Happy Halloween!

Hello! I’ve got a big, biiiiig blog post for you today! But, before that, it’s time for a…

…so, besides a couple of dancing skeletons, what is a “Spooktacular”? It’s an event where I release a horror-themed minigame!

• In 2015, I released Yanvania!
• In 2016, I released Yandertale!
• In 2017, I released Midori Forest!
• In 2018, one of Yandere Simulator’s volunteers, AMZE, developed a horror-themed minigame called YandereDev’s Greatest Nightmare!
• In 2019, I chose October 31st to release a minigame that a programmer volunteer had created for me: the dance machine in the Gaming Club!

Well, now it’s 2020…and, just like the previous two years, I’ve been too busy working on the core game to spend any time producing a horror-themed minigame. I feel so sad about that!

However, just like back in 2018,Once again, AMZE has recently developed a very spooky minigame that definitely deserves to be in the spotlight this Halloween – so that will be the star attraction of this year’s Spooktacular!

It is my pleasure to announce…

…Yandere no Sutoka!

Is the title of this minigame giving you deja vu? Click “Continue Reading” to get the full story!

Earlier this year, a very talented developer named Habupain released an alpha build for his game, Saiko no Sutoka!

His game can be considered the conceptual opposite of Yandere Simulator; instead of playing as a yandere girl pursuing a boy, you play as a boy who is fleeing from a yandere girl! It’s a very chilling experience!

One of Yandere Simulator’s volunteers, AMZE, became interested in replicating Saikou no Sutoka as a learning exercise. As he built the replica, it slowly began to develop into a project that was distinct from the original game that had inspired it! It started shaping up to be a really cool and spooky game, so we began discussing the idea of releasing it on October 31st as a Halloween surprise!

To confirm that this minigame wouldn’t bother the original developer, AMZE directly contacted Habupain and asked for permission to release a Yandere Sim parody of Saiko no Sutoka. Habupain was was fine with the idea, so we decided to proceed!

Would you prefer to be chased by a psychotic boy instead of a psychotic girl? You’re in luck! Yandere no Sutoka allows you to choose the gender of the yandere that will be pursuing you!

That’s right, it’s the official debut of Ayato Aishi, who has been known as “Yandere-kun” up until now!

Yandere no Sutoka is free, so go right ahead and grab it from AMZE’s blog!

https://amzemods.wordpress.com/downloads/

AMZE might periodically update the game, so check back every now and then!

Before you jump in, here are a couple of tips:

1. A recent horror game, Phasmophobia, features a very unique mechanic; ghosts in the game will react when you speak to them using your microphone! AMZE has implemented this feature in Yandere No Sutoka…but it’ll only work if you’re on Windows 10. Please keep that in mind!
2. Most of the mechanics in Yandere No Sutoka are very easy to understand if you simply read the text on the “HOW TO PLAY” screen. However, there is one mechanic that you may find difficult to deal with: Yandere-chan and Yandere-kun can throw knives at you! These knives move FAST, and there is very little warning before they are thrown at you. To dodge them, you must crouch with the C key. As you play the game, you might realize that the majority of your deaths are going to come from to thrown knives. But, don’t get frustrated! Just learn to anticipate them and keep your finger hovering over that C key, ready to crouch at a moment’s notice!
3. Yandere-chan and Yandere-kun will also place tripwire traps in front of certain doors! Keep an eye out for them!

What about Yandere Simulator, though?

Spooktacular aside, I’m releasing a new build today! I’ll go over the biggest changes below:

Many players have been reporting a bug within the Alphabet Killer Challenge: becoming unable to interact with any student after killing 27 students and reaching #28, Horuda Puresu. I have tried SO many times to encounter this bug, but I’ve never been able to do so! This tells me that there is a special set of steps that must be followed in order to produce the bug, and that nobody has been able to identify exactly what those steps are.

Because it is very time-consuming to eliminate 27 students and attempt to encounter the bug, I have decided to implement two new debug tools that will allow for easy progression through the Alphabet Killer Challenge:

1. A phone jammer that prevents anyone in the school from making phone calls.

2. A sci-fi cloaking device that turns Yandere-chan invisible.

As you can probably imagine, these two devices make the player almost invincible, and are basically the same as using cheat codes to eliminate all challenge and difficulty from the game. As such, any playthrough that involves the two devices cannot be considered a “valid run”.

(However, it is possible that, in the future, these two devices may become balanced and turned into official gameplay mechanics oin the base game. Perhaps the cloaking device could be obtained by joining the Science Club, but can only function for 10 seconds before completely running out of battery life? Perhaps the phone jammer can be purchased from Info-chan, and can only jam a phone that is within 5 meters? We’ll see how things turn out…)

The cloaking device and phone jammer are both located within the Student Council room (but only when the Alphabet Killer Challenge is active.) For now, the giggle button is the button that activates and de-activates the cloaking device,. (Because it’s basically at the same level as a debug command right now, it doesn’t have any sound effects or anything…but it might in the future.)

If you activate the phone jammer, but you don’t see any visuals appear, don’t worry. It’s working, it just hasn’t been programmed to give a visual indication yet.

For a long time, players have pointed out that it looks extremely suspicious when Yandere-chan remains completely emotionless while a mind-broken slave is performing a murder right in front of her face. Many people have suggested that there should be a command for “faking emotions” so that Yandere-chan doesn’t look sorely out-of-place while every student around her is reacting with shock and fear.

After some consideration, I’ve decided to add this feature to the game! Using the menu that appears when you activate Yandere Vision, it is now possible to make Yandere-chan perform a “shocked” animation to pretend that she is surprised by whatever is happening in front of her. You can perform this animation anytime you want, but it will be considered suspicious behavior unless you’re in the presence of a murder-suicide.

Currently, there is no penalty for not doing the “shocked” reaction around a murder-suicide. This is because, when a student is witnessing a murder-suicide, they are so disturbed by what they are seeing that they are not paying any attention to Yandere-chan at all. So, the “shocked animation” is kinda just for role-playing at the moment…but it might be given more importance in the future.

(In the future, maybe the “Fake Reaction” feature will result in a different animation, depending on the context of the situation. Maybe you’ll have to pretend to be shocked when a rival admits her dark secret to you?)

A lot of players have expressed that they think it’s weird if the stalker doesn’t take any sort of action against Yandere-chan after he sees her enter his room and rescue the cat. Actually, there were meant to be several reasons for this…

1. He knows that if he takes any sort of action against Yandere-chan, he would be screwed. Even if he successfully beat her up and kicked her out of the house, she could still go to the cops and report him. He’s not willing to kill her or kidnap her, so as soon as the cat is in her hands, he has already lost.
2. He doesn’t want to make too much noise and draw his parents to his room, since his parents entering his room would be his worst nightmare.
3. He is a cowardly, impotent little man, and is too afraid to physically assault anyone; he is only capable of making threats over text, and wouldn’t raise a hand against anything more threatening than a kitten.

…however, from a game design perspective, it’s just too weird if the player doesn’t face any sort of repercussion for getting caught. So, from now on…

If the stalker becomes aware of your presence, and you attempt to remove the cat from his room, he will attack you, triggering a struggle minigame. If you lose, you get a game over. If you win, he gets knocked out.

Also, when you’re leaving the house, you’ll notice that the kitchen door will be closed, and you’ll be able to hear the voices of a man and a woman arguing on the other side of it. This explains where the stalker’s mother and father disappear to; they both enter the kitchen and begin talking to one another, unable to hear whatever may be going on in their son’s room.

Their voices are deliberately muffled, but if you listen closely, you might be able to discern what they’re talking about…

By the way, I haven’t seen a single person utilize this feature, so I guess I have to point it out:

You can crouch in this bush to become completely invisible! That’s the intended way to sneak past the father and get into the house!

5 years ago, on this very day, I put Yanvania into Yandere Simulator! I still think that Yanvania has a ton of potential, and I always think about expanding it to be more than the very simple mini-game that it is now…but, working on the main game is always higher in priority than working on mini-games, so Yanvania hasn’t changed much over the years.

Several years ago, a very talented 3D artist created a character model for the protagonist of Yanvania, based on beautiful concept art drawn by Mulberry! I thought that the character model was absolutely gorgeous, but I never took the time to implement it into Yanvania…until today!

In honor of Yanvania’s 5th anniversary, the protagonist’s character model has been replaced, and her animations have been touched up, as well!

The gameplay still remains the same for now, since updating an old minigame is very low on the priority list…but I’m definitely going to continue to dream of all the ways I’d like to touch up Yanvania, haha.

The additions featured above only make up a fraction of the work that I did over the course of the past 2 weeks. The rest of my time was spent on the following:

Fixes, Changes, Additions

• Added the ability to skip the Befriend/Betray Osana cutscene. (Initially, skipping sends you straight to the part of the cutscene where you make the choice to Befriend/Betray. Afterwards, skipping sends you to the end of the cutscene.)
• Fixed bug that would allow Yandere-chan to walk around freely after getting caught by a Student Council member, if she was taking a “sneaky shot” at the exact moment that she was caught.
• Fixed bug that would cause Osana/Raibaru to spin in circles and/or slide across the ground after witnessing a corpse, if the corpse didn’t belong to someone who they cared about.
• Fixed bug that caused the player to get an “EXPELLED” Heartbroken screen instead of an “ARRESTED” Heartbroken screen, if they were pepper-sprayed after committing a murder.
• Fixed bug that prevented certain UI elements from leaving the screen if the Senpai-Osana confession cutscene was triggered while the player was aiming for phone camera.
• Fixed bug that would cause Raibaru to react as if Yandere-chan had committed a murder, if she spotted Yandere-chan holding a weapon while Osana was talking to Senpai.
• Fixed bug that could make the characters walking around in the street scene spin in circles perpetually if the player made Yandere-chan move continuously.
• Fixed bug that would make Raibaru glitch out if Raibaru was being affected by Emetic poison at the same time as Osana was dying of Lethal poison.
• Fixed bug that would prevent Osana from reacting properly if she dodged a bucket of gasoline while on her way to check her locker for a note.
• Yandere-chan is barefoot when she is wearing a swimsuit, so she now uses the “bare feet” sound effect when walking while wearing a swimsuit.
• Fixed bug that would cause a mask to become bloody if the player performed an attack with a weapon that does not result in a blood splatter.
• Fixed bug that would prevent Sakyu from performing her rooftop ring event if she was given a bag of chips shortly before the event began.
• Fixed bug that made it possible to select invalid students (un-implemented rivals) at the Multi Mission screen in the Mission Mode menu.
• Fixed bug that would cause a character’s detection marker to remain onscreen permanently if it was onscreen while they became poisoned.
• Fixed bug that allowed the player to get infinite Info Points by repeatedly trying to pay Info-chan to send a text message to Raibaru.
• Fixed bug that would prevent Osana’s Tuesday lunchtime event from ending properly if she was splashed with water during the event.
• Fixed bug that would make Osana slide across the floor if she was splashed with water during her Monday lunchtime event.
• There is now an option in the Settings menu to disable hair physics. This should improve performance on some computers.
• Fixed bug that would make a student’s “Detection Marker” remain onscreen permanently if they were splashed with water.
• Fixed bug that would cause the lighting in Yandere-chan’s room to change if the player went to town in the morning.
• The “Sneak Panty Shot” feature, accessible from Yandere Vision, now has a MUCH larger hitbox for panty detection.
• Fixed bug that prevented the game from acknowledging Osana as eliminated if she was buried in the gardening club.
• Fixed bug that prevented the game from acknowledging Osana as eliminated if she was dismembered and incinerated.
• Fixed bug that caused the swimming club’s water splashes to be heard from the opposite side of the school.
• Fixed bug that allowed the player to see outside the boundaries of the school using the top-down map.
• The shadow of Osana’s mother is now visible during Osana’s suicide cutscene.
• Fixed bug that would cause Otohiko’s textures to become solid white.
• There is now background music in the “Senpai Meets Amai” cutscene.
• Osana now uses a unique character model in her suicide cutscene.
• The clouds directly above the school no longer look distorted.

…along with several other things that weren’t finished in time for Halloween, but should be appearing in a future build very soon!

What’s Next?

Despite all the cool stuff up above, there is something that I feel very disappointed about. I really, really anticipated that, by now, I would have completed all of the changes that I wanted to make to the demo, and would have released a YouTube video discussing all of the feedback that I had received, and how the feedback was used to make improvements to the demo. I feel really bad that I haven’t met the goal I set for myself!

As described here, I really, really want to move past this current stage of the game’s development. I’ll be focusing my efforts on quickly taking care of those last remaining improvements and speedily advancing to the next stage.

Thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!