Future Plans and Your Input

Hello!

After releasing the game's first rival, I paid close attention to user feedback, and made numerous changes to improve the overall experience of eliminating her. This process of "Release content, collect criticism, revise content" has been very effective so far, but it would be tricky to apply that process to the next stage of development. I'll explain:

My goal is to release a game about eliminating 10 rivals over the course of 10 weeks. To give players the best experience possible, I'll need to ask players for feedback like, "Does each rival feel more challenging than the previous one?" "Does each rival offer a unique experience?" and "Does the school need to change more significantly from week to week?"

But, I can't gather that type of feedback when there is only 1 rival in the game. To collect that type of feedback, there would need to be 10 rivals and 10 playable weeks in the game. However, once the 10 rival girls I announced in 2016 are present in the game, Yandere Simulator will become a complete experience with a beginning/middle/end. This is not something I can simply re-do if I mess it up.

When it comes to these 10 girls that people have been anticipating for the past 5 years, it would not be acceptable to release something that will eventually become fun after a few cycles of feedback and revisions. After more than a decade of anticipation, their inclusion in the game is going to be a major event. Delivering anything less than a stellar experience would be unacceptable.

In order to create a good experience, it's necessary to go through several rounds of feedback and revisions. However, these 10 highly-anticipated characters should shine at the exact moment they are released, not several updates after they are released. So, I can't use my usual approach for this one. So, what's the solution? Don't worry - I have an idea.

I've come up with a plan to "Put 10 rivals in the game" for the purpose of gathering feedback and making revisions, without doing a disservice to the 10 girls that I announced in 2016. Up until now, I've been extremely vague and secretive about it, but the people who are financially supporting me have a right to know what I'm doing, so I'll break the news here on Patreon:

I'm going to implement a new gameplay mode. In this new mode, you don't play as Yandere-chan; you play as a completely different protagonist. The star of this mode is a different yandere girl, who has her own 10 rivals to eliminate. The purpose of this mode is to allow people to playtest the experience of eliminating 10 rivals across 10 weeks, so I can gather feedback and criticism.

This mode will be created almost entirely using assets that already exist. This mode will not involve any new animations or voice acting. The focus will be 99% on gameplay and 1% on story. This mode will take place at Akademi, but will not feature Info-chan. (The player will use the workbench in the school workshop to craft items that were previously exclusive to Info-chan.)

The process of implementing this new gameplay mode will involve setting up the framework required to add the 10 rivals who were announced in 2016. In other words, this new mode is not a detour that will slow down development; it's an added bonus that will occur as a side-effect of me doing all of the work that I was going to do anyway. 

The new batch of 10 rivals are fully designed and fully modeled, so I already have everything I need to drop them into the game. I don't have to wait for anything; I can dive into this task right away. I've been very excited about this idea over the past few months, and I hope that you're going to be really happy with the end result!

It's worth mentioning that I've only given you a basic summary of this upcoming gameplay mode; there are a bunch of details that I'm keeping a secret. There are very good reasons why I've been very tight-lipped about the name of this mode and the identity of the protagonist. I'd like to tell you more, but any further information might have to go into a post that is exclusive to Patrons.

Actually, that's a perfect segway into the other thing that I wanted to talk about in this post; I wanted to ask for your input on something!

First, I should let you know that it might take several weeks or possibly even multiple months to implement this new 10-week gameplay mode; I plan to make each rival as unique as possible, and ensure that each week presents a different challenge to the player. The goal, after all, is to provide players with a "10 rivals over 10 weeks" experience that fully emulates what the final game will be like.

Because this is new territory for me, it's not easy to predict how much time it's going to take to complete this task. In short, what I'm saying is that there might be a large gap between the current build and the next one. And, because I want to keep the details of this mode a complete secret, I don't plan on posting any screenshots or videos of what I'm working on. This puts me in a tricky spot:

The last thing I would ever want is for you to develop the impression that I'm not getting any work done, or that I've simply vanished. But, I'm about to go completely underground and disappear for a few weeks/months to work in secret on something that is meant to be a surprise...and I won't be able to show you any proof that I'm working on the game without spoiling my big surprise.

That makes me feel very nervous! I feel that it's very important to reassure the people who are financially supporting me that I'm still hard at work...but I don't want to post anything that would ruin the surprise. Well, I have one potential solution: Posting previews of upcoming content on Patreon...but locking these previews behind certain payment tiers. 

I'll give you an example of how it might work:

• Low Tier: You get silhouettes of the new 10 rivals. You get vague text descriptions of what I'm working on.
• Mid Tier: You get blurred artwork of the new 10 rivals. You get blurred screenshots and video footage of what I'm working on.
• High Tier: You get high-resolution artwork of the new 10 rivals. You get completely un-obscured screenshots and video footage of what I'm working on.

The question is, what should each tier cost? I have to consider the possibility that if the prices are super low, trolls will join my Patreon just to leak upcoming content. I wouldn't want to set the prices so low that everyone in the world gets the upcoming mode spoiled for them, but I also wouldn't want to set the prices so high that I look greedy. So, I'd like to turn the discussion over to you!

What prices do you think would be fair? Does $10 / $20 / $30 sound good to you? If you were paying those prices, how often would you expect to see new posts? Also, what kind of rewards would you want to get for each tier? Would rival artwork and screenshots/footage suffice? If not, then what else would you want to be getting? I'd love to hear any and all feedback that you might have!

Please leave your thoughts in the comments below! Also, thank you very much for your patience, for your support, and as always, thank you for following the development of Yandere Simulator!