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Tech

What the Hell Is Up with This Homicidal Japanese Schoolgirl Simulator?

We talked to the developer of Yandere Simulator.
Image: Yandere Simulator.

I'm watching students exit the school building as the sun sets on another beautiful day in Japan. She doesn't know it, but one of these students, Osana Najimi, is going to die by my hands. You see, Najimi likes the same boy I like, and that's just not going to fly.

My plan was to wait for her to go to the tree behind the school, but I lost my patience. She was the last person in the school, all alone, getting her stuff from her locker. I saw my chance and I took it. I stabbed her with a pair of scissors, dumped the body behind the building, cleaned up the blood, dumped my clothes, and ran home naked.

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I still got busted though. I guess I forgot to get rid of the bloody clothes. One day, I'll figure out how to get off clean, and then it will be just me and the boy I like. Senpai will be mine.

That's the kind of demented thinking you need to succeed in Yandere Simulator, a game where you play a sociopathic Japanese schoolgirl obsessed with killing anyone between her and her high school crush. "Yandere" is an anime trope referring to a character romantically obsessed with another character to the point of violence.

Senpai is about to notice me but I'm too shy! Image: Yandere Simulator.

Yandere Simulator is the work of one 27 years old man in California who wishes to be identified only as Alex.

"One day, I saw a very inexpensive schoolgirl character model for sale on the Unity Asset Store," Alex told me in an email. "I asked my friend what type of game he would develop if the protagonist had to be a schoolgirl. He said that he would make a 'Juvenile Delinquent Simulator.' I asked, 'Why stop at a delinquent simulator? Why not make a serial killer simulator?'"

Alex took the idea, paired it with the yandere trope (he cited the anime Mirai Nikki and School Days specifically), and so Yandere Simulator was born.

It's still very early in development, with many bugs and unfinished features (technically you can't currently finish the game), but it already has a following of hundreds of thousands of players. You can download the current build for free, which allows huge YouTubers like Markiplier and Pewdiepie to create videos that get it more attention. The only reason Alex is able to continue developing Yandere Simulator is thanks to his Patreon, which currently raises $3,600 a month from players who want to support him.

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Yandere Simulator is far from finished. Alex doesn't even call it a game yet, but a debug sandbox that allows the player to test out various features and search for bugs.

However, there's a reason why people have latched onto it: there's nothing else like it. As we've previously pointed out, horror games are mostly about jump scares. Yandere Simulator is way more complex. There are so many ways to mess your victims. For example, why just stab a student that's giving you trouble, when you can compliment them over several days, gain their trust, and lure them to an isolated storage room? That will allow you to tranquilize the student with a syringe you can steal from the school nurse, and transport the student to your basement at home, where you can torture them psychologically for days.

"Electrocution is really fun!" Alex said when I asked what his favorite method for killing a student is. "It's also really fun to kidnap a girl, torture her until her mind breaks, then command her to kill your rival and then kill herself."

Yandere Simulator is filled with these weird, creepy ideas. You can take pictures of students with your phone to learn more about them, spread gossip about other students, or better prepare for different situations by choosing to wear the right pair of panties.

Just picking my panties for the day. Image: Yandere Simulator.

The other reason people are at least curious about Yandere Simulator, in case you haven't noticed, is that it's completely fucking insane.

I have to look at a lot of bad stuff on the internet for my job, but rarely have I felt more creeped out about something on my screen than when I played Yandere Simulator. The disconnect between the light music, bright colors, and cheery anime girls, and the fact that I'm dragging one of their bloody, lifeless bodies behind me, was almost too much.

Somehow, it's even creepier to hear Alex calmly explain the sadistic new features that are added with every update.

The whole thing just seems psychotic, but that's exactly what Alex is going for. It's a horror game in the truest sense of the word.

"Yandere Simulator is a game about stalking, bullying, kidnapping, torturing, and murdering schoolchildren," he said. "Yandere Simulator is a horror game where you are the monster. If there is anyone out there who doesn't think that this game is creepy, then I suppose I need to try harder!"