Preview of Upcoming Video

To be completely honest, I actually forget how this began...

I think it began with an artist reaching out to me, expressing that they were a huge fan of Yandere Simulator, and asking if I had any art requests. I was absolutely delighted that such a skilled artist was offering to create art for me...but I didn't have any extremely urgent or high-priority to ask for. I didn't want to turn away such a immensely talented artist, so, I tried to think of any type of artwork that would be beneficial to have, even if it wasn't completely necessary for the game's development.

I thought about one of the game's characters. I've written a backstory for her to explain why she is the way she is, but there's absolutely no reason for her backstory to be revealed within the game itself. This means that, if I ever want to communicate this character's backstory to the player, they'd probably have to absorb it from some external source; a wiki page, a screenshot of a statement I made on Discord, etc. But, telling a character's backstory entirely through text would be boring...it would be much more preferable to tell her story with visuals.

So, I asked the artist to begin illustrating artwork for a "Backstory Video," similar in nature to "Yandere-chan's Childhood." Would I say that this is one of the game's highest priorities? No, of course not. But, would it give me a chance to work together with a phenomenal artist, and be fun to work on? Hell yeah!

And so, the artist began creating the artwork necessary for the project. However, that artist eventually became too busy to continue volunteering, and left the project, leaving the video half-finished. As luck would have it, another artist contacted me and asked if there was any artwork I needed. Thinking, "Well, it's a shame that this one video was never finished..." I asked the artist to create the remaining artwork for the backstory video. Sadly, that artist also eventually got too busy, and left the project.

The same thing happened again with another artist. Then another artist. And then another artist. Sometimes artists leave for a completely valid and understandable reason, sometimes they leave for a really silly reason, and sometimes they simply vanish without any explanation. I began to wonder if this was a "cursed video" - a video that would simply never get made or finished. At this point, I don't even really remember how it started; all I remember is that I've been trying to get this video off the ground forever.

Recently, an artist joined the development team who is incredibly good at imitating the art style used by a previous artist. This means that, instead of illustrating every frame from scratch, all they really need to do is illustrate the remaining / unfinished frames, and the video will be done. This is the closest we've ever gotten to this video having a hope of seeing the light of day.

I know that this is probably weird topic for me to write a post about - "Uhhhhh, a character's backstory video? Huh? What about the game itself?" - but the latest frame turned out really, really good, and you're probably a patron because you want to see sneak peeks of upcoming content, so I've decided to share a frame from the video with you. Maybe it'll get you hyped and excited for this video! ...even though I have no earthly idea when or if it'll ever get finished.

(Don't worry, this sort of thing doesn't actually take a significant amount of time away from the game's development. It's more of a fun little side-project that gets a few minutes of my attention per day.)