💼 Careercow EvaXephon / Yanderedev / Alex Mahan / Alexander Stuart Mahan / cannotgoogleme - Edgy weeaboo coomer with pedo tendencies and 15+ years internet history as a lolcow, now known as a disaster developer behind eternal debug build called "Yandere Simulator", confirmed groomer and dollfucker

[lumaleelumabop]

December 20 update (archive) Someone archived the link before me so that was nice. There are too many pictures in this post so I'm not putting it in quotes. I'll just link the video that was included.

January 1 bug fixing build (archive)

Happy New Year!

I’ve prepared a new build. It’s mostly a bug-fixing build, although there are also some cool new additions and improvements, too.

“Aw, that’s it? Just a small bug fixing build? I’m disappointed…”

I hear you. There are some words for you at the bottom of this blog post.

But first, enjoy this gorgeous artwork of Chigusa by seinachan01110!

Choca Collab​

Recently, I learned that a music artist named CHOCA is a fan of Yandere Simulator! She contacted me and asked if there was any way that we could collaborate together, such as by including her music in the game. I’m always delighted to learn that someone with a large following enjoys my work, and always willing to collaborate when offered the opportunity, so I immediately began brainstorming ways for us to somehow work together.

At first, I couldn’t think of a good place in the game a for Mexican Reggaeton track – but then, I remembered something: the dance machine minigame!


A new music track has been added to the dance machine minigame in the Gaming Club; Choca’s song “Loli Pop.” Coming in at 2 minutes and 36 seconds, it’s the longest song on the dance machine by far! I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Reduced RAM Usage​

I recently discovered that hundreds of files in the game were uncompressed, causing them to take up much more RAM than necessary. I went through each of these files and compressed the ones that didn’t need to be full-size and full-quality, which reduced the game’s file size and significantly reduced the amount of RAM that your computer has to use in order to run the game.

This might help the game run on computers with lower RAM! (Tests still need to be run to determine this for certain.) So, if you’ve been unable to run recent builds of the game because your computer was running out of RAM, I urge you to please test out the latest build and confirm if your computer is able to run the game now.

Amai Week Improvements​

• Amai and Taro now ignore distractions while they are having a picnic with each other. They’re just enjoying their picnic way too much to let anything take their attention away from each other. D’aw, how romantic.
• The Cooking Club now waits for Amai to enter the Home Ec room before they begin preparing food. This prevents situations where Amai is completely alone and vulnerable in that room.

Improvements​

• The curtains in the Photography Club now block a student’s vision when they are closed. (Previously, they didn’t – oops!)
• There is now a sound effect for stealing the cooking utensils in the Home Ec room.
• There is now a sound effect for picking up a jug of bleach.

Fixes​

• If the player eliminated Osana without killing her or removing her from school, lowered Osana’s reputation beneath -33, and killed Raibaru so that the bullies wouldn’t be afraid to bully Osana, it was possible to put a note about “bullying” into Osana’s locker to make her agree to a private meeting. This, by itself, was not a bug – but, if the player did this on Week 2, when Osana’s hair was short, it was possible to perform the “get Osana’s long hair tangled in fan blades” elimination, even though her hair wasn’t long enough for it. This bug has been fixed.
• If the nurse witnessed a corpse while she was walking to the medicine cabinet to get headache medicine for a student, the nurse would fail to exit the “getting medicine for student” routine, and would be in the “reacting to corpse” and “getting medicine” states simultaneously, causing her to perform the “inspecting corpse” animation at the medicine cabinet, or in front of the student she was getting medicine for. This bug has been fixed.
• The “kill student by trapping them in freezer” method is only supposed to work for one student at a time. If the player attempts to kill two students in the freezer room simultaneously, one will be shoved out of the room. Previously, when this happened, the shoved student would stop animating indefinitely. Now, that bug should no longer occur.
• If the player interacted with the “Spread Garbage” button prompt in the Home Ec room while holding tarp that was wrapped around a dismembered limb, the game would think that the player was holding garbage and would spread garbage around the room. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player sent Student A to distract Student B, and Student B got distracted by a weapon on the ground before Student A reached them, it would become impossible to speak to Student A again for the rest of the day. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player killed a student while they were in the process of picking an item off of the ground, saved the game, and then loaded the game, that item would teleport to the student’s hand, even in death. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player sent Student A to distract Student B, and along the way, Student A got distracted by a weapon on the ground, it would become impossible to speak to Student A again for the rest of the day. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player aimed their camera at a student who was interacting with Amai’s bake sale, the student would stop interacting with the bake sale. This was not desired behavior, so this is no longer possible.
• If the player stole Amai’s phone and ended the day with it, the “end of day results” screen would claim that Ayano had stolen Osana’s phone, not Amai’s phone. This bug has been fixed.
• If a student died while wearing a gym uniform and then the player saved and loaded the game, the dead student would not be wearing the correct clothing. This bug has been fixed.
• When a low-sanity hallucination of Osana or Amai appeared, they could be seen using their old hair models instead of their new hair models. This oversight has been corrected.
• If the player saved the game, put a corpse into the freezer in the Biology Lab, then loaded the save, the corpse would clip through the nearest wall. This bug has been fixed.
• Amai’s “staring at food, confused, trying to figure out what went wrong and made people puke” animation was not looping properly. This bug has been fixed.
• If two students in a relationship witnessed the player commit murder, they would freeze indefinitely and never run to safety. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player interrupted Osana’s Monday phone call and then saved and loaded the game, the phone call would happen again. This bug has been fixed.
• It was possible to access the “Whip Game Test” in 1980s Mode. This was unintentional (and a time paradox) so the ability has been removed.
• At the end of the 1980s Mode genocide ending cutscene, the subtitles clipped through Ryoba’s head. This bug has been fixed.
• In the 1980s Mode Genocide Ending cutscene, Ryoba was not wearing the right stockings. This oversight has been corrected.
• When the player looked at the school map, the label for the Student Council Room was missing. This bug has been fixed.
• Text labels that were too close to each other and were clubbing into each other on the school map have been adjusted.
• Fixed some inaccurate subtitles for Amai/Taro interactions that have voice lines.

That’s It?​

Yeah, I know, it would have been cool if the January 1st update was a huge, epic event with a ton of exciting new features…but, I wasn’t able to get as much work done as I wanted over the past 2 weeks. This is partially due to the holiday season re-directing my time towards my family instead of game development, but that was honestly not the biggest contributing factor.

If you’ve been thinking, “All of these updates are so small!” or “I’m impatient, I want to see huge progress on Amai!” or “It’s been 12 years, when are Ayano’s other rivals coming?” then you and I have been thinking the same thoughts. I usually just say, “Well, Yandere Simulator is the type of game that is periodically updated with new content…” and that’s true, but there’s a lot more going on than just that.

Since the start of a new year is the best time to review the previous year, I plan to write a blog post to discuss the speed of the game’s development, the factors that are slowing it down, what potential actions could speed up the game’s development, and the pros and cons of those actions. It’s basically going to be my annual “Patreon Transparency Report,” except I’m going to be doing it here on my blog instead of over on Patreon.

I’m thinking that I’ll probably split it into two blog posts. One blog post will be like, “Happy new year, let’s take a look back at 2025 at all the amazing, fun, incredible stuff we did last year!” which will be followed by a second blog post with a very different tone – “Here’s what didn’t go as planned, here’s what could have been better, and here’s how can we improve next year…” I think it would be better to separate my thoughts into two blog posts, so that we don’t have one blog post that constantly flips back and forth from positive to negative, optimistic to pessimistic.

In that secondary blog post, I plan to be brutally honest, discuss some stuff that I normally never discuss, and lay out the truth no matter how ugly or hard to swallow it is. If you’ve been thinking, “Grrrrr, I’m so disappointed, where are the big updates?” then, this will be the blog post for you.

Bottom Of Blog Post Fan Spotlight​

A content creator named JasonMM created a video telling the history of the Aishi Family!

I think it’s hilarious to see this long, grim, dark story that I wrote being communicated with a bunch of absurd memes; the editor has an uncanny knack for always find the perfect meme for any given situation, and I love it!

(The part at the very beginning about the Aishi Precursor is slightly inaccurate, because I haven’t revealed very much information about her yet, but the rest of the video is very faithful to what I’ve shared on the Characters page of the official website.)

I got a kick out of it, and I hope that you do, too!

For the first time in 2026, thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!

It's a new year so let's check the Patreon.

It's back up to $1,000 but barely.

 

[Seymour Duncan]

This is old, but it's only two pages back so I'll bite anyway.

Correction:
Graduated college, got homes, vehicles, insurance, voting rights, had family or pets die, have had full time jobs for years at this stage, paid taxes for years, and started their own families.

This includes even the people who have played Alex's "game," like Pewdiepie for example.

The same time frame Alex has taken for this project; Pewdiepie alone has moved multiple times, made multiple games, made multiple collaborative projects, got married, traveled the world, got two dogs, have both dogs die, got two more dogs, had a baby, and now that kid is a toddler who able to walk and go to school.

That same amount of time is how long Alex has taken to just put in one rival.

The game will be finished by the time our great grandkids die at the rate Alex is going.

I like using the guy who made My Summer Car as a comparison. They both started at the same time, his ineptitude at Unity was roughly comparable with Alex and both games had slow and janky progress on their silly niche premises, but instead of infinite stalling he managed to gain enough proficiency and outside help to punt it across the goal and even make serious headway into a goddamn sequel. He went from a hippie artist type grifting unemployment gibs into a multimillionaire that never has to work a day in his life unless he wants to, yet he still threw his hat in the ring again to strike while the iron is still hot.

Meanwhile someone's still suckling from the Patreon teat, making less money in his entire 10+ year "career" than Rojola did in a single WEEK.

 

[N Man]

This is old, but it's only two pages back so I'll bite anyway.

I like using the guy who made My Summer Car as a comparison. They both started at the same time, his ineptitude at Unity was roughly comparable with Alex and both games had slow and janky progress on their silly niche premises, but instead of infinite stalling he managed to gain enough proficiency and outside help to punt it across the goal and even make serious headway into a goddamn sequel. He went from a hippie artist type grifting unemployment gibs into a multimillionaire that never has to work a day in his life unless he wants to, yet he still threw his hat in the ring again to strike while the iron is still hot.

Meanwhile someone's still suckling from the Patreon teat, making less money in his entire 10+ year "career" than Rojola did in a single WEEK.

Yandere Simulator would have been finished a long time ago if Alex would simply have a little tiny bit of discipline and just sit down every day for 2 to 4 hours (with maybe weekends excluded) to develop his game. And he would still have 8 hours of sleep and the rest of the day to jerk off and watch anime. But then again, requiring a little bit of discipline from him is like asking him to be a completely different person.

And by the way, I still don't understand why he shitted on the TinyBuild collab. The game would have been finished a long time ago by professionals, he could be collecting royalties and maybe working on a new project. This would be a much better outcome for him, but I suppose his narcissistic persona just couldn't allow someone else to touch his precious Else If game, huh?

 

[Trombonista]

And by the way, I still don't understand why he shitted on the TinyBuild collab. The game would have been finished a long time ago by professionals, he could be collecting royalties and maybe working on a new project. This would be a much better outcome for him, but I suppose his narcissistic persona just couldn't allow someone else to touch his precious Else If game, huh?

They ported the game to a programming language he didn't bother to learn, so in his eyes, they ruined it.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

This is a bit stupid, but I've always felt like I could imagine Yandev having a horse body offscreen to this image because of the way the crop and white shirt on white background frame him. That and the odd angle of his neck.

View attachment 8368197

So, a while ago I wrote a song about it:

View attachment 8368195

Spoiler: Lyrics

Giddyup Yandev, your reins are pulled tight
And there's thousands of emails to traverse through the night

Sure, your nose may be silly and your code might be poor
But the patrons continue to beat at your door

So put your vidya aside, it's time the stream died


And...

Giddyup Yandev, your reins are pulled tight
And there's thousands of emails to traverse through the night

The yandere grift has dragged on and on
And the weaboo suckers have waited too long


There's troons to appease and toon tits to squeeze

So...

Giddyup Yandev, your reins are pulled tight
And there's thousands of emails to traverse through the night

Your face is a fright, and your code's not too bright

But...

Giddyup Yandev, your reins are pulled tight
And there's thousands of emails to traverse through the night

Well, you're not the first one to notice that.

Someone will donate just about enough to get him over 1k again.

It's a new year so let's check the Patreon.

It's back up to $1,000 but barely.

Told ya.

Yandere Simulator would have been finished a long time ago if Alex

That's where you're wrong, buddy. Can't win a race without knowing where the finish line is.

 

[Scientifically Inaccurate]

I am so glad that I don't know who currently voices the main character of the game but I do know 1,279 words or 7,241 characters about some random nigga that is apparently in the 1989 spin off mode of the game (he's not seen btw) Behind A Door (according to the official website). I am really glad I know about Torahiko Aishi who without a doubt will be crucial character to the game! Lore of the first rival compared to random character #4920158. Really can't wait to see the next Easter Egg
View attachment 7882872View attachment 7882879

The best thing about the bios is the weaknesses. Some of them are things like paranoia. Makes sense, that's something specific and unique. Then some of them are things like fire.

Imagine researching and sneaking around for days to make the discovery that oh shit Library-chan isn't fireproof!

 

[babadook]

The best thing about the bios is the weaknesses. Some of them are things like paranoia. Makes sense, that's something specific and unique. Then some of them are things like fire.

Imagine researching and sneaking around for days to make the discovery that oh shit Library-chan isn't fireproof!

That's what cracks me up about Venom as well, no shit a living organism is weak to fire

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

The best thing about the bios is the weaknesses. Some of them are things like paranoia. Makes sense, that's something specific and unique. Then some of them are things like fire.

Imagine researching and sneaking around for days to make the discovery that oh shit Library-chan isn't fireproof!

Wait, how does this shit work? Is it like 100% foolproof way to eliminate someone? Why does it matter if this non Mary Sue can stab anyone in the neck and then carry their body around like a plushie?

 

[Seymour Duncan]

Wait, how does this shit work? Is it like 100% foolproof way to eliminate someone? Why does it matter if this non Mary Sue can stab anyone in the neck and then carry their body around like a plushie?

If I recall correctly, the original idea was that straight assassination was basically a limited use get-out-of-jail-free card that would raise paranoia and overdoing it would eventually get the school shut down, so you'd have to go for the Hitman contrivances and social stealth because anime plot powers allow those to slide under the radar. Instead Alex decided to "fix" the "why wouldn't you just stab a nigga" issue by just straight up making the targets omniscient telepathics that would only gracefully allow you to kill them if you went through the Official Wiki Approved™ hoop jumps.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

Instead Alex decided to "fix" the "why wouldn't you just stab a nigga" issue by just straight up making the targets omniscient telepathics that would only gracefully allow you to kill them if you went through the Official Wiki Approved™ hoop jumps.

which itself was only an issue because his "I only have one rival" half-decade of development meant that any long term consequences were effectively pointless, and by the time he added more he was too committed to the lock in. If he'd just built out the extra weeks early and accepted they'd be boilerplate filler rivals, none of this would have likely come to pass.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

If I recall correctly, the original idea was that straight assassination was basically a limited use get-out-of-jail-free card that would raise paranoia and overdoing it would eventually get the school shut down, so you'd have to go for the Hitman contrivances and social stealth because anime plot powers allow those to slide under the radar. Instead Alex decided to "fix" the "why wouldn't you just stab a nigga" issue by just straight up making the targets omniscient telepathics that would only gracefully allow you to kill them if you went through the Official Wiki Approved™ hoop jumps.

Wait, but they will die anyway and it won't raise paranoia? If so, then it is even funnier. "Of, it is so sad that someone stabbed Amai to death. Should've set her on fire like Osana."

 

[lumaleelumabop]

Happy New Year! (archive)

Hey, everybody! It’s a new year! It’s 2026! Yippie!

To kick off the new year, I’d like to write two blog posts. The first blog post will describe what 2025 was like and what 2026 will probably be like. The second blog post will be my annual “Transparency Report” and will focus on factors that are slowing down the game’s development.

Scroll down past this cute artwork by unknown_ANN0, and then let’s get started!

https://x.com/unknown_ANN0/status/2006379912605635018

A Look Back At 2025​

To fully understand 2025, we have to start in 2024!

On May 1st of 2024, I released Ayano’s 2nd rival: Amai. Her release was an experiment; I wanted to learn how players would react to the release of a rival whose week did not contain any voice acting or new animations. I wanted to learn if it would be acceptable or unacceptable to release future rivals that way.

After Amai’s release, I received both positive and negative feedback. There were people who were happy with Amai’s week, but there were also many people who felt that the lack of voice acting and animations made her week feel basic, low-budget, and underwhelming. I, too, was unsatisfied with Amai’s week, and personally felt that it was disappointing compared to Osana’s week.

I eventually reached a verdict: Releasing a rival without voice acting or new animations is not acceptable. Rivals need voices and animations. That’s what a rival is; that’s what separates a rival from any random student at school.

With that in mind, my goal for 2024 became clear: Find voice actors for every character with speaking lines in Amai’s week, have an animator create animations for all of Amai’s events, and make a series of improvements to Amai’s week based on the feedback that I had received from players.

It can take a very long time to find the ideal voice for a character. I knew it wouldn’t happen overnight, and would likely take weeks or months. However, I didn’t want the game’s development to come to a grinding halt while I just spent a bunch of time searching for voice actors. So, I decided that, while searching for voice actors, I would request assets from the game’s other volunteers, and implement new content and new features that I’ve wanted the game to have for many years.

Which leads us directly into the next topic…

New Animations​

Yandere Simulator received a tremendous number of additions over the course of 2025 that were only possible due to one animator. Here are all of the additions and improvements that were made to Yandere Simulator in 2025 that were only possible due to one specific member of the development team:

• A new murder method was added to the game: shoving a student into the Freezer Room to freeze them to death.
• Another a new murder method was added to the game: using a pillow to smother a sleeping student in the infirmary.
• An “Ayano learns how to cook to imitate Amai” cutscene was added to the game.
• A new weapon – the chainsaw – was added to the game
• The “Togo warns Ryoba about approaching delinquents” cutscene now has actual animation.
• The “Togo congratulates Ryoba after she beats up a bunch of delinquents” cutscene now has actual animation.
• The cutscenes where Ryoba interacts with the Yakuza are now fully animated.
• Info-chan now has animations in the Mission Mode menu.
• The “Magical Girl Pretty Miyuki” transformation sequence has been replaced with a completely new cutscene.
• In the 1980s Mode Tutorial, the sequence where Ryoba talks to Sumire now has animations.
• Amai now has a unique suicide cutscene instead of simply being a duplicate of Osana’s suicide cutscene.
• Amai now has unique animations when describing her Task to Ayano.
• Amai’s Monday Morning event with Senpai now has animation.
• Amai’s Monday Lunchtime event with Senpai now has animation.
• Amai’s Monday Lunchtime sabotaged event with Senpai now has animation.
• A total of 20 new animations were created for the students who are interacting with Amai’s bake sale.
• The Genocide Ending now has a proper cutscene instead of just being text on a black screen.

Furthermore,

• The store-bought Game Over animation (collapsing to the ground while “HEARTBROKEN” appears onscreen) was replaced with a new, original animation.
• Gardening Club members now perform a “flower arranging” animation when standing in front of a pot of flowers.
• The animation that plays when Miyuki fires her “Love Love Beam!” was replaced with a completely new animation.
• Chigusa and Ryoba recieved new “gravure photo shoot” animations.
• Ayano now has a much better “gazing lovingly at photo of Senpai” animation
• The chainsaw has a unique dismemberment animation.
• The “Push Ritsuko into pool” elimination now has an accompanying animation.
• The “prepare breakfast in Ayano’s kitchen in the morning” feature now has a new animation.
• The “police shrug because they cant figure out who the murderer is” scene now has a new animation.
• The “policeman looks left and right, searching for evidence of a crime” scene now has a new animation.
• The Yakuza now uses an original “leaning against wall” animation instead of a store-bought one.
• The monster in the “Origin Dream” now has animation.

Wow!! That is a LOT of new content!! Many of these additions – such as the new murder methods, chainsaw weapon, Yakuza cutscene, Togo cutscene, Miyuki cutscene, and Genocide cutscene – were things that I wanted to added to the game for many years, but wasn’t able to include, because I lacked the animations for it. I am extremely grateful to the animator for everything he provided to the game this year!

New Models​

Of course, plenty of other volunteers also contributed some fantastic assets to the game over the past year:

• The 1989 gym teacher got a new character model.
• The clothing that Ryoba wears in town was replaced with a new and improved model.
• The game’s vending machines now look like Japanese vending machines instead of Western ones.
• Raibaru’s hair model was been replaced with a new hair model.
• The police of Yandere Simulator now have unique 3D character models instead of repurposing clothing models from elsewhere in the game.
• In the “prepare breakfast in Ayano’s kitchen in the morning” feature, every one of the food items on the menu now has a unique 3D model.
• Amai’s ancient hair model was replaced with a new hair model.
• Amai’s Task now involves a unique plate model and food model instead of repurposing models from elsewhere in the game.
• The Occult Club students are wearing now chokers which display different phases of the moon.
• The store-bought student bookbag model has been replaced with an original model.
• The police that appear in the end-of-day police investigation sequence now have slightly different faces and bodies, instead of being identical clones except for their hair colors.
• It is now possible to leave Ryoba’s room and interact with her family.
• The first shot of the game’s intro animation now has higher-quality hands.
• Every model in the Cooking Club was replaced.
• Bankotsuko’s model was replaced with a new one that is more accurate to her character artwork.
• Osana’s ancient hair model was replaced with a new hair model.
• Senpai now carries a plate of sandwiches to Amai’s picnic event.
• The Yakuza’s character model has been replaced.
• The 1989 Rival Delinquent Gang now has unique hair models.

…and more!​

I tried to list every new animation and model added to the game over the course of 2025, but, honestly, there were so many to list that I probably missed a few! Consider the above list to be incomplete.

Of course, that’s not all; there were many more changes, as well. The Light Music Club rhythm game now has vastly improved artwork, a new minigame was added to the game console in Ayano’s bedroom, tons of new voice lines were added to the game…the list just goes on and on and on!

Oh, and in addition to amazing assets created for use within the game, there were also a tremendous number of assets created for use outside of the game. Specifically, dozens of characters got official illustrations, enabling me to write profiles for them on the game’s official website:

• Ui Tunesu
• Sureibu Broken
• Sureibu Young
• Otohiko
• Azebiki
• Horuda
• Torahiko Young
• Torahiko Old
• Mai
• Kenko
• Kokona
• Kataba Young
• Kataba Old
• Kataba Secret Agent
• Saisho’s Wife
• Reiichi
• Daisaku
• Ken
• Joze
• Bloody Osoro
• Kugi and Hiki
• Raibaru
• Kijiyose
• Hairdresser
• Oga
• Oga
• Hodaka
• Hanzo Student
• Hanzo Soldier
• Kanehira
• Evil Photographer
• Gita
• Daigo Old
• Daigo young
• Kiba
• Sakura
• Hazu
• Fushigi Adult
• Fushigi Child
• Sameba
• Anahiki
• First Aishi
• First Aishi Bloody

Whoa!! That’s over 40 character illustrations added!!

The entire history of the Aishi family dating back to the First Aishi was revealed, several mysterious characters finally had their backstories revealed, and a few seeds for future plot twists were planted. I had a fantastic time writing the backstories for all of those characters, and if you hadn’t read their profiles, I hope you do so!

And, speaking of artwork being created…

Akane Video​

There are two videos that I’ve wanted to make for a long time: “How Aoi and Megami met and how Aoi lost her eye,” and “Akane’s Backstory.” Both videos would require a lot of illustrations; around 50 each. The Aoi/Megami video is a “cursed” project; artists keep accepting the task of creating the artwork, then disappearing. The Akane video has been proceeding much more smoothly, though:


Nearly all of the illustrations necessary to create the video have been illustrated! Only about 5~6 illustrations remain. I think that 2026 will be the year that this video finally sees the light of day! (Really not sure about the Aoi/Megami video, though…that one is sooooo cursed…)

Status of Amai and Plans for 2026​

On January 1st of 2025, I described what I planned to accomplish over the course of the year: a series of improvements to Amai’s week, a bunch of new features for Custom Mode, and the addition of voice acting and animations to Amai’s week. I anticipated that, if I could complete all of those things quickly, then I could start developing Kizana before the end of the year.

However, that’s not how things turned out. It took an exceptionally long time to find suitable voice actors for Amai and Senpai – I didn’t find them until June – and I wound up spending the majority of 2025 adding new features and assets to the game (see the massive lists above) instead of making improvements to Amai’s week or Custom Mode. Some of those tasks from that blog post got completed, but not all of them.

It’s a little embarrassing to acknowledge that I had 365 days to complete a list of tasks, and didn’t complete the full list…however, I think that this is really just an indication that game development is fluid, and that plans change as you gain access to new resources/manpower. The addition of an extremely skilled animator to the development team bumped “new elimination methods, new weapon, new cutscenes” to the top of the priority list, and knocked “update Custom Mode” down to the bottom.

So, what is the current status of Amai? Well, as you can tell by all of the voice acting and animations that have been added to the game over the past few months, I did eventually find voice actors to fill the roles of Amai and Senpai. As soon as they recorded the necessary voice lines for Amai and Senpai’s interactions, I assigned the animator to the task of creating animations for the Amai/Senpai interaction events, and that’s what he’s been doing for the past few months.

Now, as you can tell by reading all of the praise above, I have nothing but respect and appreciation for this animator. I could praise his godlike animation skills all day long! However, with that said, it’s important to acknowledge that he is human, and not a machine. It takes him about 2 weeks to create one Amai/Senpai interaction animation. With that number in mind, we can calculate how long it’s going to take until all of the animations for Amai’s week have been created.

The remaining events that require animations are:

• Tuesday Morning
• Tuesday Lunch
• Tuesday Lunch Sabotaged
• Wednesday Morning
• Wednesday Lunch
• Wednesday Lunch Sabotaged
• Thursday Morning
• Thursday Lunch
• Thursday Lunch Sabotaged
• Friday Morning
• Friday Lunch
• Friday Lunch Sabotaged
• Confession (Accept variant and Reject variant)

Assuming that it takes 2 weeks to create the necessary animations for each one of these 13 events…

13 x 2 weeks is 26 weeks, which is 182 days. 182 days from now is…

…Wednesday, July 8th.

Hm.

This means that I wouldn’t have the animations necessary to finish Amai’s week until this year is more than half over.

The previous animator – the one who made all of Osana’s animations – had motion capture equipment, which enabled him to create animations super rapidly; in some cases, he could animate an entire “Osana and Senpai interacting” cutscene in less than 5 days. However, the current animator does not have motion capture equipment, so he can’t use the previous animator’s workflow.

Obviously, I’m not trying to blame the current animator; I’m simply describing reality and laying out the math…

…however, I do need to consider what this means for my schedule…

How Animation Creation Time Affects Future Plans​

Let’s get the obvious questions out of the way first.

“Can you hire an additional animator?”

I’m not earning enough income to afford that.

“Can you launch a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to hire an additional animator?”

I feel that that public perception of Yandere Simulator is currently on a downswing, and that a crowdfunding campaign launched today would fail. I strongly believe that I should not launch a crowdfunding campaign until I’ve been able to improve public perception of Yandere Simulator.

“How are you planning to do that?”

I would like to return to YouTube and release a series of videos showing off all of the cool additions that have been made to the game since the release of 1980s Mode.

“When are you going to do that?”

After I’ve finished making all of the improvements to Amai’s week that I can make with code and voice acting, even if I lack animations for all of Amai and Senpai’s interaction events.

“What if you fail to improve the public perception of the game, and the crowdfunding campaign fails?”

Then, I guess we’d be stuck in a situation where I’ve only got 1 animator, and it takes around 200 days to create all of the necessary animations to add a single rival to the game.

Under those circumstances, I suppose I couldn’t afford to let animations be a roadblock to the game’s development; I’d have to implement rivals with generic animations and release rivals whenever I’m finished scripting their events and adding their voice acting, even if their events wouldn’t contain any unique animations.

Actually, this is a good time to mention something…

Beta Rivals​

This is the big plot twist of this blog post: Amai actually benefited tremendously from being released without voice acting or animations. After releasing Amai, I received an avalanche of extremely helpful feedback; criticism for the dialogue, suggestions for ways to improve her events, etc. After considering all of that feedback, I re-wrote nearly every line of her dialogue and re-imagined most of her events. (Most of the updated dialogue and event changes aren’t in the game yet.)

I’m glad I didn’t have any voice actors read the original dialogue, and I’m glad that I didn’t task an animator with animating the original dialogue, because most of Amai’s interactions with Senpai were completely re-written, and most of her events were completely re-designed. If I had asked voice actors to read that original dialogue, I would have had to scrap their lines and ask them to re-record the new dialogue!

You know what this tells me? This tells me that it’s actually a good idea to release rivals in a “Beta” state with no voice acting or animations, so that I can collect criticism/feedback/suggestions, make a bunch of fixes and improvements, re-design anything that needs to be changed, and then proceed to request voice lines and animations.

So, maybe the correct course of action is to not even think about voice acting or animations at this stage of development, and only focus on releasing prototypes of each rival’s week.

I do see one major downside to this plan: drama YouTubers are going to ignore the context and say, “The 10 rivals are finally finished, but they all SUCK!” which will further damage public perception of the game. However, I think that if there is a clear “YOU ARE NOW ENTERING AN UNFINISHED WEEK THAT ONLY EXISTS FOR PLAYTESTING AND FEEDBACK PURPOSES” warning screen, and a big “BETA CONTENT – NOT INDICATIVE OF FINAL RELEASE” watermark onscreen when you’re playing a Beta Rival’s week, I probably won’t have to worry about that.

It took me 89 days to implement Amai. I can definitely do that 8 more times, and potentially release up to 3 “Beta Rivals” within a single year. (However, that’s only if I decide it should be my top priority to do so. In reality, I’ll also be working on bug fixes, making YouTube videos, adding new assets to the game, etc. So, expecting 3 Beta Rivals per year might be unrealistic.)

What happens now?​

Things are probably going to go something like this:

1. I’m going to finish making the improvements to Amai’s week and Custom Mode that I described back in January of 2025.
2. I’m going to implement voice lines for all of Amai’s events, even if the accompanying animations for those voice lines are weeks or months away from being completed. Characters will simply perform a generic “talking” animation while speaking voice lines. As new animations come in, I’ll implement them, but I won’t let a lack of animations be a roadblock that just stops progress on the game.
3. Once Amai’s week is as close to “complete” as it can get, I will return to YouTube and start making YouTube videos about all of the work that I have done since the release of 1980s Mode.
4. After releasing a bunch of YouTube videos, I will gauge public perception of the game. If public sentiment towards the game is overall positive, and it seems like a crowdfunding campaign has a solid chance of success, I will probably launch a crowdfunding campaign and use the money to hire voice actors and animators moving forward.
5. If public perception towards the game never improves, and I remain in a position where I must wait around 200 days for all of the new animations required to add a single new rival to the game, then I will move forward with the “Beta Rivals” plan. Rivals will be released with no voice acting or new animations, and voices/animations will be added later.

Oh – it’s a bit of a buzzkill, but there’s one last thing I have to mention…

I wish that “difficulty finding voice actors” and “animation creation speed” were the only two factors affecting the speed of the game’s development…but, in reality, there are actually more factors than just that. I don’t want this blog post to get too bloated, though, so I’ll be writing about that in a separate blog post, which I plan to release later this month.

Even though not every word in this blog post was positive, I hope that it helped clarify the current state of the game’s development!

Thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!

 

[N Man]

How's the optimization of this game in 2026? The game is still written in booleans, and Alex prays that in the far future, when he finishes this game (lol), the hardware will finally catch up, or did he actually improve it over the years?

 

[Dr. Arinsu]

How's the optimization of this game in 2026? The game is still written in booleans, and Alex prays that in the far future, when he finishes this game (lol), the hardware will finally catch up, or did he actually improve it over the years?

The game is laggy even on a 8GB PC. I will like to mention moving the mouse results in a input delay. I do not understand why the keybinds are done the way they were. ESC to quit when it should be a menu and not regulated to SHIFT is annoying it doesn't go WHRRRRRR on the highest graphics so its fine,

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

How's the optimization of this game in 2026? The game is still written in booleans, and Alex prays that in the far future, when he finishes this game (lol), the hardware will finally catch up, or did he actually improve it over the years?

Poor. He's relying heavily on the advancing of brute force to cover up what is still very poor optimization. Things are almost acceptable today just because its been half a decade since his last visual pass, but his underlying materials are very brute force, none of the optimization is clever or particularly competent.

When he hypes himself up for another kickstarter push and goes for another visual polish pass, its gonna degrade again.

 

[Nord15$]

I mean I have a tiny bit of hope that this can be done. Sure it took him years for Osana but he's somewhat more focused about this.

 

[lumaleelumabop]

January 15 update (archive)

Hello,

I initially planned to post my annual Transparency Report within the first few days of January. I know everything I want to say and how I want to say it, but it has been very difficult to find a block of free time to actually sit down and write the post. I apologize to anyone who is waiting for that post with bated breath, but I feel very confident that it’ll happen before February.

In the meantime, here’s an update! To read a list of everything that was added / changed / fixed / improved, please scroll down past this beautiful artwork by l0tt.iie!

Amai-Related Additions​

Amai and Taro’s Tuesday morning conversation now has animations and voice acting!


I added a lot of extra dialogue to this conversation! Coming in at 2 minutes and 23 seconds, it is now the longest Rival/Senpai event in the game! (I’ll probably never let another conversation get longer than this one, because once an event is this long, creating the animation for it becomes a total nightmare. I extend my apologies to the animator!)

In this event, Amai asks Senpai what his favorite color is. Previously, Senpai’s answer was very basic. “I like black, because it’s cool. I don’t like pink, because it’s a dumb color for girls.” There were two problems with this answer:

1. It made Senpai sound shallow.
2. It was inconsistent with what I’ve said about Senpai’s favorite colors in the past.

I decided to completely change Senpai’s answer so that it doesn’t contradict any previous information, and also adds depth to his character:

1. He openly admits that he loves the color pink. This means that he’s not insecure about his masculinity.
2. He explains that there is a difference between the colors that he finds the most beautiful, and what colors he personally prefers to wear. His taste is nuanced.
3. He recognizes what kind of clothing is considered gaudy/tasteless, and that he has to be careful about what he wears to avoid giving off the wrong impression to people.
4. When he’s discussing a topic that he finds interesting, he can get carried away, start rambling, and for a moment, he’ll forget that he’s even in a conversation. (That’s kinda cute, right?)

For many years now, I’ve been saying, “It’s too early to judge whether or not Senpai is a boring character! You will learn more about him with each week! Don’t judge him until you learn more about him!” And this event is one of my attempts to make good on that promise by letting Senpai demonstrate a lot of different personality traits in one interaction.

Another one of the reasons why the dialogue was re-written was to change the exact steps that the player must follow in order to successfully sabotage the “Amai gives Senpai an apron” event. However, the updated “sabotage the apron” gameplay has not yet been added to the game. It will likely be included in the next build.

Additionally, most of Amai’s “Talking to Ayano about the Cooking Club” lines are now voiced:


Currently, 16 out of 20 lines are voiced. Hopefully, the remaining 4 will be added to the game in the next build!

Improvements​

• Previously, when saving the game, the game would only remember up to 100 water puddles. The game will now remember up to 200 water puddles.
• Ai’s suitor now stands farther back when he admires her, so that he doesn’t walk right next to the musicians performing on stage.
• The most recent 5 accessories added to Ayano were not available as options in Custom Mode. The accessory list has been updated.
• Cooking Club members will no longer attempt to give food to a student who is performing music on a stage.

Fixes​

• If the player saved the game with over 100 water puddles at school and saved the game, the game would fail to respawn even a single one of those puddles. This bug has been fixed. (However, the game will only remember up to 200 water puddles in total, as mentioned above.)
• If the player pushed a student from the school rooftop and then dismembered the corpse, the end-of-day police investigation sequence would describe the student as “pushed from the rooftop” instead of as a bunch of dismembered body parts. This bug has been fixed.
• Programming Taro and Amai to ignore distractions while having a picnic had an unintended side effect; they ignored absolutely everything, even murder and corpses. This was not deliberate; I just wanted them to ignore giggles. This change has been made.
• If the player brought a mind-broken slave to school and then simply did nothing with that slave, the slave was supposed to commit suicide at the end of the day. However, this was not happening. This feature is now functioning as intended.
• If Raibaru attacked the player while the player was in the middle of a “fan blade murder” animation and then the player fought off Raibaru, the protagonist’s sanity would be permanently locked at 0%. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player activated the Checkpoint in the “Evil Photographer” mission, got a game over, and tried again, the player would spawn at the checkpoint, but all of the bags they burned would be back. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player put a clubmember into the tranq case, saved, loaded the save, and ended the day, the game would not remember to subtract that clubmember from the club, and the club would remain open. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player got a student’s fingerprints onto a weapon, saved the game, and loaded the game, the game would forget that the student’s fingerprints were supposed to be on that weapon. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player entered the “end of day police investigation sequence” while a murder weapon was inside of a bag, the weapon’s size would be weird when it eventually appeared onscreen. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player activated the Genocide Ending while in Custom Mode, Senpai’s appearance and the protagonist’s appearance would not match the characters that the player designed. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player saved the game, loaded the game, wore a raincoat, killed a student, then removed the raincoat, the raincoat would be grey instead of its proper color. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player poisoned Osana and Raibaru simultaneously, Raibaru would break out of her “dying of poison” animation to react to Osana dying of poison. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player pushed a student from the school rooftop in direct view of the Journalist, the Journalist would not notice or react to the corpse. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player lit a student on fire and then dismembered the student, the dismembered body parts would not be charred black. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player used the “censor blood” feature, the muddy shoeprints inside the teahouse would become brown squares. This bug has been fixed.
• If the player decapitated a member of the Occult Club, their choker would float in midair. This bug has been fixed.
• The Lust Demon easter egg was broken. Oops! It should be working again now.

Stream Anniversary​

17 years ago, on January 17th 2009, I streamed a video game for the first time! Every year, I celebrate my “stream anniversary” on January 17th and 19th by replaying the first two games that I ever streamed – Resident Evil 4 and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon!

If you’re interested, you’re welcome to drop by my Kick channel on the 17th and 19th, and say hello while I’m playing RE4 and Goemon!

Thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

I initially planned to post my annual Transparency Report within the first few days of January. I know everything I want to say and how I want to say it, but it has been very difficult to find a block of free time to actually sit down and write the post. I apologize to anyone who is waiting for that post with bated breath, but I feel very confident that it’ll happen before February.

Yea, definitely difficult to find time, even though you have known this was coming for a year and could at any point put down a couple hours of dev to deliver on one of your exceedingly limited actual commitments.

Makes me wonder if he's just being incompetent or lazy, or if he's buying time, either to work up to admitting to having cleaned out the volunteer fund, or if he's about to try and throw a new revenue switch. Perhaps a renewed kickstarter push, or some even more hairbrained scheme. While its probably just laziness, he's surprised me with his high effort stupidity in the past.

 

[Dr. Arinsu]

• If the player saved the game with over 100 water puddles at school and saved the game, the game would fail to respawn even a single one of those puddles. This bug has been fixed. (However, the game will only remember up to 200 water puddles in total, as mentioned above.)

Reminds me of how EA makes those "hahaha so quirky!" shit no one cares about bug fixes. Like whose having that many fucking puddles? People are focused on killing not random bug fixes.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

Yea, definitely difficult to find time, even though you have known this was coming for a year and could at any point put down a couple hours of dev to deliver on one of your exceedingly limited actual commitments.

Makes me wonder if he's just being incompetent or lazy, or if he's buying time, either to work up to admitting to having cleaned out the volunteer fund, or if he's about to try and throw a new revenue switch. Perhaps a renewed kickstarter push, or some even more hairbrained scheme. While its probably just laziness, he's surprised me with his high effort stupidity in the past.

You're looking too deep into that. Have you read "There will come soft rains" by Ray Bradbury? It is extremely short, so it is not a spoiler - in that story humanity was wiped by nuclear war, but their automated homes keep on cleaning, cooking, etc. even though there is no one left to do that for. At this point Alex is like this machinery - there is no point in the whole world to keep this dragging on, but what else does he have? He is also delusional enough to ignore even a peep from the voice of reason, so he will keep doing this thinking that releasing some asset flip after 20 years of OOP war crimes will achieve him anything, but being called a loser.

Also:

17 years ago, on January 17th 2009, I streamed a video game for the first time! Every year, I celebrate my “stream anniversary” on January 17th and 19th by replaying the first two games that I ever streamed – Resident Evil 4 and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon!

Some people can't let go that they were the best at their college football team. Alex can't let go that he streamed for the first time almost 20 years ago, even though he lost his audience in about two months after that and did it again a year after. But this was also the place where he groomed Sisefs, so maybe this is the real reason for that.