Happy Halloween!

Hey, it’s October 31st! That means it’s Halloween! And that also means it’s time for my annual

What is a “Spooktacular”? Well, it’s a yearly tradition of mine; I post a pair of wiggling skeletons and then 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 released a minigame that a volunteer had created for me: the dance machine in the Gaming Club
• And in 2020, October 31st was the release date of Yandere no Sutoka, a parody of Saiko no Sutoka.

As you might have noticed, I’ve been busy every single day this month releasing bug-fixing builds for 1980s Mode. I simply didn’t have enough time to create a horror-themed minigame this year.

However…

Last year, around this point in time, I had a dream. In my dream, I was fighting a witch by placing magical objects on a grid. Some of these magic objects protected me from the witch’s spells, and other objects would attack the witch. It felt like a video game; some kind of first-person, grid-based action game.

My dream was so vivid that I decided to make a game prototype based on the “mechanics” of the dream. Don’t worry, it didn’t take time away from development; I did it in my spare time, and streamed the whole thing on my Twitch channel. It only took a couple of days.

Since witches are spooky and my prototype is a sort of miniature game, it technically counts as a “horror-themed minigame”, so I’ve decided to release it to the public for this year’s Spooktacular!

I call it:

Witch Game!

You can download it here:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/ahmhp4lnudtakab/WitchGame.zip/file

Now, I’m just going to warn you, this prototype is basic. It’s probably only good for, like, 30 seconds of entertainment. However, I’m still kinda proud of it, since I managed to re-create my dream almost perfectly.

Interested in hearing more? As always, click Continue Reading.

Does It Work?

The purpose of a prototype is to test a concept. So, after building a prototype to give this concept a test-drive, what have we learned? Well, to be honest, I feel that this prototype has revealed that the concept is very flawed

The focus of a strategy game is to outsmart your enemy. But if your enemy is constantly moving around the entire grid at a high speed, you can’t plan ahead or try to thwart your enemy’s strategy with one of your own. And if you can run and jump all over the grid freely, it becomes trivially easy to avoid anything your enemy does. Frantic, fast-paced, running-and-jumping gameplay does not suit a strategy game.

In its current form, the prototype leads us to the game development equivalent of a dead end; “This isn’t fun. Let’s go back to the drawing board and re-design it.” And every solution I can think of involves making the game turn-based in some form.

Imagine that the enemy gets 5 seconds to run around the map and place skulls/shields. Then it’s your turn. Now you get 5 seconds to dodge/sabotage whatever your enemy did, and throw down some skulls/shields of your own. Back and forth you go, until one opponent has outmaneuvered and outsmarted the other. Retains the fast pace, the grid, and the running+jumping gameplay, but it becomes a more tactical and strategic game.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that, by making it turn-based, it might actually have some potential. In fact, there is already a strategy game that combines turn-based elements, real-time elements and free movement around an environment that is quite fun – one of my most favorite games of all time, in fact!

…but, even though it would be incredibly fun to work on a project with that type of gameplay…it’s something I wouldn’t even dream of working on until after my current project is finished.

…and, on that note…

The Near Future

In this blog post, I’ve mentioned two things that I’d like to elaborate about:

1. Releasing daily bug-fixing builds for 3 weeks straight
2. Making game prototypes

I knew that 1980s Mode would draw a lot of attention to Yandere Simulator. With that many eyes on the game, I wanted to make sure that any bugs or issues found within the new mode would get fixed ASAP. So, I decided to fully commit to the task of fixing bugs and problems nonstop. The result is that, over the past 3 weeks, I’ve released around twenty new builds of the game, each containing at least 10 fixes, changes, or additions that differentiate them from the previous build. That’s around 200 changes to the game in 3 weeks. And this comes immediately after a 3-month-long crunch period where I did practically nothing but work on 1980s Mode to get it out as fast as possible to prove how quickly I could give people everything they ever wanted out of Yandere Simulator.

So, where does that leave us? Well…

I, really, really, really miss doing things that are not Yandere Simulator. I would like to take a break from working on Yandere Sim and do something else for a little while. A few weeks minimum, maybe a month maximum.

Of course, it’s extremely easy to predict how people would react if I formally announced that I was taking a vacation. The majority of reactions will fall into one of two categories:

1. It’s perfectly okay to take a break after working on one project for seven years.
2. It’s completely unacceptable to take a break when you still haven’t finished that thing you started seven years ago.

Some of the more nuanced reactions might be:

1. If you take a break, you will regain your energy and be able make progress faster when you return!
2. If you take a break, you will lose all of your momentum and will never be able to get it back.

Or:

1. Even if you intend to take a short break, you might get distracted by the allure of a new project and your “short” break will turn into a long one.
2. You can take a break if you want, but it would be unethical to accept Patreon donations while you’re on vacation, so you have to shut down your Patreon if you want to take a break.

The sheer amount of disapproval I’m sure to encounter is almost enough to make me dismiss the idea altogether. But, there is a part of me that hopes that 1980s Mode and the 200+ improvements that have been made to the game over the past three weeks are enough to make people say, “Okay, YandereDev, you’ve earned a break for a little while.”

So, what would I actually do if I took a break?

I want to catch up on all the highly-anticipated video games that came out in 2021 that I completely ignored for the sake of working on 1980s Mode. I want to watch a couple of anime and movies that came out this year that I’ve been anticipating for a really long time. And, most of all, I want to work on a game prototype. Not a complete project…just a prototype. I’ve got a game idea that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about for the past few months, and I really want to set aside some time to test out the idea and see if it would be as cool as it is in my mind.

Will I actually take this break that I’m agonizing over so much? Maybe not. Maybe it won’t even happen. After all, I haven’t taken a vacation since 2016. Every year, I think, “I’ll take a vacation,” and then I never actually do it. Maybe this break will fall into that category. Maybe I’ll just keep releasing daily bug-fixing builds for the next few weeks, then feel pressured to release a video, then feel pressured to do the next thing, and the thing after that, and the thing after that, and no break will ever happen. That’s how it always is, after all.

So, if I’m not able to commit to the idea of a break at this point in time, why am I even bringing it up here? To gauge your reaction, and to prepare you in case it actually does get announced at some point in the near future. If it does happen, I just wouldn’t want it to seem like a surprise that comes out of nowhere.

Anyway…I hope that I’ve built up enough goodwill that you’d be willing to be lenient with me if I did ever announce that I was taking a break for a little while.

In the meantime, I hope that you get a little bit of enjoyment out of my silly little Witch Game prototype.

…oh! I almost forgot. I’m releasing another bug-fixing build today. Here is the changelog:

Fixes and Changes

• If you bump into a student council member 5 times, they will push you. This was true even if you bumped into them 4 times at 7:30 AM and then once again at 5:30 PM. That was a little bit silly, so, from now on, the “bump counter” will reset after attending class. Student Council members will now only pepper-spray you for bumping into them at least 5 times within the same “phase” of the day. (This goes for delinquents, as well.)
• If Raibaru was distracted with a dropped weapon right before Osana’s phone call event began, Raibaru would carry the weapon everywhere and forget about returning it where it belonged. This bug has been fixed.
• Fixed bug that prevented the game from taking screenshots properly when the player attempted to save a photograph taken with Yandere-chan’s smartphone.
• Fixed bug that would make Ryoba’s hands appear in front of her camera while she was aiming the camera she got from the Photography Club.
• Adjusted the “gazing at photo of Senpai” animation to remove an issue where Ryoba’s hand was clipping into her body.
• Fixed bug that made the incorrect audio jingle play when the player obtained a “C” grade at the end of the game.
• From now on, the Yakuza will disappear from the street forever if his brother is killed at any point in time.
• Fixed bug that caused the Counselor/Headmaster/Journalist to use the wrong portraits in 1980s Mode.
• Fixed bug that was preventing the game form lowering the player’s reputation for skipping school.
• Fixed bug that made the player’s reputation go down for taking a nap on Sunday.