype and excitement for the game.

How long will it take to complete all of those steps? There are simply too many factors to know for certain! I have a prediction for how long it might take, and I could tell you my estimate right now…but people always get really mad at me whenever one of my estimates turns out to be wrong, so I’m just going to keep my thoughts to myself.

Depending on the outcome of the crowdfunding campaign, the next step would be to hire professionals, or begin speaking with publishers / investors about funding for Yandere Simulator.

Either way, that would be the point in time when hire a professional software engineer to permanently replace me as Yandere Simulator’s lead programmer. (In case you’re curious, this is the phase of development where any inefficient / sub-optimal code in the game would be refactored.)

After that…work would begin on Amai, the game’s 2nd rival.

Phew! That was a long post, but now you know everything that is going to be happening in the near future!

Oh, by the way, I’m releasing a new bug-fixing build today! It’s almost 3x the size of a normal bug-fixing build! Here’s a list of all the differences:

Fixes, Changes, Additions

• It is now possible to use a wrench to sabotage a drinking fountain so that the fountain will spray water on any student who uses it. This will cause the student to run to the locker room to change out of their soaked clothing. As a result, the “give student snack so they get thirsty and drink water” feature can now be used to send students to the locker room instead of the “bucket of water over door” feature.
• After eliminating Osana, Osana will now appear on the title screen in a state that reflects the exact way that the player eliminated her. Attacked, Betrayed, Crushed, Drowned, Expelled, etc. (There are 19 variations, one for each way to eliminate her!) This would have taken a lot of time away from development, so someone else did it for me – Star60! Thank you so much, Star60!
• The texture on the “Puzzle Cube” of the Alphabet Killer Challenge has been edited so that the puzzle could actually be solved if it was a real object. (Yes, the un-solvable puzzle texture was bothering a few people…)
• Fixed exploit that would result in Raibaru standing in one spot perpetually, if she was snapped out of an event by alarming behavior by Yandere-chan, and Yandere-chan immediately stood less than 1 meter away from her.
• Added a new background track to the school environment (9 versions, one for each possible combination of atmosphere/sanity). Now there are 11 possible tracks that can play at school. The 11th track was provided by Fonix!
• Fixed bug that caused gloves/masks to become bloody if the player used them to attack while wielding a long weapon (which isn’t supposed to make your clothing become bloody).
• Fixed bug that would cause the player to become unable to purchase Services from Info-chan if the player paid for a Service and then reset the day immediately afterwards.
• Fixed bug that would allow multiple menus to be opened at the same time if the player pressed the “go forward” button and the “go back” button simultaneously.
• Fixed bug that caused low-sanity effects to appear at the title screen if you used the pause screen to return to the title screen while your sanity was low.
• Fixed bug that could result in one of Osana’s events beginning while she was in the middle of going to talk to her suitor at the matchmaking area.
• It is no longer possible to arrange a meeting for 5:30 PM, since many characters (like your rival) leave school before that point in time.
• It is no longer possible to use the “Send To Locker” option on a student who hasn’t actually changed their shoes at their locker yet.
• Fixed bug that could result in the player entering Mission Mode from one of their save files, instead of from the Mission Mode menu.
• The “white to pink gradient” aesthetic now extends to other aspects of the game’s UI, such as the text and icons of button prompts.
• Fixed bug that prevented Osana from behaving properly if she was splashed with water between her two Friday morning events.
• Fixed bug that was preventing the game from spawning the white steam cloud that surrounds Yandere-chan when she bathes.
• Fixed bug that would prevent the Matchmaking minigame from properly resetting all of its data if the player reset the day.
• The hair salon on the street now has unique background music, meaning that all shops now have their own tracks.
• Changed some of the textures in the bathrooms again, since they didn’t turn out as expected in the last build.
• Fixed bug that would cause blood to clip through the walls, if a corpse was bleeding inside of a bathroom.
• It is no longer possible to pause the game while Yandere Vision is active, since it could result in bugs.
• Adjusted the buttons of the Prompt Bar so that the buttons aren’t so close to the edge of the screen.
• Fixed bug that prevented the “student who ate snack will be thirsty for water” feature from working.
• Fixed bug that made bathroom light switches display the wrong text when being turned on/off.
• Fixed bug that made Saki’s hair turn invisible after she witnessed a murder.
• The Settings Menu at the Title Screen now fades in and out much faster.
• Raibaru can now identify Yandere-chan’s actions from longer distances.
• Fixed a bunch of minor, miscellaneous issues around the game, such as clothing/hairstyles that clipped into characters’ bodies, missing colliders around certain props, aspects of the UI that didn’t enable/disable properly, button prompts that weren’t centered, debug commands that were accidentally left accessible, etc.