Yandere Simulator is a stealth game about stalking a boy and secretly eliminating anyone who seems interested in him, while maintaining the image of an innocent schoolgirl.
A "yandere girl" is a girl who loves a boy so much that she is willing to threaten, harm, or kill any other girl who seems interested in him.
The gameplay is similar to the Hitman series; you are put into a large environment filled with many NPCs, and you must track down a specific target and eliminate them. You can use stealth to kill your target without any witnesses, stage an accident that leaves no evidence, or just slaughter anyone who gets in your way. If you don't dispose of corpses, clean up blood, and destroy evidence, then the police might be able to link you to a murder and arrest you.
If you don't want to get any blood on your hands, you can use social sabotage to get rid of a girl; frame her for one of your crimes, get her expelled from school, or ruin her reputation. If you truly want her to suffer, you could convince every other girl in school to bully her until she commits suicide and saves you the trouble.
If the boy you love witnesses you committing murder, he could never love you, and the game would be over.
Here is a short list of some of the features that exist specifically because the game takes place in a school setting and features a yandere protagonist:
I am developing Yandere Simulator using the Unity game engine.
Yes! There are several non-lethal elimination methods available, and it is possible to beat the game exclusively using non-lethal methods.
I plan to eventually put the game on Steam, but not until the game has reached a more presentable and respectable state.
Currently, the player can customize their Senpai's appearance at the beginning of the game.
I'd like to allow the player to change the gender of their Senpai, but this would require a lot of extra animations/models/voice acting, so it's not something I can guarantee at this point in time.
I would like to allow the player to choose the protagonist's gender, but it would require a lot of additional animations/models/voice acting. It is possible that it may become a "stretch goal" for the game's eventual crowd-funding campaign.
I have already seen several mods for Yandere Simulator. However, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide an official "modding API" for the game.
A number of voice actors have volunteered to provide voices for some of the game's most significant characters. However, it is not guaranteed that every individual character will have a unique voice.
I am grateful that you would like to help me out with the game. However, I would not like to ask anyone for a translation until after the game's English script has been 100% finalized. Once the game's English script is final, I will begin seeking translation assistance.
"Yandere Simulator" was only meant to be a placeholder title. I can think of several very compelling reasons to change the game's name to something that sounds more serious. However, at this point in time, I am not yet ready to decide upon the game's final title.
I have zero experience programming anything related to online multiplayer. It could take me a very long time to learn how to implement those kinds of features, so it's not something I can promise at this point in time.
Instead of attempting to implement online multiplayer myself, it might be a better idea to find a volunteer – or hire someone – who has experience programming online multiplayer modes.
The protagonist's name is Ayano Aishi, and the boy she is in love with is named Taro Yamada.
At the end of the game, Ayano will confess her love to Taro underneath the legendary cherry tree behind the school. The exact nature of the confession - and the outcome of the confession - will depend on the decisions that the player made throughout the game. In short, there will be one ending, but with numerous variations.
(There is also a hidden ending called the "Genocide Ending" that is only obtained by killing everyone at school within one day.)
The game will take place over a period of 10 weeks. Each week, a new "rival" will appear and get a crush on Senpai. You will have one week to eliminate her. Yandere-chan will not confess her love to Senpai until all rivals have been eliminated.
Originally, I was not planning on allowing the player to interact with Senpai. I was imagining Yandere Simulator as a game about sabotaging a boy's love life, with no gameplay that involves befriending and romancing the boy. However, recently, I have been re-considering this.
A lot of players have expressed that they would appreciate the ability to interact with Senpai in some way, and that it would be weird if Senpai accepted a love confession from a random stranger. I understand these sentiments, and I agree with them, to an extent.
However, I have established that one of the protagonist's primary character traits is that she cannot control herself in Senpai's presence, so directly interacting with him is simply not an option for her. If I want to allow the player to interact with Senpai, it'll have to be indirectly.
Currently, it is possible to leave anonymous letters and anonymous gifts on Senpai's desks. This way, the player can develop a bond between Senpai and the protagonist without direct interaction. The strength of this bond will probably influence the ending of the game.
Other ways to interact with Senpai have also been suggested: For example, interacting with him online, so that the protagonist could speak to him without experiencing a sensory overload and becoming overwhelmed. However, at this point in time, I have not yet committed to this plan. This is only an idea.
I'm not ready to confirm exactly how much the player will be able to interact with Senpai in the final game.
I am only planning on including weapons that a student could reasonably find in a school setting. The post-highschool academy in Yandere Simulator will have a wide variety of clubs, so there should be a lot of potential to find interesting weapons. There will probably not be any projectile weapons or guns in the game.
I've come up with a list of about 30 weapons that I'd like to have in the final game. These weapons won't be available in the game's first official demo, since I don't want to give away too much in the demo.
I'd like to include as many weapons as possible in the final game, but the actual number of weapons will be determined by modeller support / animator support / budget size.
For now, the scope of the game is limited to the school, the protagonist's house, and one street. I would love to include more environments in the game, but each environment would require modeling, texturing, sound effects, unique characters with unique animations, etc. For each environment I'd like to add to the game, I'd need a team of volunteers willing to create it, or I'd need a large budget so that I could hire some people to build more environments for me.
I would like to release Yandere Simulator on as many different platforms as possible, but releasing games on console is a lot more difficult than independently releasing games on PC, and I would probably need the help of a publisher in order to release Yandere Simulator on any console.
At this point in time, I am only able to release builds for Windows PC. There are two main reason for this:
1) I don't own any computers using the Mac or Linux operating systems. If I exported a Mac / Linux build, I'd have no way to test it. I'd just be throwing a build onto the Internet and praying that people can run it, with no real way to debug it if it doesn't work.
2) Yandere Simulator is developed using the Unity game engine. Within Unity, the process of switching from one platform (Windows) to another platform (Mac, Linux) requires Unity to re-import every one of the game's assets. Yandere Simulator is a huge game with thousands of assets, so when I click the button to switch from one platform to another button, it hangs there for about 15 minutes. Exporting a new build takes 15 minutes, too. It's simply too time-consuming to export PC+Mac+Linux every time I want to make a new build, especially when I can't even test the Mac or Linux builds.
I can't justify working on multiple platforms right now; so I will be maintaining my focus exclusively on PC for the time being. I won't begin to consider exporting Mac or Linux builds of the game until after the first official rival is implemented.
Regarding the possibility of releasing Yandere Simulator for mobile phones...Yandere Simulator may seem like a simple game on the surface, but it is actually an extremely complex game. It is extremely unlikely that a mobile device such as an iPhone or Android could ever run the full version of Yandere Simulator. In order to run on a mobile device, the game would have to be simplified so much that it wouldn't even be the same game anymore.
I am currently receiving some very useful programming assistance from some trusted volunteers. I don't need to ask for any more programming help at this point in time.
Yandere Simulator will be free until I am ready to include two rivals in the game. After that point, the game will have so much content that it will no longer be reasonable to give it away for free, and I'll have to start charging money for it. After the second rival has been implemented, but before the final release date of the game, Yandere Simulator will be sold for a very cheap price (probably something along the lines of $5).
The price and release date of the final game will depend on a lot of different factors that are too difficult to estimate at this point in time.
I'm YandereDev! I worked at a video game company for 3 years, then left to become a freelance programmer and pursue my dream of becoming an independent game developer. In the past, I've worked on 5 console games (for Wii, 360, and PS3) and 5 mobile games (for Vita and iPhone).
You can find the answers to these questions on the "Volunteer" page.
Osana, the first official rival, was released in August 2020.
I don't have any problem with that, as long as you're only using the models for a parody video, and not a video game that you will charge money for.
I don't think it would be wise to plan a sequel before the original game has been finished...but, aside from that, there are multiple factors to consider:
All of the above factors (critical reception, financial success, fan demand, my own feelings) will be considered when deciding whether or not to develop a sequel.
When I first came up with the kidnapping idea, the plan was that it would only be possible for the player to kidnap rivals.
I wanted to be able to test the kidnapping feature without implementing a rival first, so I made it possible to kidnap any female student. I always considered the ability to kidnap any female student to be a temporary / placeholder feature that was only implemented for testing purposes.
However, now that the Yakuza has been implemented and part of his functionality involves the ability to purchase kidnapped victims, it seems as though the "kidnap non-rivals" feature has become official. So, with that in mind, now I have to begin to consider whether or not it should be possible to kidnap males.
Currently, I don't have any strong feelings about whether I do or do not want to support that feature. However, I don't actually have all of the animations that I'd need in order to make it possible to kidnap males. So, it's not something I could implement at this point in time, even if I wanted to do so.
There are already a few lesbian and gay characters in the game. In some cases, you can learn who they are by reading their student profiles. In other cases, you have to deduce their orientation by examining subtle hints and clues.
In most cases, I just don't announce that a character is gay or make it obvious, since it rarely has anything to do with the game's over-arching story or its gameplay.
If students carried bookbags, this would result in a lot of changes to their routine. They would have to start their day by going to their classroom and putting their bookbag on their desk; they wouldn't be able to go about their normal routine until they had done this. They would also have to collect their bookbag from their class before leaving school for the day. To design a challenging experience for the player, I need complete control over exactly where a student will be standing, and exactly when they will be standing there. Adding bookbags to their routine would complicate the routine, so it's not likely to be something that I'll add to the game.
I think it would be really cool if the school changes on certain days, like holidays or festivals. It would be a lot of fun to design challenges or elimination opportunities around once-a-year school events. However, adding a bunch of holiday-themed decorations to the school would require a lot of assets, and changing every student's routine to be related to the holiday would also take a lot of time. Although I think this type of feature would be really cool, it's something that I can't really guarantee and don't really want to promise, because I know that it would create huge amounts of work.
The game's current "Easter Eggs" aren't really hidden; you just open a menu and press a button to activate them. In the future, I think that the player should have to meet some very, very specific criteria to activate an easter egg - for example, dismembering 10 students' arms in order to unlock the "Demon Arms" easter egg. The player might also have to enter a cheat code at the main menu to enable the use of easter eggs or supernatural events. Entering this cheat code and using an easter egg would prevent the playing from being able to acquire any Achievements, and would result in a "non-canon" joke ending. The only way to get a proper ending would be to avoid the use of any cheats or easter eggs.
As for debug commands, there might be a way to access them in the final game, but it will involve entering a password at the title screen (and will disable Achievements).
It'll depend on a large number of factors, most of which I can't accurately predict at this point in time.
1. First, I'll listen to feedback from users and make adjustments to the game to improve the overall experience and remove bugs / exploits.
2. Then, I'll take a vacation and catch up on all the anime/video games I've been missing out on for the past few years.
3a. Then, if there is demand for additional content, I'll design and develop DLC, such as additional rivals to eliminate.
3b. Then, if there is demand for a sequel, a prequel, or a spinoff game, I may begin developing Yandere Simulator 2.
3b. However, if there is no demand for DLC / spinoffs, then I won't bother making either.
4a. By the time Yandere Simulator is finished, I'll have all of the assets necessary to create a game set in a Japanese-style school environment. So, I might create a game that re-uses many of the assets used to create Yandere Simulator.
4b. However, by the time Yandere Simulator is finished, I might be sick of Japanese school settings, and I might never want to make a similar game ever again. In this case, my next game will be completely unrelated to Japanese schools.
Female animations are incompatible with a male skeleton. In order to implement male teachers, I would need male versions of each female teacher animation - as well as male versions of each female voice line. This isn't impossible, but it would require me to ask for a lot of assets, and it would be kind of time-consuming to implement. I might implement male teachers one day, but because it's not necessary for gameplay, it's not a high priority, so you might be waiting a while for it.
If the player defeats a rival non-lethally (and doesn't get them expelled or sent to jail) then the rival will continue to attend school on subsequent days/weeks. They shouldn't be an obstacle to the player, or else the player will regret saving them - so, peacefully-eliminated rivals will spend most of their time far away from the player; for example, studying in the library.
The headmaster of the school is not superstitious; he doesn't believe in ghosts or demons or magic. He thinks it's absolutely harmless for a bunch of students to have a club revolving around occult research. He doesn't think it's a productive field of study, but he has decided that he doesn't have the right to tell young people what passions they should or should not pursue.
I think that there must be a bare minimum of 90 students at school in order for me to craft fun/interesting/challenging situations for the player. After 90 students are present at school, I will begin working on improving the game's performance (increasing the framerate, fixing problems related to rendering/animation/physics, refactoring the code, etc). After I have optimized the game as much as possible, I will analyze how much the framerate has improved, which will determine whether or not I can afford to put more students into the game.
I am dissatisfied with Yandere Simulator's current character models for multiple reasons:
For all of these reasons - and more - I want a new set of character models to be created for Yandere Simulator. (I would like to keep the same general "art style" of the current models, but with a few tweaks to make them more appealing.)
However, whether or not Yandere Simulator gets new character models is dependent on the outcome of the game's crowdfunding campaign, so it's currently impossible to promise whether or not it will actually happen, or when it will happen.
Being able to knock someone unconscious at any time / location would create a large number of new scenarios. Here are some examples:
Each of these scenarios would involve new animations, new voiced lines, and new code. I have to be selective about what kind of features I add to the game. If one new feature (knocking someone out) has the side-effect of creating at least 7 new scenarios, then I'm unlikely to add it into the game. At this point, I'm only considering features that only create one or two new scenarios.
If the player eliminates a rival early, they will be given the option of either proceeding directly to the next week, or continuing to play through the current week. If the player proceeds directly to the next week, they will be asked to allocate the remaining study points that they would have obtained for attending class every day that week.
If the total number of students in a club drops below 5, the club closes. (If Yandere-chan is in a club, she counts towards the club's population.)
Normal clubs only have 5 members. However, any club containing a rival will have a total population of 6 members, so that the player can kill the rival without losing the club.
When a rival is not at school, one of the members of her club will act as a "substitute leader" who performs all of the functions that the rival would normally perform if she was at school. If a rival dies, her substitute will take over the club and become its new leader.
If a club's substitute dies while a rival is absent from school, the club will shut down, but will re-open when the rival returns to school (as long as the club's 4 other members are still present at school).
A club that does not contain a rival does not use the "substitute leader" system. In other words, the death of the club leader will always result in the club shutting down, even if the club still has 5 living members in it (due to Yandere-chan joining the club).
My current priority is to develop a demo that shows off the general experience of playing the game. The game's demo should be interesting and challenging. So, in the demo, the first rival (Osana) will be moderately difficult. But, in the final game, Osana will be the easiest rival, and every other rival will get progressively harder than the previous one. In other words, the game's current level of difficulty (as a debug sandbox for testing features) doesn't reflect how difficult the final game is actually going to be.
I think that every room in the school should serve a gameplay-related purpose, and have a practical reason for existing. I don't think there should be any rooms that serve no purpose, or any rooms that students never bother to enter.
Some of the school's current rooms don't serve a purpose, and it's very hard to come up with any reason why a student (or the player) might go inside of that room. These unneccesary, pointless rooms may be removed in the future. If I remove these rooms, I will either replace them with more useful rooms, or I will extend the size of the school's other rooms.
I don't want every character in the game to have an identical body, but giving each character a different height can result in animation problems. For example, imagine a handshake animation between two characters that are the same height, and then imagine a handshake between a very short person and a very tall person. These two characters couldn't use the normal handshake animation; they would need to use a custom animation. Also, many killing animations involve the protagonist stabbing a certain spot on her victim's body (head, neck, heart) and if victims have different heights then the animation might look wrong. Also, if characters have different body types, then their animations might cause their arms/legs to clip into their body; for example, a very overweight student would need a different "hands on hips" animation than other students.
It would be extremely easy to make characters have different heights, but it could result in animation problems, clipping problems, etc, so it's not something I am planning on doing at this point in time. It's possible that, if the game gets new character models, the new character models might be set up in a way that allows them to easily have different body types without clipping problems. However, it's too soon to promise this.
The current matchmaking process involves Yandere-chan giving instructions to another character via an earpiece. A character would only be willing to put an earpiece into their ear and take instructions from Yandere-chan if they were hopelessly in love with another character, and desperately desired a relationship.
Because the current matchmaking process requires one student to already have romantic feelings for another student, matchmaking can only occur between pre-determined characters. You can't just convince a random stranger to wear an earpiece and follow instructions without a really good reason. You also can't just make any two arbitrary people fall in love unless they were a good fit for one another in the first place.
At this point in time, under the current matchmaking process, it's very unlikely that the player will have the ability to make any two arbitrary characters fall in love.
Probably not. Unique weather conditions (such as rain) would impact many of the game's features and many of the students' routines in numerous significant ways. For example, student routines would have to be adjusted so that they don't go outdoors during rain, blood pools would be washed away by rain, the protagonist's clothing would get wet if she was outside in the rain, characters would have to use umbrellas when walking to school, etc. Weather would change the game in so many different ways that it would drastically increase the amount of work that must be done to complete the game, so it's very unlikely to be added to the game.
Each new feature added to the game extends the game's development time. If I keep adding every new feature that comes to mind, the game will be in development forever, and will never come out. For a long time, I've considered the idea of Yandere-chan developing stalkers, but I don't want to promise this type of feature, because I know that it would just delay development further.
It's possible that having a high reputation might be an imbalanced feature. If the player gets too many advantages from having a high reputation, then I may decide that there should be a downside to having a high reputation; for example, having a high reputation might result in the player developing stalkers.
In other words, I'd consider the possibility of adding crushes / stalkers to the game if it would fix a game design flaw, but I wouldn't consider throwing this feature into the game without a good reason.
I'm aiming for an "M" rating. If I submit the game for classification and it receives an "Adults Only" rating, I'll have to edit aspects of the game until it receives an "M" rating.
An executable can be "signed" with a digital signature that identifies the creator of the executable. If an executable is signed, it's possible to learn the identity of the person who created it, and therefore hold them accountable if their executable was malicious. For this reason, signed executables are considered to be trustworthy, and unsigned executables are considered to be untrustworthy.
To "sign" an executable, you need to pay for an expensive "code signing certificate". A code-signing certificate costs hundreds of dollars per year. I have not bought one yet.
Some antivirus vendors go as far as declaring any executable (*.exe file) to be "malware" or "suspicious" if it does not have a digital signature. This is a very bad approach, and a lot of independent developers have had problems because of this. It is easy for a big company buy a digital certificate, which will be used to sign software, but it's not easy for an independent developer working on a freeware app.
In short: Some virus scanners say that Yandere Simulator is a virus (or "suspicious") because I haven't started paying hundreds of dollars to sign the executable.
I can only speak English, so I would have to rely on help from others in order to translate the game into other languages.
Because I am constantly making changes and additions to the game's text, it's not feasible to translate the game right now, while it is still in development. I can't begin to consider having the game's text translated until after the game is 100% complete, and the text is guaranteed not to change anymore.
Even then, the game can only receive a translation if we meet certain funding goals, or if I obtain a publisher who is willing to handle the translation for me.
I have been unable to determine why the screen is pink for some people; I only have a theory.
If the screen is pink, this is an indication that essential files were deleted. These files may have been automatically deleted by your anti-virus program. Try disabling your anti-virus program and downloading the game again. Either that, or download the game again from a different source. Please check this webpage for a list of different places to download the game from: https://yanderedev.wordpress.com/downloads/
Please read the giant flashing red text on this webpage:
https://yanderedev.wordpress.com/downloads/
I don't think it would be wise to plan additional content before the original game has been finished...but, aside from that, there are multiple factors to consider:
All of the above factors (critical reception, financial success, fan demand, my own feelings) will be considered when deciding whether or not to develop additional content.
If the player steals a rival's phone, this will prevent many events from taking place. To balance the game, the player will not be allowed to leave school with a stolen phone. If the player does not return a stolen phone by the end of the school day, the rival whose phone was stolen will report the theft to the guidance counselor, who will personally check the belongings of every student at school. The counselor will find the stolen phone in the player's inventory, and the player will be expelled from school, causing a game over.
I attempted to create a development roadmap here: https://yanderesimulator.com/Roadmap.png If it leaves you with more questions than answers, please let me know, and I'll attempt to improve it.
Unfortunately, it's not easy to give a meaningful answer to this question, since the outcome relies on several factors that are out of my hands. I'll explain:
After I have finished implementing the game's first rival, "Osana", I will hold a crowdfunding campaign with the intention of raising enough money to pay a team of professionals to help me complete the game. There are several potential outcomes for the crowdfunding campaign:
If the crowdfunding campaign fails, there are alternate ways to secure funding for the game. It's possible that I could raise money from investors (in exchange for promising them a portion of the game's profits) or partner with a company (most likely in exchange for ownership of the Yandere Simulator brand). So, if the crowdfunding campaign fails, it doesn't immediately spell doom for the project.
You can expect all of these numbers and estimates to change as we get closer to the crowdfunding campaign, and the amount of time/money/assets required to finish the game becomes more apparent.
Because the game is currently in development, it is changing all the time. I am constantly improving the performance and increasing the optimization of the code. Thus, the minimum specs are always getting lower.
It's possible to run the game with only 6GB of RAM, but it's recommended to have at least 8GB of RAM.
To run the game at over 55 FPS consistently, you'd need at least a i7 5820k processor, and at least a GTX 970 graphics card. (The hardware I just named is 6 years old.)
First, I came up with an interesting way for a person to die (like an actress being killed by a prop during a stage play) and then I designed characters around that concept (for example, making one of the rivals an aspiring actress who will perform on a stage).
This can be a tricky question, because the answer depends what type of formula is used to determine how "complete" a game is.
Yandere Simulator is composed of "gameplay elements" and "story elements". 100% of all gameplay elements are implemented. One rival is 100% finished, and 10 rivals are planned, which means that the story elements are 10% done.
In my opinion, "gameplay elements" are 90% of the game's content, and story elements are about 10% of the game's content. This means that the game is about 91% complete.
If that answer is too broad and vague to be useful, it may be a good idea to change the question being asked. "Now that all the gameplay elements are finished, how long will it take to complete the story elements?" Yandere Simulator has such an abundance of gameplay mechanics that it took 6 years to finish implementing all of the mechanics necessary to make it possible to play through the story. However, implementing a rival takes mere months, so the rest of the game's development should go by much faster. I predict that the game will reach completion in 12 to 24 months.
The characters in Yandere Simulator are speaking Japanese, but their words are translated into English for us westerners.
Likewise, they are using Yen as a currency, but the prices are translated into dollars for us westerners.
In Japan, you have to be at least 20 years old in order to purchase alcohol or cigarettes. Yandere Simulator takes place in a fictional version of Japan where you need to be at least 20 years old to purchase pornography, too. This is why Yandere-chan needs a fake ID, despite being 18.
Did Raibaru deliberately lose because she was tired of maintaining a 100% win rate and doing martial arts, and wanted to throw it away?
Did Raibaru lose because something happened to her earlier that day that distracted her during the match with Budo?
Did Raibaru lose because she had feelings for Budo and couldn't bring herself to use her full power against him?
Did Raibaru lose because Budo had actually surpassed her in both physical strength and martial arts ability?
Did Raibaru lose because Budo exploited a secret weakness that only he knew about?
Did Raibaru lose because Budo cheated?
Or, did Raibaru lose for a completely different reason altogether?
Maybe you'll never know the truth. Maybe you'll find out within the game itself. That's the fun of it.
If you type the letters "D E B U G" while at school, you will enable debug commands. This will allow you to open the easter egg menu using the "?" key, open the debug menu using the "\" key, and also activate certain easter eggs such as the "Meme Closet" and "Entering the Demon Realm."
I dislike the idea of adding random events/routines to the game. If the player prepares an elaborate plan and it is ruined by a random occurrence, the player would be very frustrated. The addition of randomness would completely ruin the player's ability to create plans. Whether or not the player fails should be determined by their skill, not by randomly getting unlucky.
Yandere Simulator is also meant to be "speedrun-friendly," meaning that it is supposed to be possible to completely plan out an entire playthrough. The addition of randomly-determined factors would interfere with the ability to speedrun the game.
I may consider the addition of a separate "Random Mode" that tests the player's improvisational skills. However, the main story mode(s) will not involve any randomness.
For a long time, I have been considering the possibilities of allowing the player to join the bully clique or become a member of the student council. I would like to give the player the ability to join those two groups, but it's not a high priority to me at this point in time. It's something that potentially won't happen until sometime after the crowdfunding campaign.
Try seeking an answer here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IXbfSuJexGEFLRxcUdv_pTQTpC6iEhTqPYcsHTIA48k/edit?usp=sharing
