☆ Jinja part-time job

Now you can earn additional 5,000 Yen per day by taking part-time job in the Shinto shrine map. The task is to sweep all fallen leaves on the shrine grounds. Required items: broom (can be obtained for free on the part-time job spot) and miko dress (can be bought in the shrine shop). Broom is operated the same way as tennis racket/water gun.

☆ Gameplay changes

All dating activities (and other actions affecting your skills) now deplete a new “stamina” stat of your character, which is used to limit amount of available actions per day. Stamina is restored only by sleeping and proceeding to next day. All dating activities now have an infobox showing reqiured amount of stamina and affected stats. All Summer Town rides are now classified as full dating activities and affect stats accordingly.

☆ New omamori effects

Omamori and omikuji now work differently: positive charms will prevent corresponding skills from decreasing and add +1 bonus point on top of what you gained through skill increase. Negative charms will cancel gained skill increase and additionally decrease corresponding skill by 1 point.

Love omamori/omikuji now don’t affect relationship score directly, but affect instead a new “social” skill, which goes up or down after each conversation date.

Money omamori/omikuji are not changed and work the same as before: they decrease or increase prices in all shops and don’t affect any character stats.

A new sports omamori (affecting “sports” skill of your character) is available in the jinja map.

☆ Other additions and improvements

• Fixed a small issue with walking outside of school map limits.
• New road signs in apartment, school, and Summer Town maps.
• More accurate rain detection (for girlfriend). Pillow now also declines outdoors activities during rain.
• Money tab is now hidden by default and shown only in inventory/shops/status screen.
• Your character’s status window now can be accessed through a cogwheel button in the top-left screen corner instead of the in-game smartphone.
• Fixed a minor issue with NPCs occasionally pushing characters during dates.
• Fixed a minor bug for kissing mini-game (when played without pocky).

This update is available in both paid and free versions of the game.

☆ Tennis (sports and dating activity)

Tennis court in the school map now can be used to play a tennis mini-game with your girlfriend. Tennis rackets can be obtained in the gym storage (you’ll need just one). Since accurate tennis mechanics requiring intercepting high-speed balls on the fly would be impossible to implement using current game engine, the rules are simplified: both players have a task of keeping the ball on the opposite side of the court during a 90 seconds match.

Scores awarded after completing the mini-game depend on your girlfriend’s personality. If she is into sports, she will love challenge, so you should try to win for best scores. If she is not into sports, you should try to lose on intention to avoid disappointing her.

Tennis mini-game is also available in pillow dating mode, giving the same scores.

☆ Other additions and improvements

• A new overlay shader for higher quality road and ground markings (all roads, tennis court, gym, sports field, pool).
• Fixed a few minor navigation issues (Summer Town and school maps).
• Fixed a minor water gun operation issue (when used on the run under rain).
• Basket ball (school map) and beach ball (Summer Town map) now can be carried and thrown (similar to swimrings), bounce, and have a component for floating (if placed in water). New body animation for throwing balls.
• Hitting your girlfriend with a tennis racket or water gun will now cancel her “kiss” mood (if present).

Steam, Android, and iOS versions of Shoujo City 3D are updated to version 0.8.15. Here is what is new in this update:

• One new NPC in the school map: a girl running in the sports field. After completing the field track ten times, she will buy a drink and go towards map exit point.
• Two new uwabaki shoes (in the clothes store).
• New guardian statues of stone squirrels in the Shinto shrine map.
• Improved textures and UV maps for all tights and socks (better shadows and seams).
• New snacks: yakisoba pan (Taiyaki shop and Summer Town takoyaki stall), choco nuts ice cream, azuki ice-cream (vending machines).
• Schoolgirl NPCs now can actually buy and consume drinks and snacks in shops.
• In the Shinto shrine map, when all NPCs return to the bus, it will depart and ride away.
• Fixed a bug with tomato kissing simulation not starting in some cases.
• Rotation speed during walking is slightly increased.
• Fixed a water gun aiming issue (when used in “tank controls” mode).

PC (Steam and free demo), iOS, and Android versions of Shoujo City 3D are updated to version 0.8.14.

☆ New NPCs

New schoolgirl NPCs were added to Shinto shrine and school maps. They will walk around, make purchases in shops, and take photos. In the shrine map NPCs will also perform traditional Shinto prayer in front of the main building. This was done to make locations more lively and realistic. More NPCs with different behavior patterns will be added in future updates.

☆ New food

• Dekopon (sold in Shoujo Mart).
• Banana and strawberry crepes (sold in Taiyaki shop).

☆ Other additions and improvements

• Fixed a small texture error for green school jacket.
• Improved meshes for “Sandals A” (all colors).
• Shinto shrine map now has music (can be turned on and off by interacting with audio speaker, or by changing music setting in the in-game smartphone).
• New model of a city bus (in Shinto shrine and Summer Town maps).

☆ Translations

Thanks to contributors, Turkish language is now available in the language selection menu (60% complete). All game languages, apart from English and Russian, are managed by volunteers, so their availability and completeness depend on whether there are people willing to help with languages they know. If you know some language and want to help translating the game, please contact me by email.

There were no major updates for Shoujo City 3D in a few months, so I wanted to show a small preview of what I’m currently working on.

☆ Akihabara UDX map

This is how a new Akihabara map currently looks like (50% complete as of December 2018). It will be released in the first half of 2019. There are no outsourced or store-bought assets in this map, all 3D models and textures are created from a scratch by me personally, so it will take a while as yet to prepare everything required (and that’s why there were no major updates in a while).

The map is an accurate recreation of the real UDX Akihabara area in Tokyo, and includes the Akiba bridge, Dai Biru & UDX complex, JR Akihabara train station, and surrounding area. Alongside with the main Chuo Dori street (where most anime, manga, and game shops are located) this place is a well-known Tokyo landmark for all anime fans, and for decades contributed to shaping anime and otaku culture in Japan. The map was also prominently featured in ai sp@ce MMO (which was the original source of inspiration for Shoujo City), so recreating it always was one of my main goals for this project. You can check the actual map here: Akihabara UDX on Google Maps

☆ 100% yuri

From now on this is a pure yuri game. Originally I planned to add an option to play as a male character, but this feature is cancelled, due to these reasons:

• Most people who asked to add males didn’t want as much to play as males, but rather wanted to have an option to date males. This is by far more complex feature to implement (compared to just choosing to play as a girl or a boy) and would require not only new assets for characters and clothes, but deep reworking of many game mechanics, animations, dialogues, and gameplay ideas.
• Realistically speaking, full implementation of “play as a boy” feature would extend game development time by about one year, and full implementation of all gender dating options (girl x girl, girl x boy, boy x girl, boy x boy – that’s what most actually asked for) would require about two more years of work on top of what is planned already. So the final game would be released in 2022 instead of 2020, at best.
• I don’t think I can keep people interested enough to actively follow development of this project for that long. This game is quite an ambitious project for one person already, and since it never gained any wide popularity and recognition after initial release, there isn’t any chance already that at some point in the future it becomes popular and profitable enough to expand development team. Whatever development goals I set, I will be the only person to carry them out, so I should concentrate on what realistically can be achieved by one person. Otherwise there would be a high probability that this game joins the vast mass of “good concept, never properly executed” other Early Access games with ever slowing down development progress and ever dropping interest from players. And never finished.

Long story short, I think it’s much better to have a complete game with smaller scope than to keep dragging development for years and risk having it never finished.

☆ 2019 development goals

There are a lot of things to work on as yet. Here are the most important goals for 2019:

• Adding NPCs in all areas with different behavior and more interaction options with NPCs.
• Improving girlfriend’s AI and behavior patterns so she acts more realistic.
• Adding more interaction options with one’s girlfriend (including school clubs).
• Most importantly, building clear and logical gameplay based on improving one’s skills and completing dating activities, so that players have real goals to achieve throughout gameplay and can finish the game. While the game visuals improved a lot compared to the first alpha release in 2017, gameplay didn’t do the same progress. That needs to be worked on.

The final version of the game is scheduled for release for summer of 2020 (hopefully).

Finally, I want to thank all people who decided to support this project by buying Steam (or premium mobile) version of the game. Every purchase is a direct contribution towards the future of this project. It is alive and keeps developing thanks to you.

Version 0.8.13 of Shoujo City 3D is released on Steam, the App Store, and Google Play. “Bench kissing” feature is also included into updated free demo for PC (version 0.6.7).

☆ Kissing on benches

In addition to kissing while standing and sitting on the ground, now it’s also possible to kiss while sitting on benches.

When your girlfriend is in a mood for a kiss, sit on any bench and wait until she moves closer to you. After that, press action button to start the pocky/kissing mini-game. If you date a pillow, sit on a bench with pillow in hands to start the mini-game.

The pocky/kissing game has a new selection menu. Now you don’t have to place a pack of pocky in hands to play the pocky game. Instead, when you use action button on your girlfriend, there will be a new menu to choose between pocky game (if you have pocky in your inventory) and direct kiss (unlocked after level 50 for girl, and available at any level for pillow).

Pillow doesn’t have an option for pocky game, only for direct kiss.

☆ Other additions and improvements

• Improved textures for sand, some floors, grass, fences.
• Fixed several minor weight painting issues for shirts and dresses, clipping issue for tall boots (when used with tights). Old boots will be unusable after this update, so if you had them in inventory, put them into recycle bin, and buy new boots.

After almost two months of reviews and rejections, the App Store finally allowed to update the iOS version of Shoujo City 3D. In order to comply with numerous requests for content removal of the store, some content of the game had to be removed and changed:

• Two equipment slots for underwear, and all underwear (including swimsuits) formerly sold in the game, are removed.
• “Shirt” and “skirt” equipment slots are locked, so clothes in these slots now can be only swapped with other items, but not removed.
• “Crawling” feature is removed.
• The game was renamed from “Shoujo City 3D” to “Anime City 3D”.

The game now has 17+ rating on the App Store, but even with that rating, you’ll have to ride water slides fully clothed, since girls wearing swimsuits at a water park was considered too offensive and objectionable, apparently. Oh well, at least they didn’t force to dress all girls into non-removable burqa or something. Maybe that will be their next request, though.

All these changes (apart from the title) were also introduced to Android version of the game. I’m not really happy with these changes, but I didn’t have any choice, actually.

All versions of the game (PC, iOS and Android) now are at the same version 0.8.12.

Steam and Android version of Shoujo City 3D are updated to version 0.8.12. All updates for iOS version are still rejected by the App Store, and at this point it’s impossible to predict when iOS updates will be resumed.

Updates in this version:

• Christmas decorations in all locations.
• One new hair style.
• In addition to squirrels, seashells and pine cones now can be exchanged for money at Shoujo Mart.
• Improved textures for various road and building elements in all maps (pavements, railings, stairs, utility poles, pillars, floors).
• Fixed an issue that didn’t allow to cancel a Ferris wheel ride if you had a water gun or swim ring in hands.

Steam and Android versions of Shoujo City 3D are updated to version 0.8.11. All updates to iOS version are delayed for an unknown period of time, since the App Store rejects updates to the game since October 23.

This is a very small technical update to remove temporary objects and decorations for two October events (Halloween and water gun mini-game).

Next major update will be a new Akihabara map, but due to complexity and size of the area it will take a few months as yet to prepare all required assets. That’s why, until Akihabara map is ready for release, next few updates most probably will be relatively small additions.

Updates in this version:

• Water gun mini-game is moved to a new permanent place in the Summer Town map.
• New clothes: tall boots (fashion store), miko dress (Shinto shrine shop).
• Walking in shallow water now has a separate sound.
• The mechanic of increasing relationship score to unlock girlfriend’s equipment slots is removed.

Today I got an email from Google informing that my Google Play developer account was terminated. Both 3D and 2D versions of Shoujo City for Android are gone.

I don’t know why the account was terminated – I got a generic auto-generated email mentioning that my account was violating Google Play policies, without any details and explanation. Until today, there were no prior notifications about any issues with my games.

I apologize to all people who played Shoujo City 3D and 2D on Android and were waiting for future updates. At this point I don’t know what to do about this.

UPDATE (November 3, 2018): my developer account was restored after an appeal. To tell the truth, I didn’t think it would be possible, since every story I found on the Internet said that all appeals for restoring banned developer accounts are always rejected. I still didn’t get any explanations for why my account was terminated, or why it was restored, and don’t know if there was some issue with one of published games or this was an error.