Don't let Senpai notice you...
"After all, at its core, Yandere Simulator is a horror game. Where you are the monster..."
Yandere Simulator § is an indie game for PC that explores the tropes and clichés associated with the Yandere character archetype while also deconstructing harem anime and the Dating Sim. Its protagonist is a high-school girl, the title's "Yandere-chan"* , who until recently never felt emotions. That all changed the day she met Senpai and developed an obsession for him (or her) at first sight. Unfortunately, Senpai is starting to get pretty popular at the school, so what's a girl to do to get Senpai to notice her? Why, remove any rivals for Senpai's affection by any means necessary!Originally beginning production in April 2014, the game is currently less than a quarter complete. It is programmed in the Unity engine by a single person calling himself "YandereDev"* (he stated during an interview with a British gaming site in early 2015 that his first name is "Alex"), with a development blog— YandereDev
that is updated periodically.Please note that, as this is a game still in early development, things can and often do change radically with subsequent updates. Some of the listed tropes below may not be true by the time the game has an actual demo (everything up until now is officially a pre-alpha sandbox to bug-test). Even the development process itself, due to the creator's interactions with the community, has accumulated a large number of tropes, and those relating solely to individual builds and posts by the developer go in their own folder.Yandere Simulator provides examples of:
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Tropes for the Final Game
- Adults Are Useless: Zig-zagged.
- If the player fails to keep the murder scenes neat and a teacher sees it, she'll call the cops. If she then sees Yandere-chan with a weapon and/or blood on her uniform, or if Yandere-chan tries to attack her, she will grab her and pin her to the ground.
- The Nurse in the infirmary keeps a close eye on her equipment to keep you from taking it. You'll have to non-fatally poison a student to distract her.
- The police aren't completely useless. If a murder is reported, they will arrive at the school within five minutes. If a murder scene is cleaned up such that there's no evidence that Yandere-chan did it, but there's still evidence that a murder took place (like a spot of blood), they will still be suspicious of Yan-chan and keep an eye on her. If you leave any evidence connecting you to the crime at all, they'll arrest you on the spot.
- This includes if you managed to clean up everything but are still visibly insane. The cops will take Yan-chan in due to her "suspicious behavior", and the text blurb states that they will eventually uncover her crime (lack of evidence notwithstanding), so she will never be able to confess her love to Senpai.
- Played straight if Yandere-chan decides to bully a student and gets the class involved. The teachers won't do anything to stop it or lessen the damage being done. What's worse is that the student can be Driven to Suicide because no one is stopping the bullying.note
- Adult Fear:
- Your child could be going to school with a sociopath, and given how well some sociopaths blend in with society (most of the time), you'd never know... until it's too late...
- There's also the thought of someone stalking you, as seen in the cassette tapes.
- Then there's the fact that any and all of your friends and acquaintances can suddenly turn on you if someone in power starts gossiping the right things. You can even be Driven to Suicide.
- In the game's backstory, Yandere-chan's father was kidnapped by and forced to love her mother. In the present day, it's made obviously clear that he's terrified of his wife, and that he's scared that Yan-chan will continue the family tradition. Imagine raising a child, only to learn that she's become a stalker who will hurt people to get what she wants like her mother who did exactly the same things to you and other people.
- Yandere-chan can record a video of her kidnapping victims and use them as blackmail. You're minding your own business, thinking your child's safe in school and then get a video of them tied up and scared in some basement.
- Aerith and Bob: The characters in this game have names that range from the Japanese equivalent of John Smith to meaningful names to incredibly lame puns to names that are just made up.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Some people get a bit down in the dumps when Yandere-chan, The Sociopath, loses. Makes sense because they're playing as her.
- A Lighter Shade of Black:
- The Delinquents. They're trouble-making bullies who try to goad people into fighting with them, but if they see you hurt someone they'll beat you senseless.
- Yandere-chan can be this as well, if the player opts to eliminate her rivals non-lethally. One example from the debug builds: Taking the "Friendship" route with test-rival Kokona requires kidnapping the daughter of a loan shark and using her as blackmail to get Kokona's family's debt forgiven. Say what you will about Yan-chan's motives and methods; she still saved Kokona's father – and probably dozens of other people – from crippling debt and danger, and also saved Kokona from needing to prostitute herself to help her father.
- Ambiguously Human: Played with in-game regarding the Basu sisters – they are rumored to be a succubus and vampire, yet their Student Info profiles state that "only a fool would believe something like that".* Further Explanation
- Amateur Sleuth: The members of the Photography Club will become this if/as School Atmosphere drops. As more people die/disappear, their personalities shift as they endeavor to find the culprit (i.e. you). At lowest atmosphere, they are essentially walking sentries and will dole out a swift Game Over if they catch you. Of course, this can be averted if you eliminate your rivals non-lethally – the atmosphere will stay bright and cheery and the Photography Club members will just be a bunch of goofballs. If you do go the psycho-killer route, though, you must be very careful to not let them find out.
- Anime Hair:
- Some of the girls have really crazy hairstyles. One has bright purple Mega Twintails, another has very long Miku-style pigtails, a third has a cobalt blue ahoge nearly as tall as her head, one has two-tone hair, and so on.
- This also applies to a few of the male students – the "Rainbow Boys" sport hairstyles that are themselves fairly normal, mostly following the "generic spiky-haired anime boy" cliché, but are bright primary or secondary colors. Then there's Ryuto, whose hair defies all logic and sense.
- Yandere-chan herself can wear any one of several pre-made hairstyles, running the gamut from normal (like her default 'do seen in the image up top) to absolutely nuts (green corkscrew pigtails that fade to red).
- Another Side, Another Story: The game is set to include an unlockable called "1989 Mode", which focuses on the girl in the tapes, a.k.a. Ryoba, Yandere-chan's mother. The mode has restrictions such as nothing that didn't exist in that time period (so no smartphones, Info-chan, or social media) as well as stricter school rules. However, it will be less complex than the main game.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Each club makes a specific aspect of the game easier. To wit…
- The Martial Arts Club allow Yandere-chan to easily overpower others in physical confrontations.
- The Cooking Club lets Yandere-chan easily build up her reputation by making snacks for her classmates. She can also carry a knife without drawing suspicion.
- The Drama Club provides access to gloves for setting up others for your crimes, and masks to prevent reputation loss when committing murder (but only once; masks will be banned afterwards).
- The Occult Club diminishes Yandere-chan's Sanity Slippage when killing others, as well as making students and teachers slower at noticing your suspicious behavior.
- The Light Music Club has a cello case* for transporting body parts and larger weapons.
- The Photography Club lets Yandere-chan snap pictures of classmates without drawing suspicion, and prevents the rest of the club from seeing her as a suspect when students die without anyone being charged for the murder.
- The Art Club lets you safely walk around school covered in blood while wearing a smock, under the pretense that it's just red paint.
- The Science Club has a homemade roomba that will clean up blood for you.
- The Sports Club lets Yandere-chan carry around a bat without arousing suspicion. It also gives a movement bonus.
- The Gardening Club lets Yandere-chan carry around a shovel with no penalty. note
- The Gaming Club allows Yandere-chan to gain a skill boost in any one of multiple stats for the rest of the day.
- Anyone Can Die:
- This is a game about killing. Well, it can be a game about killing. It doesn't really have to be, but most players choose to murder the other students.
- The developer has stated that he would like every NPC that Yandere-chan meets to ultimately be killable, which is why she will never meet the school's headmaster or Info-chan. note
- Averted with the school counsellor, whose job is to punish Yandere-chan for minor infractions or expel other students for larger ones – she is explicitly stated to be unkillable.
- Senpai zig-zags this. He is not killable during normal gameplay, mostly because Yandere-chan becomes a Shrinking Violet whenever she gets within two yards of him. He still has the same hitbox as any other male student, though, and you can kill him in certain Easter Egg modes, but he just magically comes back to life the next day. This video implies that Senpai will be killable in the final game, however there's no confirmation on that as of yet.
- Arc Words: A meta-example, something that YandereDev constantly points out as a theme and point of the game: "Getting away with murder should not be easy."
- Ass Shove: YandereDev's explanation for how Yan-chan can hide two weapons and a smartphone on her body while nude includes a clip that states "Well, women have more hiding places than men."
- Aura Vision: It's called "Yandere-Vision" here. It highlights Senpai (in pink), rival love interests (in red), people whose info you've learned (in green), people who know you've committed a crime (in yellow), incriminating things like blood and corpses (in orange), and useful objects (in cyan). This is explained as Yan-chan visualizing their schedule, which is why it doesn't work on random students until you've gotten their details from Info-chan.
- Ax-Crazy: Comes with the territory. Just how much is up to how the player does things. It's possible to dispatch your rivals non-lethally, however, as it is to just Kill 'em All.
- Backstory: The school has one, revealed from a series of cassette tapes left behind by a journalist who investigated a Yandere on the school grounds and had his life ruined because of it. There are also cassette tapes from said Yandere, discussing how she kidnapped her Senpai after getting off scot free for her murders. History repeats...
- The Bad Guy Wins: Though you can easily lose.
- In universe, Yandere-chan herself would see one of her rivals successfully confessing to Senpai as this.
- Played straight by the yandere in the cassette tapes† . She killed for love and has seemingly gotten away with it.
- Badass Bystander: Akademi High has quite a few of them.
- Anyone with the Heroic personality. If they see you kill someone, they'll run up and try to disarm you, even if it ends up costing them their lives as well.
- Budo Masuta, founder and president of the Martial Arts Club. Unless you level up your physical education, he will completely overpower you. He's also the only one unaffected by a drop in school atmosphere – while everyone else becomes paranoid and shaky-kneed, he still retains the same confident pose.
- Some students, if they witness you murder someone they love (sibling or crush), will attack you without hesitation, their strength suddenly bumped up to Budo's level.
- Even students who don't attack can be this. If someone with a Loner or Teacher's Pet persona sees you kill someone and you get away with it, they will spend the rest of the game badmouthing you to the rest of the school, constantly draining your reputation until you... deal with them. If you try to talk to them, they'll tell you all this to your face. YandereDev has also said that if enough students see you kill someone, they will have the ability to completely overpower you with sheer numbers.
- The delinquents count. Most of the time, they're content to just hang out by the incinerator doing nothing, but if you come at them with a weapon or they see you with a body (or part of one), they will chase you down and end you (with a bat/crowbar/pipe/etc. to the head).
- Anyone with the Heroic personality. If they see you kill someone, they'll run up and try to disarm you, even if it ends up costing them their lives as well.
- Badass Teacher: Every single teacher at Akademi has "extensive self-defense training". Without the proper stats, attempting to attack a teacher will result in her grabbing your wrist, disarming you, slamming your head into the floor, and holding you down.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: The naked characters in Titan Mode lack certain attributes, as do the characters in the showers, though that's also because of Censor Steam. note
- Barefoot Suicide: Exploited. When Yandere-chan shoves someone from the rooftop, she slips their shoes off before they take the plunge to make it look like they took their own lives.
- Beware the Silly Ones: The Photography Club is described as a bunch of goofballs who like to have fun. However, if you drop school atmosphere to the minimum, they will hunt you down like the rabid dog you are. They will sweep the school looking for evidence of your crimes, and if they catch you committing murder, they'll snap a picture of you and send it straight to the police. Game Over.
- Big Damn Heroes: The Heroic personalities will attempt to apprehend Yandere-chan if they see her attack or kill someone. If she fails to counter the attack, she will be held down and it will count as a Game Over. If she wins, though, she successfully kills whoever she's struggling with.
- Big Man on Campus: Downplayed. Senpai has managed to draw the affections of eleven girls at the school (Yandere-chan included), but he doesn't seem to have many friends and isn't that special in any particular field.
- Bi the Way: The player can make Senpai a girl.note Doing so results in every rival being bisexual – they will still all be girls and have secondary crushes on boys.
- Maxing out Yandere-chan's "Seduction" stat allows her to make female students do her bidding† – any girl she talks to will have hearts floating above her head.
- Blatant Lies: If a student catches Yandere-chan covered in blood, holding a weapon, or holding a weapon while covered in blood, you can apologize to the student(s) that spotted you, which has Yandere-chan lie to the student.
- (if caught holding a weapon) "I found something dangerous on the grounds. I was taking it to a teacher."
- (if caught covered in blood) "I spilled red paint on myself! I'm going to go clean it up now."
- (if caught covered in blood while holding a weapon) "Don't worry. I was just filming a prank video for the internet."
- (if caught taking panty shots) "It was a mistake! I was trying to photograph something else, I swear!"
- Blackmail: Info-chan is in the habit of collecting intel on other students, which Yandere-chan can use to blackmail them.
- Blood-Splattered Innocents: You have the option to dump buckets of bloody water on students, either to lure them into traps while they clean themselves up, or to make it easier to frame them for your murders.
- Break the Cutie: Yan-chan can accomplish this in several ways.
- She can trash someone's reputation via malicious gossip to the point that other students bully them and they stop coming to school (and can even be Driven to Suicide).
- She can kidnap a girl. This leads to one of two (thus far) options.
- She can torture the girl to the point their mind is shattered (at which point the girl will perform a Murder-Suicide against Yan-chan's rival... or off herself if she is Yan-chan's rival).
- In the case of Musume, the girl can be used as a hostage/bargaining chip, after which she'll be released. But for the rest of the game she will have a "broken" personality, becoming more anxious and paranoid.
- Bullying a Dragon:
- Anyone who gossips about Yandere-chan, knowing the kind of person she is.
- The game directly calls you out for this if you attempt to gossip about Info-chan.
- Camping a Crapper: It's possible to wait for a girl to walk into the bathroom and drown her in the toilet, or dump water on her over the stall after turning off the lights and then removing the light switch's cover.
- The Can Kicked Him: Again, one of the bathroom-murder options. Which involves drowning a victim in the toilet.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Yandere-chan can't confess her feelings for Senpai, at least not until anyone who could take him from her is dealt with...
- Cassandra Truth: Certain students, upon discovering a corpse, will run and tell a teacher. The teacher will come to investigate for herself. If Yandere-chan is able to move the body out of sight before the teacher arrives, the teacher will assume the murder claim was a prank.
- Censor Steam: Deliberately invoked in a Take That to YouTube's takedown of the uncensored panty shot video. When characters are getting changed or are in the buff, they're surrounded by a white haze that blocks the view of certain restricted areas of their bodies... and only those parts of their bodies.
- Chainsaw Good: One of the weapons/tools Yandere-chan can use is a circular saw found in the garden shed. It can be used to dismember corpses for easier (though more tedious) disposal. It can also be used to kill victims directly, though note that it has the longest killing animation of any weapon in the game (meaning nearby students have plenty of time to get away), and it can't be wielded in close quarters so anyone who is capable of self-defense and is aware of her can overpower her.
- Cherry Blossoms: Invoked. Not only are there cherry blossom trees on the path to school and in the school's courtyard, there is a myth that if you confess your love under the tree behind the school on a Friday, they will accept your proposal guaranteed.
- Chick Magnet: Senpai, unbeknownst to him, has a talent for attracting a wide array of potential suitors – fellow classmates, adult women, his little sisternote … and a Yandere girl. Yandere-chan's goal is to make sure none of them get in her way.
- Choose Your Own Adventure: Though the game has a rather simple linear story – you like Senpai, so do ten others, get rid of one each week – exactly how you deal with them and interact with other students can change the game significantly. You can spend your time boosting your popularity to make classmates serve you, or just murder everyone within one day. You can boost your stats – through study, clubs, or panty-buffs – to make it easier to woo, harm, or manipulate others. As for your rivals, you can take them out in any one of over a dozen ways ranging from matchmaking to social sabotage to just stabbing them in the neck.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Yandere-chan, after kidnapping someone, can do this to her victim in order to completely break their mind. Nothing is shown of what Yandere-chan actually does to her victim to break them, but one can surmise that it is anything but pleasant.
- Compensated Dating: Some of the girls in school engage in enjo kosai, which Yandere-chan can use against them to ruin their reputation.
- Contrived Clumsiness: Yandere-chan can splash people with far less severe consequences for herself by making it look like she tripped. Do it too often, though, and students might keep their distance from you if they see you with a bucket.
- Convenient Coma: Averted. If a delinquent knocks you into a coma because you attacked them or they caught you with a corpse, you will be unable to prevent your rival from confessing to Senpai, which is very inconvenient indeed.
- Covert Pervert: Some guys (and girls) at the school are implied to be this. After all, there's a market for Info-chan's panty-shot photos.
- Crapsaccharine World:
- The bright atmosphere and calm music constantly playing in the background certainly suggest that this is your standard Dating Sim... and then we meet our Villain Protagonist, find out what she's capable of, learn the backstories of some of the characters...
- Yet also downplayed. It's not the whole world that's wrong, it's just a few people in the world who make it wrong. The player character included.
- This is highlighted by the School Atmosphere mechanic. At high atmosphere, the school looks like the setting of a typical high school romantic comedy. At low atmosphere, it becomes more like the the horror story setting it actually is (with the students reacting appropriately).
- According to the game's developer, the game's design is meant to resemble a Yandere in and of itself; while it appears to be a happy, Animesque Slice of Life setting at first glance, its true nature as a horror game becomes more apparent through gameplay, much like how the protagonist is a psychopath disguised as a normal schoolgirl.
- Creepy Monotone:
- If you torture someone to the point of destroying their mind, they will go into this.
- Yandere-chan herself usually speaks in a very flat affect due to her being a (formerly) Emotionless Girl.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: The members of the Photography Club formed their club as a way to hang out with each other. That said, when the school's atmosphere bottoms out, they become your worst enemies.
- Curtains Match the Window: Most of the characters have the same color for their hair and eyes.
- The only current exceptions in their default models are Pippi Osu, Kuu Dere, Musume Ronshaku, and Kyoshi Taiso† . The Basu sisters are stated to wear contact lenses, so their true eye colors are not known. Senpai is customizable, so it's up to the player whether he does or not. Yandere-chan can avert this as well if the player messes with her hair.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Exploited and eventually Deconstructed. To make spilling liquids on people look like an accident, forcing them to break their schedule and move to a more vulnerable location, Yandere-chan can learn to convincingly trip and fall while carrying a bucket of liquid. If used too many times, this becomes less effective as Yandere-chan would earn a reputation of being this trope, causing others to be more wary whenever she's carrying a bucket around.
- Dark Is Evil: Yandere-chan's default design has black/dark grey hair, and one of Yandere-chan's outfits is a black uniform with red sleeves.
- A Date with Rosie Palms:
- One of the ways Yandere-chan can calm herself down is "using" pictures of Senpai. The developer stated that how she uses them is… up to the player's imagination.
- You can pass time by using your phone. Yandere-chan has little hearts coming from her and her phone when passing time, and calms herself down while doing so. Wonder what she's doing…
- Dating Sim: Inverted. Senpai's Cuteness Proximity prevents you from talking to him, much less wooing him. Instead, you prevent the other girls from wooing him, either through sabotage or just good old fashioned murder.
- Dawson Casting: Invoked and played with. One of the disclaimers before the title screen decrees that the animated high school girls are actually played by animated twenty-somethings, regardless of what the game says their ages are.
- Daylight Horror: Most of Yandere-chan's crimes are committed during an otherwise normal school day.
- Defacement Insult: Lower a girl's reputation to the point where the entire school hates her, and her desk will be defaced with horrible insults and calls for her to kill herself.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Inevitable, considering this is a game about a Yandere murderer in a Japanese high school made by an American. The most notable examples are the types of Japanese Bullying, the Creepy Character Archetypes (Kuu Dere and Oka Ruto are good examples), and the Dangerously Short Skirts the schoolgirls wear.note
- Destroy the Evidence: Tossing corpses, murder weapons, and bloody clothes into an incinerator and burning them, as well as mopping up the blood left behind, prevents the cops from linking Yandere-chan to any crimes. However, if multiple students disappear in rapid succession, they will become increasingly suspicious.
- Developers' Foresight: For a game still in development, some of the outcomes are surprisingly versatile.
- It's unlikely you would kidnap a girl and then frame her for murder while she's in the instrument case. But if the cops are called when that happens, the end-of-day text reveals that they found the girl asleep in the case and assumed she hid in there to avoid the authorities.
- If a Martial Arts Club member catches you committing murder, they will usually die in the process of trying to restrain you due to having Heroic personas. However, if you manage to find a way to avoid the struggle minigame, then attempt to join the Martial Arts Club, Budo will have unique quotes explaining why you can't join.If a member saw Yandere-chan killing: "It's hard to say this, but... one of our members has a big problem with you. To avoid conflict, I can't allow you to join this club. I'm very sorry."If he personally saw Yandere-chan killing: "You are not welcome here! Leave at once!"
- Some club presidents will be romantic rivals.note They will not appear before their designated week, but the other members will still be present and the club will still function. If a rival's club is disbanded before their week, a cutscene will play where the president discovers the fate of her club.
- Using a certain third-party mod (which YandereDev specifically attempted to disable) or rapid-fire teleportation in the debug builds to glitch into the Info Club room results in Info-chan screaming at you to "Get Out" and resets the week.
- Dies Wide Open: When you kill people by poison. Or by electrocution. Or if you win a one-on-one struggle against them.
- Disappeared Dad: According to the Journalist's tapes, at least one student in the school (his daughter) has this. This is because Ryoba, the yandere the Journalist was chasing after, is now the one chasing him, thus driving him out of the country.
- Disposing of a Body:
- Kill someone, and you'll probably need to do this. Leaving a dead body lying around can quickly spell Game Over unless you get rid of your weapon, bloody clothes, any bloody accessories, and calm yourself down.
- Subverted if you push someone over the railing of the roof. So long as you don't disturb the body afterwards, the death will be presumed an accident or suicide. Same thing applies to poisoning or electrocution.
- Dissonant Serenity:
- The music, at least when School Atmosphere is high, is bright and upbeat, and will continue to be unless the player personally starts murdering people and/or loses sanity. Bullying, poisoning, Murder-Suicide, taking upskirt photos – none of that affects the music. note
- Yandere-chan wears a look of pure contentment while she uses a circular saw to dismember a corpse.
- The Dragon: Info-chan, your friendly neighborhood sociopathic Knowledge Broker! Getting her to do you favors is key to some of the sneakier strategies.
- Driven to Suicide:
- You can get other girls to commit suicide if their reputation is sufficiently damaged through malicious gossip.
- What Yandere-chan can make a murder scene look like. If she takes the right precautions (not interacting with the body, doing this when both characters are alone, leaving a suicide note including her "reason" for committing suicide, etc.), then Yandere-chan can get away with murder.
- After a student is completely broken through torture, they can be given a weapon and commanded to kill a student. After the deed is done, they'll proceed to turn the weapon on themselves.
- Dynamic Difficulty: It's called "School Atmosphere" here. Students discovering corpses, blood, or unexplained suicides will lower it, thus making the game harder as they become increasingly paranoid. Killing more students after this will darken the school further, increasing the students' lines of sight, making them more easily scared, and making them more difficult to stealthily deal with. In addition, if a student catches you acting dangerous, your reputation will take a nose-dive, meaning that students will have a harder time trusting you. A week of peace will raise the atmosphere again.
- Empty Eyes:
- Originally, when Yandere-Vision was active, Yandere-chan's eyes would lose their highlights. Now they glow red when using Yandere-Vision but they'll lose their highlights when she loses sanity.
- Once you've tortured a student to their breaking point, they'll have these.
- Musume Ronshaku will get these after being released from captivity even if she isn't tortured, because the whole experience traumatizes her.
- Et Tu, Brute?: The betrayal elimination method, which involves becoming friends with a rival. First you must do a small favour for her, then do an even larger favour to gain her loyalty. After that, you will invite her to Yan-chan's house where Yan-chan can kill* her. This is especially cruel as at that point you can simply ask her not to confess to Senpai instead… to which she'll agree since she's so grateful to you for helping her.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- Delinquents will chase you down and knock you out if they witness you murdering someone or carrying a dead body.
- Yandere-chan is openly disgusted with Info-chan's modus operandi.
- Even the Girls Want Her: If you max out your skill in Seduction, all of the benefits that previously applied to male students also apply to female students as well.
- Everyone Has Standards: Students won't buy Panty Shots of dead girls because they think it's gross.
- Evil Laugh: The laugh button, if pressed enough times in rapid succession, will cause Yandere-chan to let out a maniacal cackle that restores sanity by blowing off steam. This is necessary† , because if students see you looking insane, they'll know something's up and your reputation will plummet; if Senpai or a teacher sees you insane, Game Over.†
- Failed a Spot Check:
- Yandere-chan will not be suspected for poisoning a student… even if she is practically standing on top of the corpse, laughing like a madwoman, when it is discovered.
- Averted if you try to drag the poisoned corpse away after a teacher sees it. She will (correctly) assume Yandere-chan committed murder and give chase.
- Also if you laugh like a maniac in view of the teacher guarding the poisoned corpse, even if you don't touch it, because laughing triggers her to go after you.
- Fan Disservice:
- A major gameplay mechanic involves photographing high school girls' panties. This squicks some people out and was one of the primary reasons for people filing YouTube takedowns and the game getting banned on Twitch.
- Because all the girls wear dangerously short skirts, it's inevitable they'll flash the camera if you kill them because of how you move their corpses (dragging them by an arm or leg). Don't bother taking photos though; Info-chan's customers are perverts, not necrophiles.
- The giant naked Titans from the eponymous cheat, after a reskin exposed their muscles.
- Fanservice:
- Female students will strip nude (though their naughty bits are covered by Censor Steam) in the locker room before bathing. Yandere-chan can too… and go on a Full-Frontal Assault.
- Several female characters – notably Kokona Haruka, Saki Miyu, Mai Waifu, and the guidance counselor – are extraordinarily well-endowed. Yandere-chan can be too if you mess with her model.
- The girls wear dangerously short skirts and taking upskirt photos is a core mechanic.
- Finger-Licking Poison: With a high enough grade in chemistry, you can identify poisons that you can slip into a rival's lunchbox to pick them off. Students who find a student dying of poison will call for a teacher, regardless of personality type, and the teacher will call the paramedics, ending the day automatically.
- First Person Snapshooter: A primary gameplay mechanic. Pictures that Yandere-chan takes can be emailed to Info-chan for information on students, or in exchange for favors if they are upskirts. Pictures of Senpai can be also be taken and then "used" to restore sanity.
- Frame-Up:
- One way you can eliminate a rival is to frame her for a murder you committed. You can do this by using gloves to hide your fingerprints and using a weapon that your victim uses normally (for example, a knife in the Cooking Club that Kokona uses to prepare her meal). You obviously need to dispose of your gloves and bloody clothes after committing the murder.
- The "Expulsion" mechanic requires Yandere-chan to report the infractions of another student five times throughout the week. Three of these offenses (possessing contraband, theft, and cheating) require Yan-chan to acquire and plant incriminating evidence on the student or in their bag. Another one (taking panty shots) involves stealing their phone to take the picture. If enough rivals are eliminated this way, Senpai will develop a negative opinion of women.
- Free-Range Children: You can go anywhere in the school and put people in your basement without worrying about what your parents will think. The reason why? Your parents are gone for 10 weeks. The reason for that is Yandere-chan's mother, Ryoba, found out her old nemesis the Journalist had been following her. In a panic, he fled to America… and Ryoba decided to "track him down".
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: At the starting menu, the shot of Yandere-chan standing with a stoic expression can occasionally switch into one where she's holding a knife, her clothes are bloodied, the sky is dark, and there are dead bodies in the background.
- Friend to Psychos:
- Info-chan, although she's not really Yandere-chan's friend so much as they are mutually exploiting one another.
- One of the personality types other students can have is "Evil"; they'll approve of Yandere-chan's actions and will keep quiet about them, though they still won't want to talk to her afterwards due to not wanting to be labelled an accomplice.
- If a student happens to hold a grudge against one of the rivals and they witness Yandere-chan murder that rival (or drag away their corpse), they won't alert the authorities.
- Full-Frontal Assault: With the option to change clothes added, it's completely possible to have Yandere-chan to go on a massacre while nude. This has its consequences, with people noticing you naked and all. note
- Game Over: There are a number of ways to get a game over…
- Losing Senpai to another girl (i.e. failing to take out your rival by Friday evening).
- Allowing Senpai to notice you. It is very easy for this to happen, and includes…
- Harassing him too much (this includes standing within his line of sight).
- Letting him see you performing yandere actions like having a weapon out, murdering another girl, being covered in blood, indulging in an Evil Laugh, or looking visibly insane. Also, taking panty shots in front of him isn't a good idea.
- Some of the rivals may have a "clingy" persona, and will run towards Senpai if they spot a murder or a corpse. If allowed to do so, they will tell him about it and cause a Game Over.
- If a teacher sees you being yandere – murdering a student, touching their corpse at all, taking panty shots, having blood on your clothes, looking visibly insane, letting out an Evil Laugh – she will have you immediately expelled. She will also expel you if you go to the wrong classroom and don't leave when she tells you to.
- Letting the police find enough incriminating evidence (bodies, blood, murder weapons, bloody clothes) will lead to you being arrested. This also happens if you do dispose of all the evidence but are still visibly insane when they arrive. They'll take you in due to your erratic behavior, and the text states they will soon find out about your crime. note
- If your reputation score drops low enough, it will be impossible to raise it and Senpai will reject you on sight. note If School Atmosphere is low, being caught performing Yandere actions will cause your reputation to rapidly plummet.
- Once the Photography Club members are fully implemented, letting School Atmosphere drop low enough will drive them to sleuth out the killer haunting their school. If they manage to snap a photo of you in the act of murder, they'll immediately send it to the police, ending your game.
- If you commit murder in front of students with heroic personalities or those close to the deceased, they will attempt to physically apprehend you, triggering a mini-game where you grapple for control of whatever weapon Yandere-chan is holding. If you fail the mini-game, are not holding a weapon when confronted, or are holding an unsuitable weapon† when confronted, you will be detained and arrested.
- If a delinquent sees Yandere-chan moving a corpse, or if she tries to attack them, they will smack her with their weapon hard enough to put her into a coma.
- Game Within a Game: At night, you'll have the opportunity to play video games on Yandere-chan's console, including Yanvania: Senpai of the Night.
- Golden Ending: The creator has stated that there will be multiple possible endings, depending on which techniques the player uses to eliminate rivals, and it has been implied that a Pacifist Run (disposing of rivals by playing matchmaker to hook them up with other people) would lead to this. What such an ending would mean for Yan-chan's character, however, is currently unknown.
- Goodbye, Cruel World!: Yan-chan can plant a fake one by her rival's shoes if her language skill is high enough. Doing so will prevent the police from viewing the death as suspicious.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Zig-zagged. When Yandere-chan dismembers a corpse, the camera focuses on her face as she is doing the deed, not showing the actual dismemberment in progress. The aftermath of her handiwork, however, is shown afterwards. note
- Hammerspace: Yandere-chan can pull out weapons and her smartphone out of thin air while naked. The alternative explanation invoked in the developer video is that Freud Was Right.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: Whenever you're in the vicinity of Senpai, your heartbeat can be heard in the background.
- Heartbroken Badass: If Yan-chan murders someone in front of another student close to them (usually a sibling or lover), that student will charge straight at Yan-chan regardless of their normal reaction to murder, and they will attempt to apprehend her with the maximum possible strength, ignoring their normal combat ability.
- Hero Antagonist: Because the game has a Villain Protagonist, there are several people who would love to bring a murderer to justice. This includes the Photography Club, the teachers, anyone with a Heroic persona, anyone who has witnessed Yandere-chan killing who isn't a Coward, Evil, or Delinquent, and the Journalist from the tapes (though he's more the Hero Antagonist Of Another Story).
- Hidden Badass: The teachers. Not only can they expel you if they catch you doing yandere actions, but if you try to attack them, they'll not only dodge the attack but have you pinned to the ground in a matter of seconds.
- High-Pressure Blood: Normally averted, as victims who are stabbed only squirt out small amounts of blood from their wound. However, when a mind slave kills herself, she will suddenly shoot out blood like a fountain from her neck for about five seconds before it stops.
- Hollywood Drowning: Zig-Zagged. You have the option to drown your rivals in the courtyard fountain, the locker room bathtub, pool† , or a toilet. Yes, the unfortunate victims do the stereotypical "thrash and scream" but, considering the context, this is much realistic than such a reaction would be in an accidental drowning.
- Identical Stranger: There are only a tiny handful of base character models in the game, so this is rampant.
- Every male student uses Senpai's base model. Originally they were just palette swaps of him with less robust AI's, but they eventually gained unique hairstyles just like the girls always had. They all still have the same face, however,
- Almost every female student currently seen in the game uses Yandere-chan's base model. The only physical differences between any of them are hairstyle, eye color, and breast size; their faces and bodies are identical.
- Even the teachers look like adult versions of Yandere-chan, except with brown hair and eyes. In fact, the only girls in the game thus far who don't use some variation of Yandere-chan's model are Rival-chan† , the school counsellor, and the (updated) Nurse. note Info-chan used a unique model in the prototype opening, but her in-game model is the same as every other girl's.
- I Have Your Wife: Yan-chan can perform a heroic (or at least, antiheroic) example of this: she can get Kokona's father out of debt by kidnapping the loan shark's daughter and holding her hostage, forcing him to release all his clients from their debts.
- I Know Mortal Kombat: The Gaming Club allows Yandere-chan to play certain games that boost her stats up for the day.
- Improbable Weapon User: Alongside blades ranging from scissors to katanas, Yandere-chan can also use… a syringenote , a screwdrivernote , a rotary sawnote , and a Shovelnote .
- In Love with Love: Yandere-chan says in the second intro that she's addicted to the way Senpai makes her feel. She never says that she actually loves his personality or truly cares about him.
- Interface Screw:
- As Yandere-chan's sanity decreases, the background music becomes distorted.
- By that same token, as School Atmosphere decreases, the colors become desaturated, Ominous Fog appears, and the music becomes much darker.
- When you are in the vicinity of Senpai, the screen turns pink, a Heartbeat Soundtrack is heard, and your normal-paced walk turns into a slow, shy trudge. Also, you drop whatever you're holding (weapon, mop, corpse, etc.).
- If you go into first-person camera mode while wearing an accessory that intrudes into Yan-chan's field of vision (toaster, cyborg helmet, witch's hat), your view will be obscured.
- The above bullet point also applies to any hairstyle with Peek-a-Bangs (Hatred Mode, Slender Mode, etc.).
- If the player attempts to look up Info-chan's information on their phone, the phone's screen will fill with static as Info-chan prevents the player from learning anything about her, while what text is legible has Info-chan scold Yandere-chan for trying to dig up dirt on her.
- In the Blood: Yan-chan's mother was also a mentally-unstable love-maniac with a propensity for violent behavior. The 1st Basement Tape reveals that Yandere-chan's grandmother was the same way. See here. Word of God says all Aishi women have a yandere personality, in some way or another.
- Irony: If Oka Ruto sees Yan-chan commit a murder, she'll refuse to let her into the Occult Club – or kick her out if Yandere-chan's already a member – saying her aura is too dark and will attract evil spirits. If she hears Yan-chan is a murderer, she'll refuse Yan-chan's membership saying she's possessed by a demon. The irony is that the Occult Club's activities consist of trying to summon a demon. She'll also point out the irony of being kicked out of a club about scary things for being too scary.
- It's a Wonderful Failure: If the police are called in, and Yandere-chan failed to get rid of evidence of her misdeeds, epilogue text will describe how Yandere-chan was arrested and rendered unable to confess her feelings to Senpai.
- It's Personal: If Yandere-chan kills someone's friend, family member, or lover right in front of them, they will respond by attacking you with extreme prejudice.
- Japanese Delinquents:
- Akademi High has them. There are ten – five boys and five girls (not counting their leader, described below) – and they hang out by the incinerator all day. Note that the girls currently wear short skirts† . They'll beat Yan-chan into a coma if she approaches them while brandishing a weapon or they catch her transporting a corpse.
- One of the later rivals in the game will be the delinquents' boss, returning to school after being suspended. YandereDev says she will be one of the toughest rivals in the game to defeat.
- One of the Easter Eggs, "Bancho Mode", gives Yandere-chan a Commissar Cap and arm-wrappings intended to make her look like a sukeban.
- Japanese School Club: Akademi High has 12 known clubs, 11 of which Yandere-chan can join† , which grant her either a passive benefit or access to an item that is otherwise unobtainable or would invite a harsh penalty if a non-member is seen with it. However, there are many ways to lose these benefits permanently, such as…
- Quitting the club – Yandere-chan cannot rejoin a club she's left.
- The club shutting down for lack of members.note
- The club shutting down because its leader dies or disappears.note
- Being kicked out for lack of attendance.
- Being kicked out (or denied entry at all) because a member saw Yan-chan kill someone.
- Karma Meter:
- A Reputation gauge measures how others think of Yandere-chan. Complimenting other students, giving them food if you join the Cooking Club, and calling in favors from Info-chan can improve it, thus allowing you to earn your fellow students' trust; being caught doing suspicious things like brandishing weapons, taking up-skirt photos, laughing like a madwoman, committing murder, skipping class, or letting others spread gossip about you can harm your reputation.
- This also extends to every student in the game. It is possible to trash-talk your classmates and rivals (though doing so hurts your own reputation if you don't counter it) to the point that they stop coming to school.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Downplayed. It's one of the weapons available in the game, and people who do playthroughs of the debug builds often choose it. There is a bit of Awesome, but Impractical to it, however, since Yandere-chan cannot hide it in her inventory and has to carry it in plain sight unless she hides it in a cello case – smaller weapons can be hidden so as not to arouse suspicion. Also, the katana is considered an "unsuitable" weapon for the struggle minigame, meaning you automatically lose if a martial artist intercepts you while you're carrying it (ditto for every other two-handed weapon in the game). In addition, you cannot give a katana to a mindslave* .
- Kill 'em All: What Yandere-chan can do to ensure that Senpai will be hers. Of course, you don't want to kill too many people unless you want to lower the cheerful atmosphere, get students' and teachers' attention, or get a Game Over by poor execution (no pun intended). There will be an ending that you get by killing all of the students (which would be about a hundred) in a single day.
- Kill Her With Fire: You can fill a bucket with gasoline from a Jerry can, dump it on a rival, then use matches obtained from Info-chan to light her up like a flambé dish.
- Knowledge Broker: Info-chan, a girl with a talent for digging up dirt on others and (initially) the president of the Newspaper Club. In the story mode's early development, she was the one who encouraged Yandere-chan to murder her rivals so that she could write about the tragedy.
- Knife Nut: One of the main weapons Yandere-chan can use, and the most frequently used weapon in update videos. Compared to the katana, the knife is Boring but Practical. Obviously, a knife isn't as cool as a katana. However, Yandere-chan can hide the knife in her inventory, keeping it on her person hidden from sight until an opportune moment presents itself.
- Last Words: "What are you——?" [murdered by Yandere-chan]
- Also, "Ugh. I have to turn the stupid lights back on. Where is it?" [electrocuted courtesy of Yan-chan]
- Late for School: Two different ways, each of which has an effect on gameplay.
- Being late for class will affect the number of Study Points you can obtain. The later Yan-chan is, the fewer points she'll get for the class. You'll also get special lines from the teachers; to get all or more of them, show up on time and wear special underwear.
- If you stay up late reading hentai doujinshi or take time in the morning to torture a kidnap victim, you'll arrive at school an hour later than normal. Class has not started at that point, so you can still get full Study Points, but you will have missed any scripted events that take place during that hour. Example
- Leave No Witnesses:
- Those who witness Yandere-chan commit a crime (or just see a corpse) can have a number of reactions depending on their personality. For instance, Loners will run away and call the police, while Teacher's Pets will go to alert their teacher, and Social Butterflies will run to the nearest crowded area for safety (making sure to call the cops for good measure). If any of these types of student know you murdered someone and you get away with it, they will spread word of your actions, giving a constant reputation penalty. The simplest way to avoid this is to get rid of them.
- Unavoidable with the Heroic type. If they see you murder someone, they will run at you and try to take you down, prompting a struggle minigame. If you lose, Game Over; if you win, they're dead.
- Lethal Joke Character: The Photography Club will be this once YandereDev implements their unique personality. They will start the game as a group of lively and energetic students who want to have fun – and they'll continue to be if school atmosphere stays high – but if the school atmosphere drops too low due to Yandere-chan's murders, they will become essentially a walking sentry. With easy access to cameras and the internet, the Photography Club students will take a picture of Yandere-chan if caught in an act and send it to the police, resulting in an instant Game Over.
- Let's Get Dangerous: The Photography Club consists mostly of playful students who joined to goof off. However, as school atmosphere drops, they start discussing the murders and keep an eye out for the perpetrator. If the school atmosphere drops low enough, they'll actively patrol the school, looking for evidence of the killer. And if they catch Yandere-chan in the act while in "full sleuth" mode, they'll take a picture and send it to the police, resulting in an instant game over.
- Limp and Livid:
- One of the symptoms showing that Yandere-chan is visibly insane is her slumping slightly.
- The "Hatred" Easter Egg in debug mode gives her lank waist-length black hair and has her slouched in a feral posture.
- It's also the pose of anyone mindbroken by Yandere-chan.
- Loads and Loads of Characters: The final game is planned to have around ninety students attending the school* , and that's not counting the staff* .
- Loan Shark: There is one operating in Buraza Town. It turns out Kokona's father is in massive debt to him, which is also why she's engaging in Compensated Dating. You can help her out and, in exchange, ask that Kokona stay away from Senpai.
- Lost Forever: If you quit a club or get kicked out, you can't join that club again. You can also lock yourself out of a club by killing the student in charge or by killing enough members, either of which result in the club being disbanded; or by getting caught hurting another student by a member of your club, which will result in your being kicked out of the club.
- Mad Scientist: The Science Club members are depicted as aspiring mad scientists who hope to one day make an invention that will get them noticed and hired by a big company. They've already created a robot that cleans up blood.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: You can push people over the school's rooftop railing. By taking the right measures, such as not interacting with the body and leaving a forged suicide note, you can dupe the police into thinking that the death was a suicide. If you don't leave a note, however, they'll just think it was an accident and that the student tripped over the railing. Regardless of which one you choose, the school will erect a higher fence to make sure it doesn't happen again.
- Man on Fire: It is possible to fill a utility bucket with gasoline, splash it on a rival, then toss a lit match at her, causing her to burn to death.
- Matchmaker Quest: You can set up other classmates with each other. Word of God says all rivals will like two people so that you can pair them up with someone other than Senpai.
- Missing Mom:
- At least one of the students' mothers died in childbirth. She was the wife of The Journalist, as detailed in his tapes.
- Kokona's mother died about a year prior to the start of the game's storyline. This left her father unable to afford to keep her at Akademi, which resulted in him becoming a broken lush indebted to a loan shark and Kokona's sketchy moneymaking schemes (Compensated Dating and selling used panties).
- Mistaken for Pedophile: A version that is not played for laughs. A conversation Kokona has with Saki indicates that her dad comes into her room and… does something to her when he's drunk. However, confronting Kokona about this lets her reveal that he actually goes into her room to cry and unload on her about his debt problems, which he incurred because he can no longer afford to pay her tuition.
- Multiple Endings:
- The full game is set to have several endings. While Yandere-chan will always get what she wants, the way she gets it will be different. The endings still vary from sad to happy to something else.
- There will also be a unique ending for those who kill all the students in one day.
- Murder Makes You Crazy: Every time you kill someone, you lose Sanity. Lose enough of it without some kind of effort to regain it, and you become visibly insane and people won't want to deal with you (least of all, Senpai).
- Murder-Suicide:
- After you have kidnapped a girl and have broken her completely, you can order her to murder your rival, after which she will off herself.
- If the Promo Concept video is any indication, this may very well be the result of choosing the SNAP option, with Yandere-chan killing her rival, Senpai, and finally herself.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: The most common option for disposing of rivals. If witnesses aren't dealt with, or if Yandere-chan doesn't clean up after herself before the school day ends, the police will be called to investigate.
- Naked People Are Funny: One of the options in the locker room is to go nude, making Yandere-chan into a Shameless Fanservice Girl. This has its consequences, with people's reactions and all. note
- Nintendo Hard: YandereDev has said that he'd like his game to be this, at least if you plan to play Yan-chan as an Ax-Crazy psychopath. At the same time, he acknowledges that a line has to be drawn somewhere, and if enough people think that the game is so hard that it isn't enjoyable, he'll take steps to dial back the difficulty. His own words…
- Non-Lethal K.O.: There are multiple ways to get rid of your opponents without killing them. However, leaving rivals alive at the end of the week does not make Yandere-chan a saint.
- Matchmaking – Set your rival up with a different boy. This is the game's Pacifist Run.
- Gossip – Trash your rival's reputation to the point she drops out of school.note
- Sabotage – Each rival will have five "events" with Senpai. Ruin all of them and Senpai will reject her.
- Expulsion – You catch your rival breaking school rules (or set her up) and tattle on her, resulting in her being expelled.
- Kidnapping – If she's not at that cherry tree at 6pm Friday, she can't confess to Senpai now can she? note
- Betrayal – If you help a rival out with a major problem and press the "Eliminate" prompt during the subsequent conversation with them, the screen will cut to black as the rival notices something's off with her new "friend", her mood quickly going from confusion to concern to terror… then silence. note
- Friendship – If you help a rival out with a major problem and resist the "Eliminate" prompt during the subsequent conversation with them, you can simply ask them to stay away from Senpai and they'll agree out of gratitude.
- And more! note
- Non-Standard Game Over:
- Should Senpai or a teacher notice Yandere-chan's true nature or the police find enough incriminating evidence to make an arrest, it will trigger a Game Over. If that occurs, Yandere-chan can begin anew… or SNAP.
- If the school's atmosphere hits rock bottom, the photography club will start patrolling the campus in search of the murderer. If they catch Yandere-chan committing a crime, they will take a picture and send it to the police, resulting in Yandere-chan's immediate arrest and incarceration.
- Being sent to the counselor's office typically only results in a lecture for Yandere-chan. If she is sent there while she's a member of the delinquent gang, however, she'll be expelled.
- Oh Crap!:
- Yandere-chan has this reaction whenever she gets caught.
- The students get this when they see something bad happen. Same for the teachers.
- Ominous Fog: When the school's atmosphere drops to critical levels, the school will have ominous fog blanketing it.
- Opera Gloves: If she joins the Drama Club, Yandere-chan can wear a pair of long gloves so that her fingerprints won't be on any weapons. However, her fingerprints and DNA will still be inside the glove, so you'll need to dispose of them along with any bloody clothes.
- Pacifist Run: As noted in "Non-Lethal KO" above, there are multiple ways to take out a rival without killing them. Setting your rivals up with boys who aren't Senpai definitely counts as this. The dev has hinted that doing this might lead to a unique ending.
- Panty Shot: You have a camera and the girls wear dangerously short skirts. Taking these is considered one of the game's core mechanics (and was one of the first implemented) – they're your currency; Info-chan sells pictures of other girls' underwear, and will do favors for Yandere-chan in exchange for them. However, there's risk involved…
- If a student catches you "Visibly Lewd", they'll call you out on it and you'll take a hit to your reputation. As with anything else, apologizing merely lessens the penalty.
- If a teacher happens to catch Yandere-chan trying to take pictures of panties, she'll call Yandere-chan a pervert and expel her on the spot.
- If Senpai catches Yandere-chan taking panty-shots, he'll scream at her, prompting a "Heartbroken" Game Over.
- Parody Sue:
- Mai Waifu is a girl with long pink hair and large breasts who, according to Student Info, has many admirers. However, she has sworn her heart to an independent game developer overseas (who isn't YandereDev, really). She's a reference to a twitter conversation where the Dev claimed to be a pink-haired Japanese schoolgirl with large breasts in real life.
- Early in the game's development, YandereDev described the Student Council President as a Mary Sue. Whether that's still the case now that she's in the game (via web-chat, where she's quite threatening) is unclear. She's set to be the final rival, thus the toughest to defeat.
- Mai Waifu is a girl with long pink hair and large breasts who, according to Student Info, has many admirers. However, she has sworn her heart to an independent game developer overseas (who isn't YandereDev, really). She's a reference to a twitter conversation
- Police Are Useless: Played straight or averted, depending on how murder is handled. If you get rid of any evidence that can connect you to the murders, the trope is played straight. If they catch you, then it's averted. The cassette tapes seem to bring some justification to this – Akademi High has a long history of being very uncooperative and strict about the police investigating on school grounds. After an incident where a botched investigation of a murdered student led to the only suspect being acquitted, the police now won't accuse anyone of a crime without ironclad evidence, and refuse to approach the school unless specifically summoned, and even then will only stay for brief periods of time.
- Predecessor Villain: Yandere-chan's mother was once a student at the same school her daughter attends, and was also a psychotic love-obsessed murderer. She is strongly implied to be the subject of the Journalist's cassette recordings. The Basement Tape confirms this.
- Public Bathhouse Scene: Akademi High is so obscenely wealthy that its showers are essentially a bathhouse.
- Pun-Based Title: If Yandere Simulator doesn't end up being the final name (as YandereDev has stated it was only ever meant to be a placeholder name), he might like giving it an incredibly corny subtitle like Yandere: Deadication or Yandere: Love You To Death, or even Yandere: 'Til Death Do Us Part.
- LoveSick is another possible title.
- LoveSick
- Punny Name: Geez, where to start? This entire game is a Hurricane of Puns.
- The school the game takes place in is called Akademi High School. Say it aloud and see what you get. note
- This pun works on two levels, as "Aka(i)" is the Japanese word for Red, which you'll be seeing a lot of if you play Yandere-chan as a murderous psychopath.
- Kokona goes to a place called "Shisuta Town" to engage in Compensated Dating, while the town that Akademi High is in is called "Buraza Town". Explaining The Joke
- Every rival (or nearly so) is set to have one.
- Senpai's tsundere childhood friend, who also happens to be your first rival, is named "Osana Najimi".
- The leader of the Occult Club (your 5th rival) is named Oka Ruto.
- The Cooking Club President (Rival #2) is thought to be named Amai Mafin.*
- Many of the regular NPC students also fit the bill. See the Character page for more information.
- Every member of both the Martial Arts Club and the Occult Club count.
- Midori Gurin's name is derived from the Japanese word for "green" and the Japanese transliteration of the English word "green". She also has green hair, green eyes, a green phone, green stockings, and green underwear. note
- The Basu sisters are named Sakyu and Inkyu.
- There's also Mai Waifu, who has pledged her heart to a game developer living overseas.
- Kuu Dere "has never been witnessed exhibiting emotions".
- Yandere-chan's family name, Aishi, can be rendered using these kanji – 愛死 – which mean "love" and "death" respectively. Fitting, though said sequence doesn't exist as a last name in reality.
- The loan agency that lends money at absurd interest rates is called Ronshaku Loans.
- And the daughter of the company's boss? Musume Ronshaku. "Musume" means… Daughter.
- The school the game takes place in is called Akademi High School. Say it aloud and see what you get. note
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: Senpai can be either male or female. Yandere-chan is always a girl however.
- Reality Ensues:
- As nice of a person as Senpai is, even he has his limits.note If he sees Yandere-chan being creepy (such as standing around them too long or being visibly insane) or catches her red-handed, he'll never accept her and it's Game Over.
- Seeing as she's a rather small teenage girl, Yandere-chan cannot physically overpower adults, so trying to murder a teacher will go about as well as you may expect. This also applies to trying to take down martial artists. Yandere-chan will have to significantly boost her Physical Education stats before she can do that. And even then, if Yandere-chan has no idea what she's doing note , they still overpower her through technique.
- If a lot of students die, the game will become more difficult – people's lines-of-sight will increase, they'll react more quickly to Yandere-chan's actions, and they'll generally become more paranoid. Murder as many as you like, but don't think that it'll go unnoticed by the school.
- You can spread rumors about one person and then people will bully her so much that she may even commit suicide.
- Students will notice if you're acting suspicious, giving you a reputation penalty. You can apologize, which makes Yandere-chan come up with an excuse, but it only lessens the penalty. They'll also talk if they see you commit a murder and get away with it, which steadily decreases your reputation. The easiest solution to that? Leave No Witnesses.
- If you try to take photos of certain people, they will be suspicious of you and wonder why you're trying to take their picture. Others, mainly the Social Butterfly personalities, will just smile and pose for you.
- If you plant a lost ring in someone else's bookbag, but then forget to report them for the "theft", they'll just return it to its owner, who will make sure not to lose it in future, preventing you from trying this tactic again.
- If you steal the test answer sheet (to copy it and plant the copy on a rival to frame her for cheating) but then fail to return the original to the Faculty Room before the end of the day or report "cheating" to the guidance counselor, the teacher will realize something's up and keep her answer sheets under lock-&-key for the rest of the game, preventing you from trying this again.
- Not implemented yet, but… Think it might be funny to take a picture of your victim's corpse to keep as a trophy? Well, the pictures are considered "incriminating evidence", so if the police are called they'll be able to find them once they look at your phone. Cue Game Over.
- If Yan-chan does her "trip and splash" routine too often, she'll develop a reputation as a klutz and students will be more wary around her.
- Meta example: Midori complains in the March 2nd 2016 update video that the new incinerator position, coupled with the presence of the Delinquent students, will make it much harder for the player to dispose of the bodies of Yandere-chan's victims. YandereDev retorts that getting away with murder should not be easy.
- Red Armband of Leadership: All the club leaders wear one.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning:
- Info-chan certainly counts.
- Yan-chan's eyes turn red in Yandere Vision.
- Yui Rio, the pettanko girl with a red ponytail and red eyes, has the "Evil" personality, so her response to murder will be to express her approval but then run away so people won't think it was her.
- Averted with Kuu Dere, who has red eyes but is quite harmless. Ditto Haruto. Ryuto is mostly harmless.
- Removing the Rival: The entire purpose of the game. You can get rid of rivals by having them be bullied so that no one likes them or by pairing them off with someone else. You can also literally remove them, lethally or otherwise.
- The Reveal: If you lure Kokona to the roof and choose to hear her out instead of throwing her off the roof, she reveals that her father wasn't coming into her room to abuse her, but to weep because he took money from a loan shark and was now in debt. Her Compensated Dating was a way of trying to help her father pay off the debt.
- Ridiculously Human Robot: The Science Club is rumored to have a lifelike android as a member.
- The Rival:
- Obviously, every girl/woman with a crush on Senpai is this. But the dev has also floated the possibility of there being a rival focused on you – specifically, someone who knows what Yanderes are capable of and would love to see you arrested.
- It turns out that in 1989, an Investigative Journalist took it upon himself to look into a murder at Akademi High, which was also committed by a Yandere. He made himself her rival, but failed to prove her guilt and eventually had to flee the country.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Don't kill someone's sibling or unrequited crush right in front of them unless you're prepared to deal with the consequences - namely, being attacked by a livid student fighting with the strength of Budo Masuta through sheer Unstoppable Rage.
- Romance Sidequest: Averted. Despite the game's premise, it is not possible to interact with Senpai (such as asking him out on dates, buying him gifts, or sending him love letters). Word of God states that romancing him normally would defeat the purpose of playing as a Stalker with a Crush."Yandere-chan will confess her love to Senpai when the time is right, once all of her rivals are eliminated. Until then… Don't. Let Senpai. Notice you."
- Sailor Fuku: The default uniform for girls is a white and blue sailor outfit, which YanDev learned after the fact is actually the uniform for middle school girls. A uniform more befitting a high school girl is available as an alternate.
- Sanity Meter: Represented by a cardiograph. Killing people, being covered in blood, and being around bodies brings it down; while looking at photos of or being around Senpai, secluding herself, or laughing maniacally brings it back up. Let it go down too far, and Yandere-chan becomes visibly insane. This proves problematic, since letting Senpai or a teacher see you in this state will trigger an instant Game Over (and letting other students see you causes your reputation to rapidly fall). Played with a bit in that this meter doesn't represent Sanity Slippage - Yandere-chan has screws loose to begin with (she has to, to conjure up a plan like hers in the first place). The meter just represents how openly batshit she appears.
- Scare Chord: A rather unpleasant one sounds if you've been caught by someone important (Senpai or a teacher), which heralds your Game Over.
- School Bullying Is Harmless: Averted. Spreading rumors about a romantic rival will result in her being ostracized, and continuing to damage her reputation will result in bullying, death threats both implied (a flower on their desk – a loving tribute to a student who passed, but a grave threat to a living student) and explicit (graffiti on the desk reading "KILL YOURSELF!" and "I dare you to go jump off the roof!"), and ultimately, if you keep it up, suicide.
- Serial Killer: Yandere-chan can be played as this, with multiple methods of killing people available to her and the player.
- Shifting the Burden of Proof: Yandere-chan can be arrested if she is unable to prove that she didn't murder anyone and there's blood on her clothes. Simply being arrested is enough to cost her her chance with Sempai.
- Shipper With An Agenda: One of Yandere-chan's many options for Removing the Rival is playing matchmaker, hooking a rival up with someone who has a crush on them.
- Shock and Awe: Through some engineeringnote , it is possible to electrocute someone to death.
- Shout-Out: This game is packed to the gills with these. Ones unique to the debug builds are described in detail on the Trivia page.
- One of the students is Pippi Osu, the mascot for the Rhythm Game osu! (used with permission, it turns out). She spends most of her time in the school's computer lab playing the game.
- For bonus points, a picture of Mami Tomoe can be seen on the screen.
- She was later joined in the lab by Ryuto Ippongo, an Expy of Ryuta Ippongi from Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (who had a cameo in osu!). His routine is identical to Pippi's. They are said to have mutual unrequited crushes on each other.
- At the beginning of the game, you can choose Akademi's uniform style. Some are shout-outs.
- One of the customizable uniforms for boys looks a lot like Light Yagami's.
- Uniform Style 5 bears a resemblance to the uniforms from School Days. Fitting, really. The "official" uniform in the future might have even more of a resemblance.
- It is possible to give Yandere-chan any one of dozens of different hairstyles. Most are original (many are commissions by fans and used with permission) but there are some shout-outs in there, including but not limited to… Yuno Gasai, Super-Saiyan Vegeta, Korra, Ryuko Matoi, Rei Ayanami, and Asuka Langley Soryu. Also, Pippi's hair is in the rotation.
- The Yanvania Game Within a Game is a parody of the Castlevania games. The final battle dialogue and boss fight is taken directly from Symphony of the Night.
- Several Undertale references:
- In a random closet in the school, there is a piece of cheese placed in front of a mouse hole. Examining the cheese brings up the message "Knowing the mouse might one day leave its hole and get the cheese… It fills you with determination."
- After examining the cheese, the skull found in the Occult Club will gain a blue left eye, referencing how Sans from Undertale sometimes has a flashing left eye.
- The mysterious girl on the laptop in the Student Council Room threatens Yandere-chan with having a bad time, another reference to Sans.
- One of the manga series Yandere-chan can collect is called Life Note.
- The Photography Club members are expies of Mystery Inc.
- Aiding The Horror has him give Yan-chan access to supernatural arms that can destroy anyone she desires (except Senpai). She effectively becomes a Diclonius, though the arms themselves resemble a Dead Hand.
- If Yandere-chan joins the Science Club, the accessory she gets to wear is a Scouter.
- If Yandere-chan joins the Gaming Club, she gets to wear a white d-pad hairclip.
- The Magical Girl Wand is the one of the Crystal Princess Wands from Go! Princess Pretty Cure.
- One of the students is Pippi Osu, the mascot for the Rhythm Game osu! (used with permission, it turns out). She spends most of her time in the school's computer lab playing the game.
- Shrinking Violet:
- Yandere-chan gets this way around Senpai. She can't bring herself to confess to him unless she knows there aren't any rivals for his affection. Whenever he's near her, she'll assume a nervous pose and drop whatever she's holding. If Senpai notices Yandere-chan acting like this around him, he'll slowly get creeped out to the point that he'll eventually tell her to get lost, resulting in a Game Over.
- Oka Ruto, the Occult Club President, is also this. Her default walk cycle looks identical to Yandere-chan's when Senpai is nearby, and she speaks with a quiet, halting voice. Many of her lines of dialogue suggest she's lonely despite being the leader of a club.
- Anyone traumatized (but not mind-broken) by Yan-chan will become this.
- Single Girl Seeks Most Popular Guy: Yandere-chan plays with this trope in that she didn't know (or care) Senpai was that popular. Other rivals might be the same way. Actually, Senpai isn't popular at the start of the game, though the attention he gets from girls as the game progresses changes that status.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: All of the rivals for Senpai, as well as Yandere-chan herself, are basically this.
- Sitting on the Roof: A lot of the students like to congregate on the rooftop during lunch or before class.
- If a girl's reputation has been wrecked by Yandere-chan's gossip, she may sit alone on the roof while her former friends congregate elsewhere, leaving her an easy mark for our Villain Protagonist.
- Sixth Ranger Traitor: Yandere-chan can be this for the Photography Club – as dangerous as they can be to your quest to keep Senpai to yourself, they're very trusting of each other and would never suspect that the killer is one of them...
- Slice of Life: The story mode is told in a day-to-day fashion, with Yandere-chan having one week (five school days) to get rid of the rival love interest, and a new rival popping up the next week.
- The Sociopath: By Yandere-chan's own admission."I can't feel anything. For as long as I can remember, I've never been able to feel emotions. I pretend to be normal when I'm around other people, but on the inside, I feel nothing. It's not as bad as it may sound. I know that I'm broken, but I don't care. This is normal for me."
- Although you could at least play this straight or subvert it depending on your options. For example, you could play matchmaker to subvert the Lack of Empathy and also avoid wanton bloodshed.
- Even more strangely, Yandere-chan can also be somewhere in the middle, becoming a Sociopathic Hero, as she can use her otherwise cruel and heartless methods solve the problems of her rivals (Like kidnapping and torturing a Loan Shark's daughter to get the Rival's father out of debt) and gain your Rival's trust instead of killing them. Of course, you can kill them later on when their at your house to talk to you, but even if you don't kill them, Yan-chan will remove as a rival for Senpai's affection regardless.
- Soundtrack Dissonance:
- The game's standard background music is a bit too cheerful for the game's premise. However, if Yan-chan's sanity drops (usually through murdering multiple people), the music will become distorted.
- If the school's atmosphere drops too low, the standard music will take on a more foreboding tone, upping the bass and muting the bouncier parts.
- Any of the Easter Eggs in the Debug builds that use copyrighted music (many have since been swapped out for soundalikes) – for instance, just hearing "Guren no Yumiya" in Titan Mode is a bit distracting. However, you can turn off copyrighted music… which makes the spectacle even crazier.
- Stalker Shrine: Yandere-chan's bedroom has a shrine to Senpai that she can build via collectibles such as a toothbrush or a half-eaten apple.
- Stalker with a Crush: The player character is this. However, the point of the game is to not be noticed by Senpai until all of Yandere-chan's rivals have been eliminated. If her extreme shyness creeps him out too much or he sees her true nature, it's Game Over.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: The player has the ability to poison a girl's food to get them out of your (and Senpai's) hair. As a bonus, when a student gets a teacher to examine the scene, they call an ambulance rather than the police, keeping Yandere-chan free of suspicion unless she tries to move the body.
- Tastes Like Friendship: If you join the Cooking Club, you can make snacks that you can hand out for a huge reputation boost± .
- Teacher's Pet: One of the personality types. In this case, their reaction to seeing a murder/corpse will be to run and tell their teacher, drawing them to the scene of a crime and making it more difficult to cover up. It is possible to make the Teacher's Pet look like a liar by cleaning up the scene of the crime before the student and teacher return. If Yandere-chan successfully tidies up the scene, then the teacher won't believe the student. However, if the Teacher's Pet witnessed the murder, they will try proving that Yandere-chan killed a student, constantly draining your reputation. Their fate afterwards depends on the player. However, it is recommended to kill them before another slip up happens or Yan-chan's reputation drops too low.
- Technical Pacifist: Although you can do a traditional Pacifist Run (see above), you can also trash a girl's reputation down to the point where she'll be bullied out of school and Senpai will reject her (but not driving her to suicide), or you can plant fake evidence of her cheating and get her expelled. Hey, nobody got physically hurt!
- Teens Are Monsters:
- Yandere-chan can murder and bully her classmates.
- Info-chan can blackmail others, was the one to suggest killing others to Yandere-chan (in the original now-scrapped opening), and her currency is Panty Shots, presumably without the subject's consent.
- Senpai and the other classmates may start bullying one another if Yandere-chan starts gossiping.
- Teens Are Short: Despite Yan-chan – and presumably almost every other NPC student – being in their second (or third, in Senpai's case) year of high school, the school staff tower over them.
- Too Awesome to Use: Wearing a mask and using the edge of the rooftop are very powerful aids to getting away with murder. The mask will conceal your face and the rooftop railing is a good place to stage an accident/suicide. However, both of these will only work once. Murdering while wearing a mask will result in masks being banned, and a railing death will result in a ten-foot-high fence being erected (if the school determines that the person died from falling off the building. If that doesn't appear to be the case, then the railing stays as it is).
- Torture Cellar: Yandere-chan's basement is used to trap students she kidnaps, where she psychologically tortures them and breaks their minds.
- Twitchy Eye: The lower Yandere-chan's Sanity goes, the more mentally unstable she becomes. She'll even have a noticeable twitch if she kills a lot of people.
- Unwinnable by Design:
- Teachers are easily capable of outrunning Yandere-chan, so triggering one to pursue her will bring about an inevitable detainment and game over (if you have no single-handed weapon, that is; if you do, then the same rules governing Martial Artists apply).
- Turning on the incinerator (which locks it for an hour in-game – six minutes real-time) without disposing of the murder weapon or bloody uniform note first, while the five-minute police countdown is in action, does this.
- Antagonizing a delinquent (by approaching them while brandishing a weapon or letting them see you with a corpse/body-part) inevitably leads to Yandere-chan getting beaten into a coma. As of current builds, they are literally invincible, run faster than Yan-chan, and will phase through walls just to get to her.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Yandere-chan is able to play matchmaker and eliminate her rivals by getting them together with other guys as a nonlethal option.
- Yandere-chan can also befriend her rivals by helping them with their major problems. In turn, they could return the favour by agreeing to not pursue Senpai.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Depending on your play-style, you can really make your rivals suffer.
- You can sabotage their social standing, damaging your rival's reputation to the point that she stays home in fear of bullies and Senpai refuses to accept her confession. Beyond that, you can further trash her reputation until she is Driven to Suicide – note that doing this is not required, as you will have already ruined her chances with Senpai; the only reason to do it is if you really have it in for the girl and want to twist the (proverbial, in this case) knife.
- Yan-chan can eavesdrop on students and learn their darkest secrets – drug addiction, Compensated Dating, and pregnancy – and exploit them by staging their deaths as suicides or posting about it on social media to instigate bullying.
- It's also possible to torture and mindbreak students. This is especially cruel since the person you're doing this to is someone you befriended earlier, and since the end result kills two students, one of them your rival and the other one your victim as she kills herself after killing your target, having nothing else to live for.
- You can befriend your rivals just so that you can betray them after having earned their trust and kill them in a private location. This one's especially cruel because if you ignore the prompt to kill them, then Yan-chan will simply ask them to stay away from Senpai and they'll accept out of gratitude, meaning that there's no reason for them to die at this point.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
- If you let the school atmosphere drop to very low levels, you will end up losing more reputation for suspicious behavior and students are more alert of your actions, making it harder to kill students.
- If the school's atmosphere drops to critical levels, members of the photography club will start patrolling the campus in search of the murderer, and will have you arrested immediately if they catch you and take a picture, thus making them among the toughest opponents in the game.
- Also, trying to damage a girl's reputation counts. If you don't get the details exactly right, your reputation will drop. However, if you uncover dark secrets, you can use this to your advantage by damaging the girl's reputation severely without losing too much of yours.
- Taking trophy shots of your dead victims will backfire tremendously if the police take you in for questioning and search your phone. And no one is going to accept a panty shot of a dead girl – Info-chan's clients are perverts, but not in that way.
- Video Game Perversity Potential: When you get right down to it, Yandere Simulator is a really perverted game – the player character has a shrine to her crush filled with things she stole from his trash, a bunch of underage girls walk around in revealing school uniforms, two major gameplay mechanics are centered around panties (Yan-chan gets certain stat boosts depending on what panties she wears and, more famously, she can take upskirt photos and exchange them for favors from Info-chan), and such. She can even strip completely nude in the showers and walk around school with just a bit of Censor Steam to cover herself.
- Villain Protagonist: Our protagonist is an unrepentant stalker and potential murderer.
- Virtual Paper Doll: You can customize multiple aspects of Senpai's appearance.Examples
- Weapon of Choice:
- You can wield a number of weapons. Weirdly enough, you can only hold two despite there being three slots besides your hands. note The least suspicious ones so far are the scissors, the box cutter, and the screwdriver. Hold those if you don't want to take an immediate reputation hit.
- A lot of Let's Players usually choose the katana. Unfortunately, that's one bladed weapon you can't conceal, so be prepared to take a reputation hit if anyone sees you (regardless of whether you kill them or not).
- We Cannot Go on Without You: If the president of a club is killed, that club will be closed forever. May or may not be the case for clubs whose leaders are also designated rivals. note
- Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises:
- Various game overs have Yandere-chan's eyes widening.
- If a student sees a dead body or witnesses Yandere-chan killing a student, they'll be traumatized and their eyes will change into this. If it's a boy and he alerts a teacher but Yandere-chan moves the corpse before the teacher arrives (meaning she'll assume it was a prank and scold him), he'll keep that look for the rest of the day.
- Teachers get this look when they see a corpse and they keep it until the day ends, which will be in five minutes or until they take you down, whichever comes first.
- Yandere: It's right there in the name. This game is a thorough tribute to this trope, studying it from different points of view.
- The main character is one, and the game revels in exploiting as many clichés and associated tropes as possible.
- The main character's mother is/was one. She killed the girl who is now a ghost who hangs out in one of the school's bathrooms.
- You Gotta Have Blue Hair:
- And green and magenta and teal and fire-engine red...
- Pippi and Ryuto take this to a different level with their two-tone hairstyles.
- You Have Researched Breathing: Yandere-chan will not have the ability to trip and fall right off the bat. Justified, since it's not that she can't do it, but that she needs to get the idea to.
- You Lose at Zero Trust: Senpai won't accept Yandere-chan's love confession if her reputation is poor. This extends to rivals as well; if you damage a rival's reputation enough, Senpai will reject them.
- Zerg Rush: Planned. If you commit a murder in front of too many witnesses, they will gang up on you and overwhelm you through sheer force of numbers, even if most or all of them are normally incapable of self-defense on their own.
Tropes Limited to Builds and Developer Videos
- Adults Are Useless: As of Summer 2016 (over a year since her introduction in the debug builds) the School Nurse still lacks any sort of AI. She cannot be interacted with; all she does is stand in the infirmary as Yan-chan steals a syringe and drugs from her.
- All Crimes Are Equal: Disrupting class, laughing evilly, and murdering a student in broad daylight all bring the same punishment if a teacher catches you — instant expulsion. This is mainly because the other punishments aren't programmed in yet. The only aversion so far is being late for class — you'll lose Study Points and get a reprimand based on just how late you were.
- Arc Welding: The June 1st 2016 update ties together all the elements of Kokona's story. Here!
- Artificial Atmospheric Actions: As long as there's no blood on Yandere-chan or any bodies in sight, students and teachers will not react to gallons of blood on the ground. They also don't tend to notice people dying ten feet away from them, such as the example of the girl graphically choking to death (listed under the YMMV page's Narm section). On a less creepy note, when students interact with each other, they will make the same few gestures, one of which is randomly saluting for no reason.
- Artistic License – Law: Lampshaded in the December 2015 update, which introduced the Frame-Up to the game. YandereDev notes that Kokona, your scapegoat, has a rock-solid alibi and a perfectly innocent explanation as to how her fingerprints ended up on the murder weapon (she is a member of the Cooking Club and she earlier used the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, to prepare a meal for her friends).
- It's also notable that you can currently go on a killing spree, clean up all the evidence, and leave witnesses alive (though possibly suffering a constant reputation drain depending on the witness's personality). You will still get away with the crime even though up to a dozen students saw you do it. Asking someone to follow you doesn't arouse suspicion even at lowest atmosphere (but Yan-chan still needs a high reputation and Seduction), and even if the student ends up murdered, the cops don't question it so long as concrete evidence is disposed of. Additionally, there's no forensics involved except fingerprints and blood-typing on weapons and Yan-chan's clothes (the victim's clothes would realistically be examined for fingerprints and foreign DNA, etc.).
- In addition, even if it is clear that a murder did happen, the police will give up if they can't catch the perpetraitor on the day that the murder happens. The police will leave and the students will be allowed to go home. The students will return to school the next day (or Monday if the murder happens on Friday), and the police will not be there. In reality, the police would have continued their investigation for weeks, and would still be there searching when the students returned.
- Ascended Meme: A Word of Saint Paul variant: A parody video made by Mom0ki, Midori Gurin's voice actress, has Midori refer to herself as "Midori Gurinu", which is the Fan Nickname given to her by popular LP'er Jay from the Kubz Scouts.
- Berserk Button: On a regular basis, YandereDev reminds his fanbase that he does not like being sent emails for any purpose except to report bugs or volunteer (at which point he wants to see your résumé and/or portfolio). Or fanart. YandereDev likes fanart.
- Breast Expansion: In the debug builds, you're able to adjust the size of Yandere-chan's chest from supermassive to nearly concave on the fly. Though the Dev has said that Yandere-chan will be customizable in the final game, it is unknown if her bust will still be adjustable (either in a pre-game menu like Senpai's features, or in-game like the debug builds).
- Butt Monkey: The debug builds and update videos have two in particular.
- Kokona Haruka, the big-breasted, purple-tornado-twintail girl.
- While every student in the game aside from Senpai and Rival-chan is killable during regular play† , Kokona was designated the Test Rival, and as such is often used as the example girl in the builds to demonstrate the various more-creative methods you can use to kill people (such as faking suicide, planting bogus evidence to get her expelled, brainwashing her best friend to kill her, etc.). Crosses over into woobie territory since Yandere-chan can eavesdrop on her conversation about her father and use that to kill her. Not to mention the fact that Yandere-chan can have her bullied badly enough through malicious gossip that she is Driven to Suicide.
- Lampshade hung in the video for the June 16th 2015 update, where the dev sighs as she approaches the fountain and toilet, commenting on her Too Dumb to Live status. Before that, in the June 1st update (the poison video), he makes it look like he's going to target Saki Miyu (the girl with Miku-style pigtails) before quickly panning over to Kokona and picking her.
- He further lampshades it in the August 12th 2015 update by referring to her as "everyone's favorite punching bag".
- Midori Gurin was created to represent the game's well-meaning but counterproductive fanbase. As such, she exists to be shut down, insulted, and often murdered. Heck, she's been murdered by YandereDev himself at least twice in his update videos – granted the first time happened after she slapped him (to snap him out of a funk), and the other time she was attempting to murder him because his abuse finally pushed her Berserk Button and sent her over the edge.
- She has no routine in the debug builds – she arrives at school and beelines to the roof and just stands there for the rest of the day unless the player interacts with her.* Next to her are a knife, mop, bucket, and utility sink just to make killing her that much simpler.
- Midori was the guinea pig for the "Dismemberment" update video, marking the first time in nearly a year that a student other than Kokona was used to demonstrate an elimination method (though the end of the video showed Yan-chan holding Kokona's severed head, just to ensure "everyone's favorite punching bag" wasn't left out).
- As development shifted in early 2016 – fewer elimination methods implemented but more under-the-hood fixes – Midori was getting the business end of the knife more often than Kokona. This includes one video where she finally snaps from all the abuse and tries to murder YandereDev.
- Kokona Haruka, the big-breasted, purple-tornado-twintail girl.
- Censor Shadow: In June 2016, YandereDev proposed a grid-style inventory system, but some fans objected to the original design because it had Yan-chan's panties front and center. So he offered the option of shrouding her body in silhouette instead.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Aside from the whole killing-people-thing, the early builds of the game were fairly lighthearted and humorous. Now, not so much thanks to crueller ways to kill people, the school atmosphere dropping, Kokona's issues, the Journalist's backstory, and more!
- Crash-Into Hello: This was how Yandere-chan and Senpai met in the 2014-era intro.
- Dead Man's Chest: A very early test showed Yandere-chan able to dismember bodies in order to hide them in a guitar case. Later this was replaced with an instrument case to fit intact sedated students, but a later build put the guitar case back in, albeit nonfunctional. The dismemberment function returned in the Feb 2016 build, complete with circular saw.
- Dem Bones: The "Spooky Mode" Easter Egg turns every female student into a skeleton, but keeps their hairstyles intact. Originally, this was accompanied with a remix of Andrew Gold's "Spooky Scary Skeletons" playing in the background, but that music has since been replaced with a soundalike.
- Demonic Possession: One of the Easter Eggs added in the February 21st 2016 build. One of the demons in the void room, The Horror, has a ghostly gape and stumps for arms. Talking to it reveals its arms were cut off and it wants revenge. Dismembering five students† and placing their severed arms inside the Occult Club room's sacred circle will satisfy The Horror and cause it to possess Yandere-chan, with ten demonic arms sprouting up from the floor around her. Anyone (other than Senpai) who gets slashed by the demon's claws is instantly dismembered.
- Dissonant Serenity: YandereDev talks about the features in the game (namely stalking, murdering, and disposing of bodies) in a calm, soothing voice.
- Like this gem from the aftermath of his (first) e-mail related breakdown…"Gee, you're right, green-haired girl. It's time for me to get back to what I'm good at: murdering schoolgirls in horrific ways."
- A great example is from the October 17th 2015 update, where he talks about the mechanics of torture."As you can see, our prisoner is no longer watching us as we move around the room, and she's no longer twitching either. This is because we have completely destroyed her mind. There are no traces of a human left inside of her. She's permanently broken, forever. …Let's bring her to school!"
- Like this gem from the aftermath of his (first) e-mail related breakdown…
- Dummied Out: Certain characters, like Victim-chan (who never appeared in a public build) or the girls with Yandere-chan's hair but blue (actually the default character model YanDev bought from the Unity Asset Store), are impossible to meet unless you access the game's code in earlier builds.
- Easter Egg: Both traditional and what might be better termed "cheats"…
- For the latter, the debug builds have several, accessed via a secret menu, all of which mess with the game for the rest of the day. Whether any of these will remain in the final game (since Word of God insists the debug menu itself won't) remains to be seen. See the Trivia page for more information.
- There are others, more correctly called Easter Eggs this time, that the player can only see by messing with the game files in certain builds. Again, see the Trivia page.
- Certain characters have been called "Easter Eggs" by the wiki, although they're really either Expies (Midori, Ryuto, Kuu), cameos (Pippi), or inside jokes (Mai). The Phantom Girl, however, really is an Easter Egg. The only reference to her in-game is obliquely in the Journalist's Tapes (which are not required listening), and you wouldn't even know she's there unless you either learned from someone else how to see her or lucked into it.
- Failed a Spot Check:
- NPC's in the debug builds do not notice blood on the ground/floor. So if you drag a corpse far enough away before a teacher gets there, she'll assume the student is pranking her… even if she's looking at a massive pool of blood leading right to you and the corpse. You'll still get the five-minute timer to clean up the scene if another student managed to contact the cops, though.
- For the first several builds after dismemberment was implemented, if you kill someone and dismember their corpse, but wash yourself off and regain sanity, none of the NPC students or teachers will notice the body part you're carrying. This means that a cleaned-up Yan-chan can carry a severed head right into the middle of a group of students and they will not care. By that same token, police are not yet programmed to notice body parts either. The delinquents, however, do notice body parts, and react to them by chasing Yan-chan down and thwacking her into a coma.
- If you kill someone and take a photo (or several) of the scene, but get rid of any physical evidence tying you to the deed (burn the weapon and your clothes and regain sanity), the cops won't check your phone. Arguably justified, as going through someone's phone usually requires probable cause and a search warrant… or whatever the Japanese equivalent is.
- Failure Is the Only Option: As the debug builds are made just to test out features and check for bugs, they have no win condition. The ostensible win condition of "kill or otherwise deter all 10 rivals and win Senpai's heart" can't even be started, as your first rival, Osana Najimi, doesn't even appear in the game.note
- Freud Was Right: Deliberately invoked in the "Dumpsters, Buckets, Bathing, and Electrocution" video in regards to where Yandere-chan could be hiding scissors, a knife, and a smartphone while naked.Meryl: Well… women have more hiding places than men.
- Funny Background Event: In the "Expelling Your Rivals" video, Kokona dies multiple times in the background (the first time from poisoning), with YandereDev simply ignoring all off them.
- Gainaxing: Zig-zagged. None of the female students (or any of the female faculty) have Jiggle Physics regardless of their bust size, but the succubus in the void room has breasts that move up and down as she breathes.
- Gang Up on the Human: Heroic and Strict characters will not try to restrain brainwashed characters due to the difficulties in programming such interactions.
- Guide Dang It: Inverted example. YandereDev provides a lot of information through his videos about the game mechanics and intends to build a tutorial into the final version specifically to avert this (and All There in the Manual). However, it is possible to be misled by early videos. A very early look at sanity in the game shows Yandere-chan killing several people and then standing in Senpai's aura to calm down… which is still possible, but in later builds will earn you an immediate Game Over if Senpai sees her bloody and insane; you need to be in his aura but out of his field of vision.
- Harder Than Hard: The list of clubs include two very different groups on opposite ends of school life; the Delinquents and the Student Council. Joining the Delinquents requires having a low reputation and causes Yan-chan to lose more each day, shuts her out from being able to talk to students or do tasks for them, and will cause a Game Over from being sent to the Counselor's office. Joining the Student Council saddles Yandere-chan with a lot of extra responsibilities, and any misbehavior would get her kicked out immediately. Both are optional, and will likely carry powerful benefits to make up for it.
- Hate Sink: Midori Gurin is meant to be one of these. She's a Take That at everyone who sends YandereDev unwanted questions or suggestions. All the other characters - especially the teachers - consider her an annoying idiot who wastes their time, and many development videos featuring her end with her being killed by either Yandere-chan or YandereDev himself. However, depending on one's sympathy (or lack thereof) for YandereDev regarding his e-mail situation, she may instead come off as a woobie.
- An Ice Person: One Easter Egg turns Yandere-chan into Cirno, an ice fairy from the Touhou series. In this mode, she can shoot ice beams that kill almost anyone they hit, including Senpai and the teachers. Exceptions
- Identical Stranger: For much of development, as more unique character models have yet to be made.
- The designs for the other male characters started out as being pretty much clones of Senpai with different hair and eye colors and less-complex AI's. This changed a little starting with the mid-August 2015 build, as the boys now sport different hairstyles just like the girls always had, although they still all have the same face.
- Same can be said about the female students, who are all variants of the "Aoi Kiryu" character model (Yandere-chan included) but with different hair/eye colours, hairstyles, and breast sizes.
- Even the teachers used to look like an adult version of Yandere-chan, except with brown hair and eyes. In fact, the only girls in the game so far whose faces are not simply Yandere-chan's model with different irises are Rival-chan and Info-chan, the latter of whom doesn't even appear during normal gameplay.
- Implacable Man: The teachers are a heroic version. The delinquents in their unfinished state are even more implacable, with them always running straight towards Yandere-chan, even to the point of floating through the air and running through walls and floors.
- Insistent Terminology: Works both ways.
- In combination with You Keep Using That Word, the Easter Egg Menu in the debug builds, despite the fact that the very presence of such a menu makes them not "Easter Eggs", technically speaking. They're actually cheats, and the Dev has said that in the final game they will probably be unlockable either via code-input or achievement.
- This rant from late-April 2016 has YandereDev putting some things about his game into perspective… namely that at present, it isn't a "game". This is mainly because it lacks The Rival, and thus lacks any sort of win condition. By extension, he declares one cannot judge YanSim (positively or negatively) on its gameplay, "because there is none".
- He also indirectly took to task impatient fans who modify character models and info screens to replace Kokona (the test-rival) with Osana (the actual first rival), going into detail on what a "rival" actually means to the game, finishing with this:"In other words, adding a new student with a specific name and hairstyle is simply not good enough."
- Late for School: How the game started in the original intro. As befitting the cliché, in the game proper you can give Yandere-chan a slice of toast constantly hanging from her mouth… or if that's not enough, an entire toaster.
- Long List: As part of a Take That against Twitch.tv banning the game from its site, the February 1st 2016 build displays this message before the main title screen, warning players about all of the game's objectionable content. It starts out normal, but quickly devolves into insanity.WARNING: This game contains bullying, kidnapping, torture, murder, suicide, graphic violence, partial nudity, kittens, raw sewage, cooked sewage, microwave-ready sewage, true nightmares, eldritch monstrosities, bald assassins, DK Mode, fake tans, Titans, murderous ice fairies, impossibly-strong punches, genocide crusades, spooky scary skeletons, STANDING ON THE EDGE, zombies, vampires, succubi, lewd manga, busty pink-haired schoolgirls, game-breaking bugs, an overworked programmer, and much worse.
- Lord British Postulate: YandereDev has made two videos spoofing repeated attempts to kill the currently-indestructible Rival-chan.
- Mood Dissonance: Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting the special 2015 Christmas carol: "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder".
- Mook Chivalry: If multiple Heroic personalities catch Yandere-chan committing murder (for example, if you're dumb enough to charge the martial arts club with just a piddly knife), they will politely attack you one at a time, allowing you to easily dispatch them.
- No Name Given: Yandere-chan, Info-chan, and Senpai for much of early development. However…
- Yandere-chan's name got a low-key reveal in October 2015. The social media website she can visit at night lists her as "Ayano Aishi". note
- That same social media site gives Senpai's name as "Taro Yamada" (basically the Japanese equivalent of John Smith). However, this is a placeholder; the Dev has said he would like for the player to be able to choose Senpai's name.
- Info-chan still lacks a name. The Dev says she has one but the player will never learn it, mostly because it's not important to the game.
- For over a month after her introduction, Midori Gurin had no name, so fans simply called her "Churuya" due to her first dialog being paired with a Nyoron Churuya-san panel (and her in-game character model bearing a strong resemblance to Tsuruya). Her name became known once she appeared in the game and her Student Info page was accessible.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: If you take a picture in the girl's bathroom on the third floor (or by the Confession Tree in earlier builds), you can see a semi-transparent model of a girl. An old post from Halloween 2014 suggests that she was the girl that Yandere-chan's mother killed in the bathroom, and that a future DLC may focus on her attempt at revenge.
- Psychotic Love Triangle: Back when the final rival was planned to be another Yandere* . Senpai really knows how to attract the wrong type of girls.
- Arguably still the case since the Second Yandere was replaced by the Delinquents' Boss – a girl who was suspended from school for something very serious and is implied to have done time in juvie. Chances are she's not quite sane.
- Quintessential British Gentleman: One of your head accessories in the debug builds is a top hat and curly moustache, which causes Yandere-chan to spout Britishisms when the player presses the "laugh" button.
- Ragdoll Physics: It is said that, unrefined, the Unity engine considers this a suggestion rather than a reality. As such, it is more likely than not that corpses will do bizarre things, especially when you try to move them.
- If someone dies by a wall and any of their body clips into it, trying to drag them causes their limbs to stretch and contort horrifically until they finally, uh, pop out.
- Using an Easter Egg like Falcon Mode or One Punch Mode on someone will send them flying (their bodies will be grossly contorted for a couple of frames the instant the punch connects). If you're inside, chances are the body will hit a wall or floor, at which point the corpse will spaz out.
- Anything having to do with Titan Mode. See the Funny and Nightmare Fuel pages.
- Running Gag: Any time he wants to show off a new method of eliminating a rival, YandereDev will invariably test it out on Kokona Haruka, the purple-haired girl. Lampshaded in his poisoning tutorial."Because Yandere Simulator doesn't have an official rival yet, we're going to pretend that one of these girls is our rival."
[approaches the six rainbow girls and stands in the middle of their circle]
"Okay, let's just pick a girl at random…"
[takes out camera and focuses it on Saki, the teal-haired girl]
"For today, the rival is going to be…" [suddenly moves the camera over to Kokona] "You."- In the video for the August 2015 update, he refers to her as "everyone's favorite punching bag".
- When demonstrating the dismemberment mechanic, YandereDev uses Midori (his other Butt Monkey) as the test subject, but at the very end of the video he reveals that he had already dismembered Kokona and the video fades out with Yan-chan carrying Kokona's severed head towards the camera.
- Script Breaking: Inevitable since the game is not at this point even close to finished.
- If you use an Easter Egg mode to kill Senpai… pretty much nothing happens. Yandere-chan will somehow stalk him home at the end of the day and, in an Obvious Rule Patch, he'll magically come back to life the next morning. note Otherwise, it's the same as if you had killed any other student.
- In the early-June 2016 build, if you start Kokona's storyline, kidnap Musume, but then kill Kokona before the end of the day (making sure to clean up your mess), the rest of the sequence – filming the ransom video, having a text conversation with Kokona, and the cutscene of Kokona visiting Yan-chan's home the next morning – will still play out normally. However, Kokona will not be at school the next day or in your basement if you chose to "eliminate" her during the cutscene.
- If you perform the "Befriend" elimination sequence correctly – asking Kokona to not pursue Senpai (which she'll agree to) – and finish it by Tuesday night, Kokona will still do her pre-scripted dialogue from the "Poisoning" sequence at lunch on Wednesday, which makes her come off as a liar.
- Self-Deprecation: Prior to the August 12th 2015 update, YandereDev had to make apology videos explaining his Schedule Slip, and vented about how he's spending more time responding to emails than coding the game or taking time off. The update video proper opens with him complaining about it again, only for Midori Gurin to give the sad Yandere-chan on the screen a bitchslap and telling him to snap out of it. He moves on to the content, but not before giving her a nice stab in the chest for her trouble.
- Shout-Out:
- Pretty much the entire point of the Easter Egg menu, which may or may not show up in some form in the final game (it's guaranteed the copyrighted music accompanying some modes won't). See the Trivia page for specifics.
- The trailer released on April 1st 2015 is basically a parody of the infamous trailer to Hatred.
- A third April Fools day joke in 2015 announced the dev was scrapping Yandere Simulator altogether and working on a new game called Kuudere Simulator, which featured characters bearing resemblances to Rei Ayanami and Asuka Langley Soryu as the eponymous kuudere and the alternate Tsundere mode respectively. Baka.
- He did it again the next year, releasing the highly-anticipated sequel, Kuudere Simulator 2, adding a brand new mode: "Himedere".
- Another April Fools day joke replaced Mario with Yandere-chan in Super Mario 64 HD's† Bob-omb Battlefield. This used to be able to be played by crouching next to one of the computers.
- The "I Want My Senpai Back" video is a parody of the children's book I Want My Hat Back. Osana even fills the role of the Rabbit who stole the Bear's hat in the book.
- The December 2nd 2015 update has a segment where Yandere-chan sneaks through the cooking club to the tune of Encounter from Metal Gear Solid, and Phoenix Wright cameos to explain why your frameup would never fly in real life.
- The "Raising the Strength Stat" video ends with Yandere-chan giving Osana a hammer toss using her pigtails, much like Ms. Trunchbull did in Matilda.
- Shown Their Work: Sometimes in the videos or on the blog, YandereDev will explain elements of Japanese culture that are in the game, such as why Yan-chan removes the shoes from a girl as she tosses her to her death, what bullying looks like in schools, and what exactly Compensated Dating is. An early post on the blog also has information he learned from an actual Japanese high school teacher, such as what a typical day looks like.
- Spear Counterpart: In test builds, particularly ones released prior to December 2015, the boys – well, the Rainbow Six at any rate – are literally just male versions of the original six female students, although their AI base is different. Sending their photos to Info-chan reveals that the boys and girls who shared hair/eye color are in the same classes. They also used to be in the same clubs. The only real difference between them at that point was their personality type (girls were all "Loner"* and boys were all "Teacher's Pet"). Since then, things have become much more varied, at least for the girls (less so for the boys due to lack of animation assets for them).
- Take That: YandereDev likes to do this whenever outside forces attempt to prevent exposure of his game.
- After his video explaining the panty shot mechanic was flagged for inappropriate content on Youtube, YanDev added the feature to strip Yandere-chan naked (with clouds of Censor Steam covering the objectionable bits… and only those bits), stating this was his way of getting back at them.
- In mid-January 2016, YanSim got banned from livestreaming site Twitch without adequate explanation. As a result, the February 1st build opens with a joke Warning Screen with a Long List of "inappropriate" things the game contains – starting sensibly (bullying, kidnapping, torture, etc.), but becoming increasingly ridiculous (various states of sewage, game breaking bugs, an overworked programmer, "and much worse"). He later dropped the screen for being too narmy, but it got the point across.
- Working under the assumption that Twitch's issue with the game was the "naked" (but Barbie Doll Anatomy) Titans, YandereDev changed the texture of the Titans' skin… to a low-resolution photograph of what is apparently red feathers but when stretched kind of resembles muscles (but looks more like bacon). A later build changed the Titan skins again, this time to something more resembling the source material (exposed muscles and all).
- Teacher's Pet: A standard personality type in the main game, but it's notable in the builds that almost all male students not in the Martial Arts club qualify as this.
- Throw the Dog a Bone:
- Most videos showcasing elimination methods use Kokona as a guinea pig, but the June 1st 2016 update video finally showcases a method that does not require harming her in any way. Instead, Yan-chan befriends her and helps her out of an unpleasant situation* . Then, when Kokona visits Yan-chan's home to thank her, Yan-chan simply asks Kokona to back off Senpai, which she agrees to out of a sense of honour. The end of that video states the next elimination method to be added to the game will be Matchmaking, meaning that unless Dev picks a different guinea pig (unlikely), we'll get to see Kokona happy with another boy.
- Defied. The next elimination method implemented wasn't Matchmaking.
- YandereDev will occasionally have Midori ask legitimate, non-stupid questions, including ones he'll admit he has no satisfactory answer to, such as how exactly the skirt inventory system will work if Yandere-chan isn't wearing a skirt (whether that be because she's wearing pants, is naked, or is hypothetically a man) or why all the students keep coming back to school when it's obvious there's a serial killer loose in it.
- Most videos showcasing elimination methods use Kokona as a guinea pig, but the June 1st 2016 update video finally showcases a method that does not require harming her in any way. Instead, Yan-chan befriends her and helps her out of an unpleasant situation* . Then, when Kokona visits Yan-chan's home to thank her, Yan-chan simply asks Kokona to back off Senpai, which she agrees to out of a sense of honour. The end of that video states the next elimination method to be added to the game will be Matchmaking, meaning that unless Dev picks a different guinea pig (unlikely), we'll get to see Kokona happy with another boy.
- Uncanny Valley: An In-Universe meta variation occurred not with people, but with clothes. YandereDev mentioned that, prior to a programming breakthrough in May 2016, he could add assets not associated with the "Aoi" model to the game – other articles of clothing for example – but they would glitch when the characters moved. He gave the example of wearing a pair of pants that would not move with the body of the person wearing them, and that it gave everything an unnatural and eerie feeling.
- Underboobs: You can see Yandere-chan's when you go into Venom Snake mode.
- Unwanted Assistance: Midori in development videos is constantly interrupting Yanderedev and harassing him by asking questions he's heard many times before and offering unwanted advice.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: After reading an article about the game that expressed concerns about how it might be trivializing serious social issues like bullying, YandereDev wrote a thoughtful response that acknowledged the concerns and even considered including a mechanic in which if a student is bullied into suicide, the bullying option becomes unavailable as the rest of the students become horrified at their actions.
- Villain Song: Yandere-chan gets two official ones for the holiday season: "It's beginning to look a lot like murder" and "Yandere-chan is coming to town". There's also "Senpai Notice Me", which was given approval by YanDev (he and Midori have a dialogue at the end of the video).
- Wide Open Sandbox: Discussed in a video, with YandereDev contemplating adding a number of previously unconsidered features the game, including a small town, to prevent it from becoming boring, with a warning that doing so would necessitate extending development time by at least half a year and/or soliciting for additional funds to hire professional aid.
