A Quick Look at Schoolgirl Murder Sim Yandere Simulator

Yandere Simulator is easily classified as one of the more ambitious crowdfunded projects I’ve come across in some time. Raising nearly $4,800 dollars per month, its sole developer goes by the moniker of YandereDev and works on it full time. That’s 24/7/365.

YandereDev describes his project as a stealth game about Yandere Chan (played by you) stalking a boy she likes and secretly eliminating any other girl who seems interested in him while maintaining her image as an innocent schoolgirl. He describes the gameplay as similar to the Assassins Creed or Hitman series where you are put into a large and heavily populated environment and you have to track down a specific NPC and get rid of them. Of course you also have to get rid of any witnesses and make sure to clean up the mess and evidence because if you don’t, then the police might be able to link the murder to you. Or worse, your crush might see you. Both result in game over.

Of course there are other means of getting rid of the competition for your crushes potential partners. You can sabotage her social life, frame her for a crime you committed, get her expelled or for the sadistically inclined you could get every other girl in school to bully her to the point of suicide. Remember, all is fair in love and war. But be warned if the boy you love could never love a murdering psychopath so make sure he doesn’t see you do any of this. Yandere is a Japanese word and is defined as “a girl who loves a boy so much that she is willing to threaten, harm, or kill any other girl who seems interested in him.”

Started in April of 2014, the game is now only at 5% completion and is currently unwinnable. Most features are missing right now and it’s currently in a debug build and not a demo. YandereDev does promise to have better graphics and animations when the final version is released but as of today the visual look of the game isn’t that bad and I’d be satisfied if the game was finished and released with the current graphics.

A new build was released on January 15^th of this year with another panned for February 1^st. YandereDev is very active with his community, constantly updating the website and he even has a Youtube channel with 404,039 subscribers where he will discuss what’s new with his game and give you updates on what is going on. The most recent video was released last week and carried the sad news that his game was banned from Twitch with no concrete explanation given beyond referring both him and inquiring journalists to the rules of conduct and did not specify which rules had been broken. While a finished release seems far away both myself and the steadily growing community following it have high hopes that work will continue.

If you’d like to contribute to the development of Yandere Simulator you can do so here.