Quick note: I’m not going to be talking about any of the drama surrounding the developer himself. Sure, it’s fascinating, uncomfortable, and it sheds a lot of light on this dumpster fire of an early access game. But that would take waaaaaaaaaaay too long, so I don’t wanna do it. I’m going to be focusing entirely on the game itself. Okay? Okay. Cool. Let’s go.
When it comes to creating anything, you need to start with a foundation. A painting needs a subject. A story needs an idea. A building needs a blueprint. So on and so forth. Before you begin making literally anything, you need to have some kind of base to build on top of. Something to keep it standing as you build on top of it.
Such a shame that Yandere Simulator doesn’t have this. Like… at all. This shit’s just a big ol’ pile of mess.
For those of you who don’t know, Yandere Simulator is an indie game that’s been in production since 2014, developed entirely by one Yandere Dev AKA Alex. In the game, you play as Yandere-chan, who aims to win the heart of her senpai. Not by, like, asking him out or baking him cookies, mind you. No; you need to murder every other girl aiming for him in order to take him for yourself.
Or at least that would be the case. If the rivals actually existed in the game. You know what is in the game though? A whole bunch of unnecessary bullshit! Such as:
- Countless pointless NPCs with names and backstories
- Tons of mechanics that don’t work/aren’t finished/ don’t have any application yet
- Roughly eight actual fucking demons
- A town with nothing to do in it except an empty music store
- An in-game augmented reality game
- An in-game anime that’s had more thought put into it than the game itself
- The ability to take panty shots of high school girls (just writing that made me feel sick; that isn’t a joke, I might actually throw up)
- The ability to customize your character, from their hair to their panties (again, a high schooler; one step closer to barfing)
So on. And so forth. All of that. Added over the course of six years of development. Instead of the rivals. You know. The most important part of the game.
It’s pretty obvious that the dev is completely unfocused in designing this game. He’s basically working backwards. Instead of starting his blueprint on the first floor, he’s leapt straight to the penthouse. Unfortunately for him, there’s one problem with that: you can’t have a penthouse if you don’t have the rest of the building built beneath it.
Typically in game development, you start off by defining what the game will be at its core. For example, if you were making a Mario game, you wouldn’t start with whatever mechanics will separate it from other Mario games. You’d start with what kind of Mario game it is. Is it a linear, course-clear platformer? Or an open-world exploration platformer? Maybe you don’t even want to make a platformer and you want to make a Mario Kart game! Point is, you need to decide right off the bat.
Next, you work towards your first playable. This should be a playable version of the most simplistic version of the game. Going back to our Mario example, this playable would be Mario in a blank space with some boxes to jump on. No enemies, no bosses, no items, nothing. Just Mario and some stuff to jump on.
From there, you start to develop the other details. You decide on his different abilities and power-ups and build the levels around those. After you’ve built the levels, you fill them with enemies and the occasional boss, along with items like coins and boxes. Once you’ve built every level, you go into fixing the various glitches and exploits until badabing badaboom, you’ve got a finished game.
In the case of Yandere Simulator, the first playable should be super simple. Just put Yandere-chan in a mostly empty level with Senpai and her rival, plop a few items down, and try to kill the rival without Senpai noticing. That is the core of the game, so that’s what should be in the game first and foremost. From there, you build the other rivals, other mechanics to dispose of them, the levels, fill it with stuff and side characters, and then, once everything is there, you refine it until the game is done.
Yandere Simulator does the exact fucking opposite. It defines all the side mechanics and fills it with random crap well before any of the rivals even existed. Which means that, once the rivals do come out, the game will be filled to bursting with bugs and exploits. You can’t put a wall when you’ve already built a window in the same space.
If Yandere Dev had any sense of focus, maybe this game would be more impressive. Or near finished. But he keeps getting distracted by stupid shit. He doesn’t know nor care about which mechanics are the most important. He just wants to make whatever he finds interesting before making what he needs. He completely lacks focus.
And believe it or not, but that’s not actually the worst part. Not by a long shot. If I went into every reason why this game is a disaster, I’d be here for actual fucking days. And frankly, I have a million better things to do than that. Like playing an actual game.
Long story short: don’t give this guy your money.
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