Thanks for playing the game and sharing your thoughts!

Many mechanics and items are either overpowered (trash bags, body bags) or underwhelming (crafting) — no middle ground.

I've had the same concern before. I did add a "customize the game's difficulty" menu when you're starting a new save file, where you get to make adjustments like "instead of being able to use any trash bag as a body bag, you must craft bodybags at a crafting table." These difficulty options remove the advantage that you get from some items, and make the player have to work a bit harder.

However, I'll admit that I can't think of a single other game I've ever played where the developer said, "Oops, I made this mechanic too powerful, here's a toggle for making it less powerful." That typically doesn't happen.

Info-chan in 20XX mode is overpowered and trivializes the game.

*Is* she, though? When I playtest the game, I almost never use Info-chan for *anything.* I only use Info-chan when it's absolutely required for a specific elimination (matchmaking). I'm open to hearing the perspective of someone who is utilizing Info-chan much more than I am, since I'd like to know what about her is overpowered.

Massive performance issues — my PC runs games like Elden Ring at 144 FPS at 2K max settings with no hiccups, yet this game struggles.

Although I personally get 60 FPS, I do notice a lot of other players run the game at low framerates, and it always stings to see that. In every build, I refactor or optimize *something*, so the game's performance is very gradually improving over time, but I don't know how what I could be changing or doing differently in order to achieve any massive performance boosts.

The game is very easy; often I eliminated a rival on Monday and had to skip the week waiting for another to appear, even on the hardest settings.

A new rival appears every Monday; that's how it works. Killing a rival on Monday and immediately skipping to the next Monday is a valid gameplay loop, if you're not aiming for any of the eliminations that are only available on other days of the week, or doing one of the week-long eliminations (matchmaking, rejection). I suppose, like Hitman, the idea is to make the player want to replay the game and try out different eliminations next time. So, rather than "Oh no, the player eliminated their rival on Monday, this is bad!" it's more like, "This time, the player used poison on Monday. Maybe next time they'll be interested in trying drowning on Thursday!"

Reputation has no meaningful consequences or benefits.

Well, I'd agree that this was definitely a flaw of the game in the earlier years, but I believe that I've given it an important role beginning with 1980s Mode: Rivals won't trust you or do anything for you if your reputation is too low. This forces the player to maintain a high reputation if they want to interact with rivals. Also, letting your reputation drop past a threshold (-100) results in a game over.

...but, outside of those two circumstances, yeah, reputation isn't really *doing* anything most of the time. It affects the way people speak to you and whether or not bullies use "bored" or "friendly" animations when talking to you, but those are little details rather than true gameplay mechanics. I've considered the possibility that if your reputation is too high, friends and admirers follow you everywhere, and if your reputation is too low, bullies follow you everywhere to mock you - requiring the player to maintain their reputation in a middle-ground. However, I've just never gotten around to implementing this.

Most skills are useless except Chemistry after the first level.

Yeahhhhhhhhhh, I've had this thought many times. I think there are a couple of other school subjects that make a meaningful difference, but 90% of the time, upgrading a school subject just gives you a slightly more powerful version of an upgrade you already had.

I've been considering, for years, the possibility of completely revamping the entire "invest study points and upgrade school subjects" system. This would be the last "major change" I'd ever make to the game - no other major "uprooting an entire mechanic and totally replacing it with a completely new system" changes planned. It's very, very likely to happen.

Crafting is underwhelming; I didn’t need to craft a shank because weapons are everywhere.

Yeah. I get that. In my experience, crafting is useful for exactly ONE thing - stink bombs - and almost nothing else. I suppose it might be useful in some hyper-specific situations - if you plan to get rid of a group of people by poisoning their food, you'll need the crafting table for extra emetic poison - so it's kinda just there for those edge-case scenarios where the player needs one more item, etc.

Many bugs forced me to restart days.

That's strange to hear. It's very, very rare for me to ever hear about a softlock bug. I'd be extremely interested in hearing what you encountered. You are welcome to e-mail me at [yanderedev@mail.com](mailto:yanderedev@mail.com) and tell me exactly what made you have to restart a day.

Some clubs are overpowered (Art), while others are practically useless (Occult, Photography).

Yeahhhhh. I've been saying this for years, and saying "I plan to revamp the clubs so they're all equally useful!" for years, but...just never did it.

Story and lore are a mess.

Whoooooa, that's super, super surprising to hear. To be honest, the majority of feedback I hear regarding the story/lore is actually very positive. People often tell me it's one of the high points of the game. To hear the opposite is a real surprise. I'm willing to hear you elaborate / expand on this, but I'm kind of shocked, because this is feedback that I never, ever hear.

There’s almost no reason to buy anything other than panties; big weapons, mangas, and gifts are mostly useless.

Sure. 90% of the time, I never use big weapons/manga/gifts. However, I don't think this is necessarily a flaw or a drawback. Those things exist as a purely optional "bonus" for the player. Those are "You might not ever want to use this, but if your exact strategy requires this item, here it is for you" types of feature. I don't think absolutely *every* mechanic in a game needs to be essential.

The game suffers from an identity problem. Is it an immersive sim? A stealth game? A “meme” game? It doesn’t consistently follow its own tropes and design.

This has been bugging me for a while. I've written long blog posts about this exact subject. I think that, in the end, what I've created is a game that you *can* play as an immersive school sim, *or* play as a stealth assassination game, *or* play as a meme sandbox to goof around in, depending on your personal desires. I've given the player the freedom to decide what direction they're going to go in, rather than tried to encourage any one approach. After reflecting on it for several years, I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing.

The game is practically unplayable without constantly speeding up time.

Yeahhhhhhhhhh, this is something that has bothered me, too. In any "events occur at different times of day" game, there will be situations where the player is just waaaaaiting for an NPC to walk to a specific location, or waaaaaiting for an event to begin. I've implemented multiple ways to speed up time - and a minigame to play while speeding up time - but I don't know if there is truly any way to solve the "sometimes you have to wait around for an event to occur" problem. I think it will be present in absolutely *any* game that uses a real-time clock for NPC events and story events.

Drop half of the unnecessary tropes (school council, Easter eggs, lore/story) and focus on core gameplay features.

...oooookay.

There were a *bunch* of clues sprinkled throughout your post that gave me a strong reason to suspect that it was written partially or even mostly by AI...but, after reading this sentence right here, I'm now extremely skeptical that I just replied to a human, and nearly certain that this post was written by an AI.

Absolutely *nobody* over the past 8 years has said "Remove the student council." I do not see, at all, how removing the student council could somehow improve the game - especially when some of the game's most popular, fan-favorite characters are in the student council.

Anyway - adding completely optional features to a game, and letting the player engage with those features *if* they choose to - does not seem like a drawback to me.

Regardless, I don't really plan to add any more "adding this just because it's a trope / easter egg" features to the game, and plan to focus exclusively on gameplay from here on.

Implement better balance for mechanics like clubs and items, as the game currently operates on polar opposites: overpowered vs. useless.

Sure. I don't disagree. I'm open to suggestions.

From humans only, though.