I saw a TikTok about how someone would handle a rewrite of Yandere Sim, and it’s got the gears turning. Because while they had a lot of good ideas they also had a lot I don’t love.
So while my neurons bumping, here’s a few ideas
This version cuts the Aishi curse and limits it to just Ryoba and Ayano. Ryoba still stalked Jokichi and married him, they had two children (assume in all these both Ayano and Ayato are options because I really like that and it makes sense to have a male option). Ryoba is arrested for her crimes coming to light, and Jokichi is distant from his kids. From then the game progresses as normal.
This version is similar to the version the original TikToker posted (@.princess.yuuko, i think she plans to go over more of the rivals). Because it’s so similar I don’t plan to go more into it.
I will say I want there to be some focus on the playable sibling’s relationship with their other sibling, their father, their mother and their cousin. Like aside from the Senpai stuff you have quests with them. This is a concept I want to explore in my other ideas but since I don’t have much of my own to say here, I’m putting it here.
2. Yandere Simulator: Broken Family
This version reverts back to the main canon, with the Aishi curse (we can keep Ryoba in jail because I like the consequences.) But even with the Aishi curse the focus is on Ayano or Ayato.
I want to have this one more customizable. For example you choose Ayano, you could select either a male or female love interest, and decide if your love interest is only attractive to men, women or both. If you choose men, all the rival’s genders will be swapped, and if you choose both the genders will be swapped randomly or every other rival will be male.
The game proceeds as normal (with some rival changes) without much mention of the Aishi curse until maybe the last rival. We keep the familial relationships but add in Grandma Aishi. There’s multiple endings you can achieve depending on your elimination methods, your relationship meters, and other small quests (nothing too big, just stuff to keep you busy if you eliminate a rival early, just to build skills or make the world feel more alive)
The twist here is that once you finish your first play through as (presumably) Ayano, you can start a second playthrough as Ayato (while also being able to go back as Ayano and get other endings.) The second Ayato playthrough has an entirely different set of love interests (instead of Taro or Taeko) and a different set of ten rivals (that can be gender swapped with the same settings as the first one.) Ayato can build skills faster with help from his sister, and their relationship builds faster because of the first playthrough. But all other relationships need to be built naturally, such as their dad, mom and grandmother.
The game proceeds as normal, with some exceptions. If your sibling is in a club, you cannot join it. If you know your sister went somewhere to murder someone, you can’t follow her. Your first playthrough impacts and limits your second. You also get a few cutscenes at the ends of weeks to connect the two playthroughs.
Like the first playthough, there are many endings you can get, and both endings influence a large ending epilogue (for example if you both go full murder you move in with grandma, but if you’re pacifists you move away with dad. If you get one ending each the siblings are split.)
There’s an optional third playthrough as their cousin (I kinda want to imply the canon option involves a queer romance). The difficulty spike is that you don’t have a sibling helping you, or a grandma helping you. You just have your parents. And also because their cousin is older, she probably has large mandatory side quests like jobs and college. The love interest can also be tinkered to be more difficult.
I feel like you could do a 1980s mode with this but there’s so much content here that I don’t think it’s necessary
3. Yandere: Cursed Bloodlines
This one uses the Aishi curse and makes it the focus of the story.
We start in the 1800s with the first Aishi, she goes through her rivals and marries her love interest. There is a brief montage of marriage and family life before we move into her children.
This is the conceit of the game, follow the curse down the generations from the first Aishi to Ayano. There’s still multiple endings and the endings effect the next generation; for example, if Ryoba messes up somehow, when you play as Ayano, she’ll be in jail (idk what possessed me to hate Ryoba so much. I have been so neutral until now)
The second thing of note is difficulty. Obviously the first rival of each generation is the easiest and the last is the hardest, but the difficulty gets higher each generation, due to increased security, better technology, and growing suspicion around the Aishis. The tradeoff is that more elimination methods are unlocked as the generations move on.
I also don’t want all the love interests to be perfect and innocent. If we’ve got like nine generations, we need interesting characters.
I like the idea of this game also having some replay ability as the siblings of your main protagonist, but I think this game would be big enough.
Also because this game is bigger I’m imagining it’ll be 2D instead of 3D. And there will be limited NPCs that aren’t rivals. One can only have such a big character design budget.
So that’s what I got. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually build in either of these (the last two are obviously the ones I have the most to say about) but I could. If I wanted. If people wanted. Idk.
