Yandere Simulator

"WARNING! This game contains bullying, kidnapping, torture, murder, suicide, graphic violence, partial nudity, kittens, raw sewage, cooked sewage, microwave-ready sewage, true nightmares, eldritch monstrosities, bald assassins, DK Mode, fake tans, Titans, murderous ice fairies, impossibly-strong punches, genocide crusades, spooky scary skeletons, STANDING ON THE EDGE, zombies, vampires, succubi, lewd manga, busty pink-haired schoolgirls, game-breaking bugs, an over-worked programmer, and much worse." Yandere Simulator is an "upcoming" stealth action game developed by Alexander "YandereDev" Mahan in conjunction with volunteers for the game. The game was firstly released as a "debug build" in April 2014. Originally, the game was slated to be released in 2019, but there is currently no deadline as of 2022.

A prototype demo was released on August 31, 2020, and while it is possible to win the game, only one of the ten rivals has been implemented.

Plot
The game revolves around a schoolgirl named Ayano Aishi (in the game just referred to as Yandere-chan, or Yan Chan), who has never felt emotions during her childhood and pretended to be a normal girl. During the first day of her second year at high school, she meets Taro Yamada, who she falls in love with after finally experiencing the feeling of true emotions. That same day, Ayano notices a girl hanging out with Taro and finds out that she was planning to confess her love towards him next Friday. At the risk of losing her "Senpai", she has to eliminate ten "Rivals", Taro's possible love interests and obstacles that will prevent him from getting into a relationship, over the course of ten weeks.

Why It's Not Coding

 * 1) While there is a way to win the game as of August 31 2020, there is no way to complete the full storyline. This is because only one of the rivals were implemented after six years and the game ends after she is eliminated.
 * 2) * As of December 22 2020 after you've beaten the first week, you can unlock the Amai Challenge where you can eliminate the second rival (Amai) but you have to dispose of her dead body without alarming or killing anyone which can be really frustrating.
 * 3) * What’s worth noting is that the rivals are just the base model for female students with wackier hairstyles.
 * 4) * As of the May 6 2020 build, there is an alternate "genocide" ending. However, it can barely be considered rewarding or an actual ending at all as it makes the game incredibly short. All you have to do is kill everyone in the school (without using cheats) and beat the game on the first day.
 * 5) * It also doesn't feel satisfying to kill a majority of the rivals as they haven't done anything particularly wrong to deserve killing off other than liking senpai. Compare this to Hitman where you kill people who have committed terrible crimes that upon killing felt satisfying as it feels like you just made the world a better place through your action (and is actually fun).
 * 6) The game was originally programmed in JavaScript. This caused numerous amounts of bugs and glitches as well as extremely low framerates.
 * 7) * Now mostly fixed as of July 2017 - the code has been ported to C# and Unity 4 was updated to Unity 5, which is far cleaner and neater (though Mahan didn't do it). However, the bugs and glitches remain mostly because of WINC #7.
 * 8) Frequent Rebooting: In general, the game doesn't know what it wants to be; sometimes a sandbox game and sometimes an actual stealth game. What’s not helping is WINC #9.
 * 9) * Contrary to the typical stealth game with big areas to explore or locations built around one objective, the entire storyline of Yandere Simulator takes place in the school area with the player's home acting as a sort of hub and the road to the school as a pointless bicycle mini-game.
 * 10) ** As of October 2019, there is a street that the player can go to, but it only contains shops and NPCs.
 * 11) * Combat only exists in the form of a quick time event and only against the delinquents or when defending against an apprehension from students and teachers.
 * 12) * The game lets you do tasks like wiping off the blood with a mop, which can be considered mundane especially in the context of a stealth game.
 * 13) * Instead of fleshed out linear paths for the player to take, there are half-baked elimination methods. Since they’re all meant to be equally difficult there is no real benefit of choosing one over the other.
 * 14) The steps required for a successful elimination are convoluted and/or extremely specific. Without looking up the YandereDev YouTube channel or the game's fan wiki, it's hard to guess the required steps.
 * 15) * One way to obtain such information in-game is by getting the instructions from Info-chan, but it requires you to pay with panty shots.
 * 16) * You also don't have the freedom to play how you want as you HAVE to use the elimination methods to kill the rivals as evident in WINC #8 and #9.
 * 17) The idea of a video game that combines the stealth of the Hitman series and social mechanics of the Persona series, while not exactly a terrible idea on paper, is very bad because it doesn't work since one contradicts the other. Hitman is stealth-focused and barely has a story since it's primarily focused on gameplay and killing people who have done atrocious things. The Persona series on the other hand is a turn-base RPG mixed with social mechanics where you can hang out with characters in the story and expand more on their personality, play mini-games, get a part-time job, etc.
 * 18) The game suffers from extremely poor optimization. This is due to the game's coding and assets with unnecessary amounts of polygons (usually over 100K vertices), which is riddled with beginner mistakes such as the over-usage of "else if's" and using way too many code lines in the update procedure, which is a method that updates every frame and as well as a lack of LODs. This leads to the frame rate dropping from 60 to 20 just by turning on the shadows. It doesn't help that its creator sees nothing wrong with it calling everyone who reports this problem "children with a cheap laptop". In fact, the game uses over 3 GB of VRAM with minimum details. It's so   bad that it makes GTA IV's optimization look as good as its sequel’s optimization.
 * 19) There are a number of video options that don't work right such as the bloom effect, which is way too strong and blinding (and can sometimes cause frame rate drops too), or other video quality options like 1080p, which will blur the characters you talk to. It was pointed out by Kappa Kaiju that this might be because these issues don't affect YandereDev's playstyle so he doesn't care to fix it.
 * 20) * For example, he showed that there's a glitch where when going into a menu on keyboard that the button prompts for an Xbox controller will flash and that the game has no issues with running at 720p indicating that YandereDev doesn't see these issues (or doesn't care about them) because he probably plays the game at 720p and with a controller.
 * 21) Many things that could be considered rewarding because you did something smart keeps getting removed because YandereDev sees it as an exploit.
 * 22) * The YouTuber Razzbowski came up with the idea to kill Osana by filling a pan with gasoline and put it above a doorway to drop on Osana and then put a candle in front of her, which in turn burns her to death. YandereDev saw this and "fixed" it by having Raiburu smell gasoline and then open the door without going through, which ruins a part of the gameplay and doesn't make any sense.
 * 23) * The burning elimination has become more tedious due to YandereDev removing matches from the game to make it more difficult to burn your rivals.
 * 24) Ever since 2019, Yandere Simulator qualifies as being in development hell. The game has been in development since 2014 and even was initially slated to be released in 2019, but this was later changed to be "when it's ready/done". One of the reasons for the game being in development hell is arguably its scale; with the scale increased on a constant basis and work on the game's first rival being halted. YandereDev intends on collecting the sufficient funds for the game only after Osana is completed. Without the money to hire professionals that create assets for the game, he currently has to rely on his volunteers. A demo build was released on August 31, 2020 with Osana implemented, but the full game still has yet to be completed.
 * 25) * In an interesting turn of event after YandereDev's assets were leaked in late June 2020, an indie programmer, DrApeis, created Love Letter, a "recreated" version of Yandere Simulator which solved the aforementioned game's optimization problem and glitches in only 2 weeks.
 * 26) The game suffers from Feature Creep with each build making the game unstable since there's lots of content that doesn't ultimately affect the game. A good example is the easter egg game Magical Girl Pretty Miyuki, which despite being an easter egg has its own plot and character arcs.
 * 27) The overall fact that players must kill students at a school comes off as rather tasteless and taboo. Also, considering them being underage doesn't help it either. This is also one of the reasons about why this game was banned on Twitch.
 * 28) * This also leans into the fact that the game tries too hard to be edgy as one of the main selling points YandereDev made was how "risqué" the game is. In reality, all of it just feels forced. Not to mention the number of games that have had much more shocking things in them making this game not all that special.
 * 29) Lots of inaccuracies. For instance, as of an August 2019 update a new currency feature was added, but for some reason it uses US dollars despite the game taking place in Japan (which has their own currency, the Yen). Some of the names of characters are inaccurate and at times bad like the Nurse, Nasu Kankoshi, which is spelled wrong (it should be spelled Nāsu Kangoshi as Nasu means eggplant in Japanese) or Yui Rio, which are two first names and are the two most popular names for female babies in Japan. The school uniforms are wrong as most are wearing middle school uniforms instead of high school uniforms. While this could be a technical limitation, it could just as easily be indolence.
 * 30) * It's also weird how this game really wants be primarily Japanese and focus on things relating to Japanese culture, customs and ways of life despite coming from a developer who is neither Japanese nor seems to understand Japanese culture outside of anime.
 * 31) * It's not to say that people can't make games about cultures other than their own since Ghost of Tsushima (a game based on Japanese history) was made by an American studio and was praised by Japanese players and Japanese historians alike, so much so that the game director and creative director of the game became permanent tourism ambassadors of the city of Tsushima in Nagasaki.
 * 32) The game is an asset flip mess. (See the linked Google Docs file for yourself):
 * 33) * All character models are modified versions of existing models from the Unity Store. A notable example is Ayano's model, which is actually a recolored version of the Aoi Character Pack found in the Unity Store.
 * 34) * YandereDev stole the grass textures and the protagonist's room from a person named Doug Clayton. According to Clayton, who asked him to remove it from the game in vain, he did “a poor job at removing the watermark”. Eventually, it was removed from the game.
 * 35) * From older builds of the game, the school models are used from the anime K-On! and mh:awesomegames:Persona 4.
 * 36) * In one alpha build, the game stole the track A Stranger I Remain from the mh:awesomegames:Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance soundtrack. However, it was thankfully removed due to copyright issues.
 * 37) * Most of these stolen assets were mismatched together without proper optimization as evidenced by the fact that the largest asset file in the game is a model file for a toothbrush, bucket, knife and even a poster.
 * 38) The "panty shot" mechanic is quite tasteless. Until mid-2019, it was the only way to get Info-chan to give you a favor.
 * 39) * It is now averted with information bugs and blackmailing which are more valuable.
 * 40) Some of the rivals are very questionable.
 * 41) * Mida Rana is a substitute teacher whose hobby is seducing schoolboys. This is creepy and disgusting for a rival since teachers would never seduce their students in real life as it could either get them fired or arrested for pedophilia.
 * 42) * Muja Kina (while not bad as Mida) the substitute nurse, is also an adult rival in love with a student. Again, school staff members are not allowed to be in love with students. In the real world, Kina would face similar charges as Rana would.
 * 43) When hackers got into YandereDev's accounts they found out that there is a menu for nudity.
 * 44) * Nude textures were discovered by data-miners. They didn't contain any explicit features and they were corrupted, but they existed in the game.
 * 45) While it was in the running at the time, it should be noted that this game is severely behind in the Indie scene since the bar for Indies rised so much since its announcement. Some notable examples are Bright Memory, The First Tree, Stardew Valley, Disco Elysium, mh:awesomegames:Undertale, Kentucky Route Zero, etc. Bare in mind a lot of these games were made by ONE person (sometimes even using hand-made assets).
 * 46) While it is decent, the soundtrack doesn't fit the tone of the game since it sounds like bubbly visual novel music instead of what you would expect from a game about murder.
 * 47) Apparently, killing a Student Council member will cause the game to drastically increase the game's difficulty to the hardest as it can lower the School Atmosphere to 0% and security cameras and metal detectors will be installed all over the school. But killing a teacher doesn't affected it.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The intro in the demo looks cool and much better than the actual game itself.
 * 2) It has a decent soundtrack although it doesn't really fit the theme of the game.
 * 3) The voice acting is pretty good.
 * 4) There’s a decent amount of customization such as the different school uniforms.
 * 5) The idea of a video game that combines the stealth of the Hitman series and social mechanics of the Persona series, while is a very bad idea, is sorta interesting even though it is executed poorly.
 * 6) Some of the characters (while cliched, genric and underdeveloped) can be likeable and/or interesting at times.
 * 7) * Also some can be treated as sympathetic mostly due to they pasts or current solutions (such as Kokana, The Delinquents, some of the bullies victims and Ayano herself).
 * 8) * Despite being annoying at times, Midori was a pretty funny character. Her character adds some okay comedy to the game.
 * 9) * Alongside, some of the character designs can be decent, despite most of the character designs being identical to assets from Unity's store.
 * 10) Despite its glitches, the graphics at times are passable and the artstyle is pretty decent for the most part, despite some of the weak characters designs and asset flipping.

Reception
Despite the game's currently mixed to very negative reception, it has become one of the most anticipated indie games to this date.

Kappa Kaiju gave the game a 2/10 (so far), criticizing how hand-holdy it is, how buggy it is, how it had the lack of freedom, and went on to say that YandereDev seems to not understand the mechanics that he derived from the Hitman franchise. He even stated how it appears that YandereDev seems to only fix certain optimization and video issues if it affects how he plays the game (See WINC #8).

FPS Diesel went on to criticize the lack of reasonable motivation for killing Osana (See WINC #1) and the lack of an interesting story to get players excited for future updates.

Many impatient fans and less known developers started making their own version of Yandere Simulator due to YandereDev's delay making this game.

Tips

 * There are ways to eliminate your rivals without killing them. Examples include:
 * Befriending them (therefore asking them to stay away from Senpai).
 * Expelling them (though that still isn't justifiable).
 * Matchmaking them with another boy.
 * Sabotaging their relationship with Senpai.
 * Kidnapping them (once again, not justifiable).
 * Framing them for murder (still not justifiable).


 * The game has radios and bang snaps similar to Hitman's pennies that allow the player to divert attention.
 * It also has clubs, each with their own benefits:
 * There’s the Cooking Club where Ayano can cook meals to increase positive reputation.
 * There’s the Gardening Club where Ayano can carry gardening tools without suspicion and have regular access to the tool shed.
 * There’s the Drama Club where Ayano can get masks to hide her identity and gloves to frame other students with their fingerprints.
 * There’s the Sports Club where Ayano can run faster and carry sporting equipment without suspicion.
 * There’s the Gaming Club which allows Ayano to temporarily level up her stats once a day.
 * There’s the Science Club which has tools that help eliminate rivals (though currently only a robot that cleans up blood is available.
 * The room also has a blowtorch that can cauterize wounds on corpses to stop bleeding as well as the vat of acid that is essentially the furnace but more convenient.
 * There’s the Photography club which allows Ayano to take photos of students who usually cover their faces, as well as avoiding suspicion from sleuth students
 * There’s the Occult Club where Ayano's sanity drops by 50% the normal amount as well as students and staff members that take longer to notice suspicious activity.
 * And finally, there’s Light Music Club that has a rock band style minigame. It also allows Ayano to uprise her reputation.
 * Ayano can also join the Delinquents which allow Ayano to intimidate students to do things for her without befriending them. The game now has a street with shops that allow the player to buy items that could help them eliminate the rivals, though it’s just not done well.
 * In fact, YandereDev mentioned that he added the hardware store to solve an issue that the Hitman franchise had where lethal weapons were always available, yet mundane tools like hammers would have to be found, possibly wasting time before using them

Trivia

 * On October 10 2021, a huge update came to the game that added the 1980's mode to itself complete with 10 rivals that recycle parts from pre-existing assets and new mechanics.

Videos
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