YandereDev

The Biology Lab is furnished!

Hey! I've got some good news!

The Biology Lab - one of the only rooms in school that was completely empty - is now furnished with props!

Currently, no aspect of the room features any sort of functionality, but off the top of my head, I can quickly think of three utilities for this room:

1. Freezing students to death by locking them inside of the freezer room and turning the temperature down to subzero temperatures that humans can't survive.
2. Storing corpses inside of t...

Upcoming Asset Preview

As mentioned in a previous post, I am currently preparing the assets required for the inclusion of the next rival's Befriend/Betray stealth mission. The mission will take place in the middle of Buraza Town's commercial district. The player will walk across roads and sidewalks, and storefronts will mark the boundaries of the playable area.

But, if the player looks down a street, off into the distance beyond the playable area, what will they see? Obviously, they shouldn't be able to see o...

Animator Guidance Example

I've said it before, but the majority of work I do is not related to writing code. It's speaking with 2D artists / 3D modelers / animators. The majority of my time is spent reviewing their work, testing their work, and requesting changes when necessary.

When I need to explain to a volunteer how their work can be improved, I do everything I can to provide guidance and help them understand what needs to be changed. This usually involves finding reference material online (images or videos)...

New Animation Preview

Some of the oldest animations in the game are the "laughing" animations. These animations were created by taking 5 frames from other animations (like "nodding yes") and looping that 5-frame segment to create the impression of laughter.

These "animations" - if you can even call them that - were put into the game in 2014, and were some of the worst-looking animations in the game. They have finally been replaced, and you can see what the new animations look like above!

Day 30: DLC Rival Concept Art

I did it! I posted never-before-seen material for 30 days in a row! ...right? I didn't miss a day, did I? I didn't skip directly from 14 to 16 or some other mistake like that, right?

Anyway, for the final day of this 30-day event, I figured that I should post the most exciting behind-the-scenes material I could possibly muster...and I figured that the one thing that people would be most excited to see would be concept art for the "DLC Rivals."

For the past 4 years, the idea of DLC...

Day 29: Easter Egg Concept Art - Part 2

Hello!

As we wrap up the 30-straight-days of never-before-seen art, I'm dropping all of the last remaining "miscellaneous" concept art: easter egg designs.

In the gallery above, you'll find a potential design for Ayano's "Persona" if a Persona easter egg was ever added to the game, the concept art for the Stand (Bad Romance) that she summons in the Jojo easter egg, concept art for the Shipgirl easter egg, concept art for the re-designed Lust Demon (after I decided I wanted to diff...

Day 28: Easter Egg Concept Art - Part 1

We've almost reached the end of my one-solid-month-of-concept-art challenge! Only three days to go!

When I first announced that I would be posting concept art, I teased that I would be sharing the design for Yamiko's Shinigami. Since there are only 3 days remaining, I figure that now is the right time to finally make good on that promise!

Above, you can find the design for Yamiko's Shinigami (a character who was supposed to appear in-game when using the Life Note easter egg) as we...

Day 27: A Lost Piece of Yandere Simulator History

You've heard of YouTooz, right? They're a company that manufactures collectible figurines of popular Internet creators.

In 2019, I began speaking with YouTooz about the possibility of releasing a figurine. Because Ayano is my "mascot," and because one of my biggest dreams is to sell a physical figurine of Ayano, we started designing a Yandere-chan figurine together.

As you can tell from the concept art and 3D renders above, we had a figure fully designed and ready to be manufactur...

Day 26: Preview of Upcoming Environment

Earlier this year, a 3D modeler contacted me and volunteered to create assets for the game. Their portfolio had a lot of environments - building interiors and exteriors, furniture, etc - so I knew they were perfect for a certain task. I described what I wanted, they got to work...and at this point in time, the environment I requested is almost done!

I'm not going to explicitly tell you exactly what the environment is (although one of the screenshots contains a word that kinda spoils it,...

Day 25: Custom Mode Concepts

In recent times, I am very reluctant to consider planning anything for the game that isn't absolutely necessary, especially if it's ambitious, complex, and would take a lot of time to add - but there is one "unnecessary" feature that I'm so enthusiastic about, there is a chance that I may actually take the time to add it to the game, since it would add a tremendous amount of value - both replay value and production value - to Yandere Simulator.

That feature is ...

Day 24: Matchmaking Video Concept Sketches

I was pretty proud of the Matchmaking feature (it was the first feature so ambitious that it took more than 2 weeks to implement) and I wanted my video about it to be special, so I requested fancy artwork for the thumbnail. The illustration that I used can be seen in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQOJprZ-3w8 However, before it was created, 2 other sketches were created depicting other potential p...

Day 23: UI Re-Design Concepts

I've said it many times before, but I'm quite unsatisfied with the game's user interface, and I'm always wondering how it could be improved. At various points throughout the game's development, I've asked artists to imagine and illustrate potential new designs for the UI - and here's a collection of concepts that they've come up with!

Overhauling the UI is probably one of those things that would make people think "Whoa, the game looks completely different now than it did a few years ago...

Day 22: Sneaking Outfit Concept

Like everything else in the game, the outfit that the protagonist wears during stealth missions (like the Osana Stalker mission and the Insane Asylum mission) is something that had to be designed and illustrated before a modeler could create it. The current design - black turtleneck, black shorts - was sketched by a volunteer. However, I was never 100% satisfied with it, and always wondered if, potentially, someone could design a better one - so, concept art was created for two other sneaking...

Day 21: Senpai Meets Amai Storyboard

Over the course of Yandere Simulator's development, only two storyboards were ever created: one for the "Driving your rivals to murder" video, and one for the cutscene where Senpai meets Amai. The storyboard for Senpai meeting Amai was extremely useful in helping to visualize how the cutscene would be playing out.

As you can see, some aspects of the final cutscene are different, such as not having a close-up shot of Amai grabbing Senpai's hand. This is because every aspect of a cutscene...

Day 20: Crossover Concepts

Over the years, various mobile game developers have contacted me and offered me money to advertise their game on my channels. I turned down each one of these offers, because I couldn't possibly recommend something to my viewers unless I personally cared about it, and I just don't care about most mobile games.

However, whenever a developer contacted me and proposed a crossover, I was always delighted to say yes. I'm always ecstatic to see Ayano or other Yandere Sim characters appear in a...

Day 19: Plushie Concepts

When working together with a company to manufacture plush dolls of Yandere Sim characters, orthographic artwork (front view, side view, back view) needed to be created of the characters. This is that artwork!

Day 18: Art Style Concepts

This artwork might have appeared in one of my YouTube videos, but as far as I know, I've never publicly shared the full-resolution artwork.

These illustrations were created while searching for an art style that was appropriate for the game - realistic or cartoony, serious or stylized. The expressions were drawn as reference for the modeler who would be modeling the new character model, so that the modeler would understand how expressive the final model needs to be.

Day 17: Body Proportion and Uniform Concepts

I've said this dozens - hundreds? - of times over the course of the game's development, but I really dislike the characters' body proportions. Anime characters are known for being tall and slender, and the Yandere Sim characters look like the exact opposite; short and wide. They also look too young, closer to "mid teen" than "18 or older." Oh, and don't get me started on the necks - those short, thick necks do not feel "anime" at all!

At various points througho...

Day 16: Mission Mode Concepts

Hello!

This is the original concept art for Mission Mode. As you can see. Some of the original ideas made it into the game almost 1-to-1 (font choice, Mission Failed screen), and others weren't used at all.

Even after all this time, I still feel like some aspects of the Mission Mode GUI look far too primitive and amateurish, and I still feel like it should get an upgrade before the final game...but it's so hard to insert that into my priority list when there are still so many ...

Day 15: New Stealth Mission Environment Progress

Hey, remember when I said that I was done showing you images of environments? Well, it turns out I'm going to have to retract that statement. Yesterday, I discovered some more images that would probably be of interest to you patrons - the progress screenshots for an environment that was being modeled last year.

The modeler who was working on this environment eventually got busy with other aspects of life, and had to stop working on the project. However, the work he did really laid a goo...

Day 14: School Bag Concepts

Any time that a new asset is needed for the game, an artist needs to design and draw it before a modeller can model it. Absolutely every model that you see in the game - from the characters' hair down to the accessories they wear - had to be illustrated from multiple angles before it could be created in 3D.

The process begins with sketching out potential designs, sometimes with just a pencil. The different designs are reviewed, and the "best" design is selected to be the one to move for...

Day 13: Inventory Concepts

Long-term fans of the game may remember the time when I proposed a "skirt-based inventory system" - an inventory interface which would depict the protagonist spreading apart her skirt to reveal the murder tools that she was concealing underneath it:

https://yanderedev.wordpress.com/2016/06/20/community-feedback-wanted-new-inventory-system-propo...