1 year ago today, I uploaded a new build that I called “The Medium Amai Update” – it wasn’t big enough to be called “The Big Amai Update,” but it was larger and more significant than a typical update, so I gave it the title of “Medium.”
Well, by pure coincidence, I am releasing another larger-than-usual update to Amai’s week exactly 1 year after the last one! It feels bigger than the last update, but still not big enough to be called “Big,” so instead, it’s…The Larger-Than-Medium Amai Update!
In a single sentence, what makes this update “big?” The answer is: 137 new voice lines for Amai. That’s a huge number! There are now *less* than 137 voice lines remaining until Amai is complete, so you’ll never see another Amai update bigger than this one. This update is a huge step towards completion.
To read a list of everything that was added / changed / fixed / improved in the last build, scroll down past this artwork of Ayato by
MirakuNyandes!
First, before we discuss the latest content added to the game, a quick note…
“Violent Criminal Organizations” Tip
Last year, YouTube began terminating channels that had uploaded footage of Yandere Simulator. YouTube claimed that these videos were in violation of the rules regarding “Violent Criminal Organizations.” YouTube did not elaborate on how gameplay footage of Yandere Simulator violated the rule.
In response, I added numerous censorship options to Yandere Simulator – the ability to censor corpses, censor weapons, etc. One of the new censorship options is the option to completely obscure all killing animations. Not just blur them, but hide them from view completely and also mute the sounds of screaming, stabbing, etc.
Someone has been performing experiments to see what kind of gameplay footage from Yandere Simulator gets automatically removed, and what kind of gameplay footage is allowed to remain online. He has experimented with various different censorship options enabled and disabled, trying to find the combination that satisfies YouTube.
Recently, he uploaded a 10-minute video where he slaughters every student in school while only
one censorship option is active: the “fully hide killing animations” option.
The video has been online for 16 days, and has not been taken down.
I can’t confirm it with 100% certainty, but this
seems to indicate that activating the “fully hide killing animations” option is the one and only thing that players need to do in order to safely upload footage of Yandere Simulator without facing problems from YouTube.
You’re taking a risk if you upload gameplay footage to YouTube that involves murder. However, if you’re feeling brave and willing to accept the risk of your video being taken down, it appears that the “fully hide killing animations” option
might be the solution to this problem.
Apron Event Overhaul
Amai’s Tuesday Apron Event has been completely overhauled!
First, I’ll describe how the event previously worked:
- Amai makes an apron
- You make an apron
- You swap the aprons
- Both Amai and Senpai are surprised by a weird apron
Now, I’ll explain how the new version of the event works:
- Senpai names his favorite colors, and also describes the colors he enjoys wearing.
- Amai writes this information down in a notepad.
- Amai goes to the sewing room, checks her notepad, and begins gathering fabric to create an apron that incorporates the colors Senpai described.
- Amai realizes that the fabric she needs isn’t in the sewing room, but is present in a different room in the school. She leaves the sewing room to go get that fabric.
- While Amai is out of the room, you can sabotage what she wrote in her notepad to swap “favorite colors” for “colors he wants to wear.”
- When Amai returns to the room, she double-checks her notepad.
- If you sabotaged it, then Amai believes that she has gathered the wrong fabric, and begins gathering different fabric.
- The fabric that Amai needs isn’t present in the sewing room, and Amai doesn’t know where to find it.
- You have to go to the school infirmary, steal the fabric that Amai needs while the nurse isn’t looking, then bring it back to the sewing room.
- Amai will find the fabric you brought back, and then begin sewing the apron.
- Later, when Amai presents the apron to Senpai, he is noticeably disappointed. When Amai asks why, Senpai repeats what he said at the beginning of the day and explains that he doesn’t prefer to wear certain colors.
- Now Amai looks like someone who doesn’t properly listen to another person when they’re talking / doesn’t respect another person’s preferences, bringing Senpai’s opinion of Amai down.
Phew! That was a lot of information.
This event was exceptionally difficult to program into the game, because the event has three branches: “No sabotage” “Apron description was sabotaged but Amai doesn’t have the fabric necessary to make that apron” and “Apron description was sabotaged and Amai has the fabric necessary.” The script that governs 202X rival events wasn’t set up to handle three outcomes like that, so I had to do a lot of extra work. It all worked out in the end, though!
But, if future events are going to have multiple sabotage steps and multiple outcomes like this, I might need to rework the system that is flexible enough to support that sort of thing…
Tip for speedrunners: The moment you put the pink fabric onto the fabric shelf, the game acknowledges that Amai will find the fabric and make an apron with it, and thus the event counts as “sabotaged” as soon as the fabric is on the shelf. You don’t have to stand around and wait for Amai find the fabric unless you just really want to watch that.
Note: You’ll notice that some of Amai’s voice lines are missing, and some of Amai’s voice lines don’t match the subtitles onscreen. That’s because I decided to completely change Amai’s lines, and Amai’s voice actress hasn’t read the latest versions of the lines yet. So,
don’t bother reporting any bugs related to missing or inaccurate voice lines in this event – they’re all getting replaced soon, anyway.
Speaking of voice lines…
New Voice Lines
A bunch of voice lines related to Amai’s Befriend/Betray sequence have been added to the game:
The “Have a private conversation with Amai about the rival bakery” event now has voiced lines for both Amai and Ayano:
The cutscene where Ayano texts Amai to tell her what she found in the rival bakery is now voiced:
The visual novel cutscene where Ayano either befriends or betrays Amai is also now fully voiced:
Also, the scene where Amai wakes up tied to a chair in Ayano’s basement is voiced:
(Also, if you arrange a meeting with Amai, she waits for you to arrive and you never show up, Amai now has a voice line for that scenario, too.)
I believe that, as of now, Amai’s
entire befriend/betray sidequest is fully voiced! Every character involved in the sidequest – Amai, Ayano, the baker, the bakery owner, the security guards, and the man inside the construction site – all have voice lines now! This is a major milestone, and I’m very glad that we’ve finally reached it!
(There are a handful of voice lines that have audio quality problems, and I’ll be requesting re-takes for those lines. So, if you come across any lines that have obvious issues, don’t worry – I’m already planning on replacing those.)
Additionally…
- The “male student asks you to retrieve confiscated magazine from student council room” task now has voice lines.
- If you splash Amai with any type of liquid (water, blood, gas, brown paint) she now has voice lines for reacting to each type of liquid, and announcing her intention to go clean it off.
- If you interrupt one of Amai’s events with Senpai by standing too close, her “We’re trying to have a private conversation…” response is now voiced.
- If Amai discovers a corpse or witnesses a murder, you will now hear her gasp in shock (instead of hearing the generic female scream).
- If you kidnap Amai and keep her in your basement, she now has 20 voice lines depending on her current level of sanity!
- If you try to ask Amai to do a Favor for you while she’s busy with her bake sale, her response is now voiced.
- If Amai lose her smartphone and then finds it, her reaction to finding the smartphone is now voiced.
- If Amai witnesses murder, you will now hear a spoken “How could you do that?!” Line of dialogue.
- If you ask Amai for a Favor when your reputation is too low, her refusal is now voiced.
- If Amai witnesses you behaving strangely, her reaction is now voiced.
A little bit of backstory is required to explain the next voice-related addition I’ve made to the game:
A voice actress contacted me and asked if there were any open roles. I let her audition for a number of different characters – and one of those characters was Kizana.
As with nearly every actor’s audition, the first attempt wasn’t a perfect match for how I imagined the character. However, I kept coaching her, and eventually we reached a point where she was able to give a performance that is quite close to my mental image of how Kizana is supposed to sound.
I’m not ready to officially declare, “Kizana has been cast! This is officially the voice of Kizana!” but, I feel satisfied enough with her lines to include them in the “Senpai meets Kizana” cutscene.
If this actress’ performance gets positive feedback from the fans, then perhaps she really will be officially cast as Kizana. However, if the fans aren’t satisfied, then these lines will only be placeholders.
In addition, I also asked Senpai’s voice actor to record Senpai’s lines for this scene. Here’s how the scene currently sounds:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=kBGCWDCBSn4
What do you think? If you feel happy with this voice for Kizana, let me know. If you’re unhappy with it, I need to be aware of that, so express your feelings.
But, please, be respectful – remember that there’s a human being with emotions on the other side of that voice. (Actually, instead of blaming the actress,
you should blame anything you don’t like on me, since I was the one who was giving the instructions.)
Let’s count up how many new lines have been added to the game in this update…
- Befriend/Betray dialogue at school: 23 lines
- Befriend/Betray dialogue in Ayano’s home: 44 lines
- Befriend/Betray dialogue over text messages: 6 lines
- Amai wakes up tied to a chair: 1 line
- Amai states that she is busy with her bake sale: 1 line
- Amai waits for a meeting that never happens: 1 line
- Amai reacts to being splashed with liquid: 9 lines
- Amai as tortured prisoner in basement: 20 lines
- Amai gasps when seeing a corpse/murder: 1 line
- Amai reacts to witnessing murder: 1 line
- Amai reacts to weird behavior: 1 line
- Amai reacts to eavesdropping: 1 line
- Amai refuses to do a Favor: 1 line
- Amai finds her smartphone: 1 line
- 1980s Mode Magazine Task: 6 lines
- Senpai meets Kizana: 20 lines
That’s a total of 137 new lines – probably the most that has ever been added to the game in a single update, aside from the Osana update! This is huge!
Characters Page Update
Over the past 192 days, a lot of artists produced a lot of new character artwork for the Characters page. I loved all of their artwork, and was looking forward to uploading it to the official website! However, I wanted to focus my time and attention on updating Amai rather than updating the website, so I chose to postpone updating the website until I was finished with my Amai tasks.
Eventually, I started to feel super guilty about this – it felt disrespectful to those amazing artists to let their artist just sit there on my PC, waiting eternally to be uploaded. So, over the past few days, I decided to just upload everything! If you visit the Characters page of the official website, you’ll notice that numerous new profiles have appeared!
The following characters now have profiles on the official website:
- Shin, Daku, Chojo, Supana, and Kokouma from the Occult Club
- Tsuruzo, Shozo, Riku, and Tokuko from the Drama Club
- Beshi and Dora from the Light Music Club
- Itachi and Unagi from the Sports Club
- Ryuto and Pippi from the Gaming Club
- The “First Senpai”
- Kyuji Konagawa
- Sumire Suzuki
- Arisa Aishi
- Toga Tabara
- Kuu Dere
Additionally, profiles have been created for entire branches of the Aishi bloodline:
- The “American Branch”
- The “Scissors Branch”
- The “Ninja Branch”
These profiles will tell the stories of entire branches from 1818 to 202X, rather than focusing on individual characters.
Also, a few characters got updated artwork:
- New “alternate” artwork has been added for Midori, Gita, and Kiba. The old artwork remains,
- Sureibu’s old artwork has been replaced.
- Sameba’s old artwork has been replaced.
Make sure to check every character’s profile to see if they have new “Alternate Artwork” options! For example, Tsuruzo has a “With Capelet” option, because I’m considering modifying his character design slightly by putting a “half-cape” on his right shoulder. It just feels right for him!
The majority of these characters do not have any text in their profiles yet; this is because uploading images and creating profiles only takes a few minutes, but writing a character’s biography can take a long time, and I didn’t want the act of updating the Characters page to slow down Amai’s development.
Still, that’s 40 illustrations in total – a huge update!! I hope you enjoy looking through all the new artwork!
(By the way – another amusing coincidence is that, exactly 1 year ago, in the 2025 June 1st update, I *also* described a huge update to the Characters page in a blog post. What a funny twist of fate!)
Changes
- For some reason, I disabled the “rivals will refuse to do favors for you if your reputation is too low” feature in an earlier build. Why did I do that? I’m not really sure why I did that, so I’ve re-enabled this feature. It’s entirely possible that I disabled it for a really good reason, though…
- It is now possible to press a button to skip the Genocide Ending cutscene. (Nobody complained about this until now. I guess this means that the cutscene is so good, it too many months until someone finally wanted to skip it!)
- Custom Mode allows you to create a female Senpai, but the Genocide Ending cutscene does not support a female Senpai. A message now displays onscreen to inform the player of this, so that players stop reporting it as a bug.
- When the player approaches a rack of fabric in the Sewing Room to obtain pink cloth, there is now actually a piece of pink cloth visible that disappears when you take pink cloth from the rack.
- Re-balanced how much the Psychology Grade assists with powering a student’s sanity. The formula is now Psychology x 5, rather than Psychology x 10.
- If the player kills all of the bullies except Kokoro, Kokoro’s profile will change to say that she is no longer in the “Popular Girls” group.
- The 202X teachers’ portraits have been updated to reflect their unique face textures (it’s really only noticeable on one of them).
- Some of the icon’s for Info-chan’s “Services” have been replaced with new icons.
- The “Censor Corpses” feature will now censor the corpses in the intro cutscene.
Fixes
- In Custom Mode, if the player designed a rival with a routine that would cause her 5:15 meeting with Senpai to take a lot of time to happen, Senpai would walk out of school and then eventually walk back into school once the rival was finally ready to have the meeting. This bug has been fixed.
- If a corpse was reported to a teacher, and the player concealed the corpse before the teacher could find it, resulting in the “So, this was just a prank?” reaction from the teacher, the player would lose the ability to save the game for the rest of the day. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player purchased Osana’s Dark Secret from Info-chan and then advanced to Amai’s week and tried to purchase Amai’s Dark Secret, Info-chan would be under the impression that the Dark Secret was unavailable and wouldn’t sell it to the player. This bug has been fixed.
- In the Alphabet Killer Challenge, if the player used the amnesia bomb on Osana, she would revert to her “hang out with Raibaru” routine instead of her “patrol around school” routine. This was unintended, so it has been fixed.
- If the player performed the asylum stealth mission two times in one save file, the game would automatically load the asylum’s checkpoint on all subsequent tries after the first one. This bug has been fixed.
- Custom Mode takes place in the 80s. However, if the player designed a character with the “Gossip” routine, that character would take out a smartphone when not gossiping. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player sent the robot to kill a target and the robot encountered that target on a stairway, the “robot kills target” animation would not play properly. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player was caught by a teacher while Yandere Vision was active, the “empty eyes” of Yandere Vision would be visible even outside of Yandere Vision. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player pushed a student from the school rooftop onto the dumpster while the dumpster lid was closed, the student would fall inside of the dumpster. This bug has been fixed.
- In Custom Mode, if the player gave multiple students the “Sunbathing” action/destination, those students would all try to sunbathe in the same chair. This bug has been fixed.
- If the player sedated Komako, her admirers would stop stalking her, but would spent the rest of the day walking in place nearby the lockers. This bug has been fixed.
- In Custom Mode, if the player designed a student council character with inverted hair, the character’s hair would not appear properly. This bug has been fixed.
- When the protagonist performed the medium-sanity katana attack animation, her right iris would slide out of her eye socket. This error has been corrected.
- The flowers in front of the gym entrance were using the wrong texture, leading to a glitched appearance. This has been fixed.
- The protagonist’s hair was not correct during the Genocide Ending cutscene. This bug has been fixed.
- In Custom Mode, the protagonist was bald in the Genocide cutscene. This bug has been fixed.
- 1980s Mode teachers’ unique face textures were not being used. This bug has been fixed.
What’s Next?
It is now extremely easy to list out the tasks remaining until Amai’s week has all the animations and voice lines it needs:
- Thursday Lunch Event (I already have the voice lines and animations, I just haven’t implemented them yet)
- Thursday Lunch Sabotaged Event
- Friday Morning Event
- Friday Lunch Event
- Friday Lunch Sabotaged Event
- Amai’s Confession
- Two Monday events where Amai interacts with people beside Taro and the Cooking Club
- Some miscellaneous gameplay-related lines (like Amai reacting to noticing that her phone is missing)
Aaaaand that’s about it! The last item on the bullet-point list is a bit sneaky, since it’s hiding about 16 lines in it, but that’s still not a large number.
All of the work remaining to be done on Amai is small, so you’ll never see a “Big Amai Update” – just a trickle of updates over the next 2 months until all remaining tasks related to Amai are finished.
It feels like, at the end of a long journey, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! I’m very excited to finish off these last remaining tasks and finally declare Amai to be finished!
Thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!
