I spent the past few weeks working on
some features that I've wanted to add to the game for a very long time. Some of these features are minor improvements and others are kind of a big deal. I'll start by telling you about the minor stuff and then I'll describe the important stuff. While you're playing Yandere Simulator there will be situations where you need to quickly locate a specific student. But if you haven't completely memorized that student's entire routine you might not
know how to find them. To make things easier for the player you can now tag a character from the student info page. Afterwards a red circle will appear
around that character in Yandere Vision. This type of feature probably doesn't
seem super fun or impressive, but it's important to me to put features in the
game that exist purely to make the overall experience smoother, so that the
player isn't getting frustrated when trying to complete simple tasks. The last time I added new background music to the school was over two years ago. As of now there is finally a new background track that the player will hear during school gameplay. The music changes depending on Yandere-Chan's current level of sanity and when school atmosphere is medium or low. So there are technically nine new
tracks in the game now. I hope to add even more background tracks in the near
future. When I first put the corkboard into the game I didn't plan for it to retain the players photographs from day to day. I was fine with letting all the photographs disappear when the player left the room. However I've recently seen people do some very creative stuff using the corkboard and it's a shame to imagine all that
effort being wiped away. So from now on the corkboard into Yandere-Chan's room will remember photographs and strings across multiple dates Those are the types of minor improvements that I've been working on, but now I'll discuss the more significant additions that I've made to the game recently. I don't usually emphasize the reputation feature, but it's definitely one of the most important aspects of the game. If you are spotted misbehaving enough times, then Yandere-Chan will be feared, or hated, or ridiculed by the entire school. Including Senpai. Which will lead to a game over. You can think of your reputation like a health bar. Once you take enough damage - you're dead. Previously getting a low reputation game
over was very unceremonious. You just see some text on a black background and then
it's all over. To really emphasize what Yandere-Chan goes through when her reputation hits rock bottom, I've decided to make the low reputation game over
sequence a bit more elaborate. In the future there might be multiple
versions of this cutscene depending on the exact reason why
Yandere Chan's reputation has fallen. For example if the entire school fears her
and thinks that she's a scary, dangerous, violent person, then this sequence would
depict people running away from her instead of laughing at her. One thing that has been bothering me for years is the evil persona. The idea was that this type of character is delighted to watch people die, so they won't report you to the police if they see you commit murder. I added this persona to the game because I wanted to have as many different personality types as possible. But from a game design perspective this isn't a very good feature. It's basically a get-out-of-jail-free card, that allows the player to completely escape the consequences of their actions with zero effort
whatsoever. And it's completely redundant because it's functionally identical to the coward persona. I don't want to completely remove the
evil persona, but I do believe that the player needs to put in some effort if they want to get away with murder. So, I've made a compromise. As of now, the evil persona has been replaced by something new. The "spiteful" persona. A spiteful character reacts to murder by running away and calling the police. Unless they hate the person who you murdered. For example if you make the Bullies harass a spiteful student, he will wish for the deaths of the Bullies. So if you murder a Bully in front of that student, he will be grateful towards you rather than afraid of you. And he will not report your crime. If you lower a person's reputation far enough a spiteful student will see no worth or value in that person and won't be disturbed if that person dies. Right now these are the only two ways to make a spiteful student hate another student. But perhaps there may be more methods in the future. It's also possible that there might be students who hate other students right from the start of the game, without any action from the player. For example maybe one of the students in
the drama club despises Kizana and wants her dead. If you do enough research
you can figure out who it is and then you'll know that you can murder Kiazana in front of that student without any repercussions. It's no secret that Yandere Simulator is heavily influenced by the Hitman series. In fact the video that plays by default on my Youtube channel is the video where I compare
Yandere Sim to Hitman. Because it's the fastest and easiest way to explain what type of game I'm trying to make. However I definitely don't want a Yandere Sim to just be a reskin Hitman game. And I'm always trying to make Yandere Sim different from Hitman whenever possible. The most unique aspect of the Hitman
games is the ability to take someone's clothing and disguise yourself in order
to gain access to restricted areas and slip past other people without suspicion. This is a feature I would never consider adding to Yandere Sim, because then it would feel like I'm just making a Hitman ripoff. However there is actually a plausible reason to add a similar type of feature to the game. In the past I've explained that Yandere-Chan is an empty girl who doesn't experience emotions in the same way that other people do. When she was a young child she learned how to pretend to act the way that people expected her to act. She pretended to be happy or angry when the situation called for it and pretended to
cry when tragedy struck. Even though she felt nothing on the inside. This aspect of Yandere-Chan her ability to put on a convincing act and pretend to be someone she's not is something that has never really been a part of gameplay. Until now. As of today you can decide how Yandere-Chan presents herself to others. By standing in front of a mirror and pressing a button you can choose Yandere-Chan's persona. As of now over ten different personas are available. Adopting a persona will affect your interactions with certain types of students. For example if you adopt the bookworm persona, you'll receive a reputation bonus when interacting with nerdy students. Such as the teachers pets. And you'll have less of a reputation penalty when a teacher's pet sees you doing something bad. It will also take longer for a teacher's pet to notice you
misbehaving, because their guard will be down around you. The confident persona will give you bonuses with Heroic Students and the Martial Arts Club, the Shy persona will give you bonuses with the Loners and the Occult Club. Here's a list of which students will treat you differently depending on your persona. However keep in mind that this list may change as time goes on. In the event that I need to rebalance this feature. it's possible that you might not be allowed to join a club, unless the club leader thinks you would be a good fit for that club. You would need to speak to the club leader while using the appropriate persona. For example the leader of the drama club wouldn't let you join unless you're using the elegant persona and the Delinquents wouldn't take you seriously unless you're using the tough persona. Hopefully the ability to change Yandere-Chan's persona will emphasize the fact that she is a cunning, deceptive, manipulative person who is putting on an act at nearly all times. In case you're wondering how all of this is going to result in more interesting gameplay, allow me to provide you with an example. Let's say that there's a situation where your current rival is almost alone and vulnerable. But there's a Bully nearby who will spot you if you try to commit murder. The obvious solution is to kill the Bully beforehand. But maybe there's never a good opportunity to do so, because that bully is almost always in the presence of other people. One possible solution is to intentionally lower your own reputation, use the tough persona, join the Delinquents, and then intimidate nearby students into leaving the area so that you're alone with the Bully. However, there might be a spiteful student nearby who would be immune to intimidation. Let's imagine that killing him isn't an option because you need him alive for some reason Because you wouldn't be able to intimidate him into leaving the area you'd have to lower his reputation until he's bullied so that you can safely kill the Bully in front of him without consequence. This is one way you could get rid of the Bully and create a situation where your rival is alone and vulnerable. I could drop Osana into the game today, if I wanted to. But it would be really boring to kill her unless the game has this sort of stuff. My top priority is not getting a rival into the game as soon as possible. I think it's more important to make sure that the game has the features it needs in order for the player to have a fun, interesting, and rewarding experience when eliminating the rivals. Right now the two things I'm most
excited to work on are the Delinquents and the mysterious obstacle that I've been teasing for a long time. So the next update will probably be about one of those two features. I hope you'll look forward to it. Thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator.
This bot's late to the laughing party.
I'm enjoying the development of a sandbox primarily focused on social elements and mechanics. There's a lot of complexities and counters to various strategies, which will help to create multiple viable play-styles when the time comes to eliminate a rival.
I've been following YS for about two or three years now, and I'm always impressed with the amount of thought that goes into developing mechanics. Good work as always, Dev.
u/YandereDev