Following seven long, no doubt exhausting years of constant development, Yandere Simulator is finally on course for a full release. Your immediate question – unless you’re deeply entrenched in Japanese culture – will no doubt be, ‘what’s a yandere?’. Without beating around the bush, the term refers to a common Japanese trope/stereotype in entertainment media involving a woman with two conflicting personalities.
One is a calm, kind and often approachable individual, while the other exhibits polar opposite behavior. The latter is traditionally depicted as being obsessive over a love interest, to the extent that they’re willing to murder and steal to ensure their ‘senpai’ isn’t stolen by a competitor.
Yandere Simulator doesn’t just lean into this but jumps in headfirst. Kidnapping, torture, dismemberment, trap-setting, and just general unhinged behavior are all part and parcel of this stealth action title, which owes its existence to an impromptu pitching session on 4chan.
Unsurprisingly, the content of YandereDev’s pet project has courted heavy controversy from mainstream media, with Twitch, hardly known for cracking down hard on questionable content, having banned the game from its streaming platform back in 2016.
According to a status update provided last week by the one-man development team, only a minimal amount of work remains before Yandere Simulator is considered 100% finished, with an announcement video penciled in for “very, very soon.” For now, anyone interested in giving this a shot should only expect a PC release. If Twitch has already washed its hands of the game, Sony and Microsoft are likely to follow suit, though given what the former has let slip under its QA screening process in the past (look up Life of Black Tiger, I dare you), never say never.