Alpha 0.4 update comes with a new unique feature that I have been planning since long ago!

☆ Dakimakura dating

This feature was inspired by the famous Japanese gamer and artist known online under nickname Nii-san (兄さん) and his dakimakura girlfriend Nemu-tan (a hugging pillow with Nemu Asakura from Da Capo series). For many years he used to run (and still does) a blog posting photos and stories about him traveling and visiting cafes, amusement parks, shrines, and many other places, taking his Nemu-tan dakimakura with him everywhere.

You can check Nii-san’s blog here (Japanese language): http://love-nemu.seesaa.net

Now, after starting a new game, you can choose to get a real anime girl, or a dakimakura girlfriend.

Advantages of dakimakura girlfriend:

• she doesn’t require food, so you don’t have to feed her every day (you still can have a dinner with her in your apartment or in cafe and get bonus relationship points);
• she won’t follow you everywhere you go – you can leave her on a bench or just on the ground while you go shopping, and pick later;

Disadvantages of dakimakura girlfriend:

• you’ll have to carry her in hands to transport, since she can’t walk on her own;
• due to being a pillow she won’t show any emotions or kiss you back.

Thus far there is only one pillow case with an anime girl, but I hope to add more later (these require a lot of time to draw). As far as I know, this is the first time dakimakuras are used in a video game as a gameplay element, so it is a completely unique and original feature.

EDIT (Nov 19): it came to my attention after publishing this update that there are at least a few other video games out there with dakimakuras appearing in them, so my statement from above about “first time… used in a video game” is incorrect.

☆ Neko Cafe (WIP)

The cafe is open and now you can visit it with your girlfriend. This is an alternative to cooking food in your apartment. Some interior details in the cafe are still missing and will be added in future updates.

☆ New clothes & accessories

• Thigh-highs (4 colors);
• Daisy hairpins (can be bought in the fashion store, alongside with headphones (3 colors) and android girl ears);
• White cat ears and white cat tail for cosplay (in the gachapon machine near convenience store);
• Red mini-skirt (can be bought in the fashion store, alongside with shorts);

☆ Miscellaneous additions and improvements

• All Halloween decorations from previous update are removed.
• New NPC promoting Shoujo City on Patreon;
• Better collisions for squirrels;
• Optimization of shadows in all scenes (increased FPS);
• New (much better) water with refraction effect in the pool;
• Improved animation for short hair;
• New animation for standing up from crouching pose (during hide and seek mini-game);

☆ Fixed bugs

• Minor clipping issues for hands during kissing scene;
• Issue that was preventing girlfriend from eating served food if she was holding some object;
• A minor error with displaying “Arrested!” message for translated languages.

☆ Translations

All translations are updated according to their current status in the game wiki.

As of today I have spent over a year developing Shoujo City 3D, releasing the first alpha build previews to everybody for free. Continuous development of the game and implementation of all planned features and content requires years of daily full time work. Which means only one thing: either I find a way for this project to earn money so I can work on it full-time, or it begins to die. If it doesn’t get any money, then I can work on it only a few odd hours a week as a hobby – and then it forever will stay in the current small demo stage without any major locations and features ever implemented.

If you like how this project develops thus far and want to see it growing to its full potential in the future, please consider donating to this game through Patreon.

If you want to know what exactly you will be paying for, please check the development roadmap for planned game features and content below.

Development Roadmap

2018

• Shinto Complex location – third game location. Will contain new dating spots, food and souvenir stalls, as well as several area-specific activities, like drawing omikuji, getting Shinto miko clothes, and feeding carps in a pond. Also it will be a central spot for Hatsumode (celebrating New Year) dating event.
• Ocean Beach – fourth game location. In the beach area you will be able to buy swimsuits and swimming accessories, swim in the ocean, collect seashells, eat special summer snacks in the sea cafe.
• Tanabata Event – planned for July 2018. The event will include special clothes, fireworks, firefly catching event.
• Girlfriend’s personality – current implementation of “girlfriend” in the game lacks any distinct personality, which is to be fully designed and developed as yet. Personalities will be implemented through a set of various parameters ranging on a scale from 0% to 100% (e.g., calm-energetic), which will allow all girls to react differently on various events and interactions.
• New interactions with girlfriend (including holding hands).

2019 and beyond

• Akihabara area – this will be the largest game locaiton with accurate recreation of the central part of Akihabara, containing game and cosplay shops, arcades.
• Zoo location – for visiting with your girlfriend, taking photos of animals, dating, and participating in several area-specific events.
• Park location (including playground activities).
• School clubs and activities, including cosplay club, sports club, musical club, literature club. By joining various clubs, you and your girlfriend can participate in various events and activities, which will be unique for every club.
• NPCs with different behaviors to populate all game locations.
• Cosplay outfits.
• Story Mode – will contain specific relationship goals to achieve and game events different for every day.

This list is by no means complete, and contains only outlines of the main goals. If you want to see all of that being implemented in the game, and a lot more, please support Shoujo City on Patreon.

Update (January 8, 2018): the Patreon campaign wasn’t successful and was cancelled in December 2017. The development roadmap in this post, which was an integral part of the Patreon campaign, is outdated and no longer relevant.

To continue development and get funds for implementing planned features, in January 2018 the game was released on Steam Early Access.

It’s Halloween time in Shoujo City! You can walk around the city at night, win special Halloween items and glow in the dark accessories for you and your girlfriend, and try new snacks in the taiyaki shop.

Updates Log:

☆ Night mode is enabled for Halloween event. All game locations are decorated with carved pumpkins, lanterns, and lights. All NPCs have Halloween costumes.

☆ Special Halloween items (can be obtained from a new Halloween UFO catcher):

• Witch Hat
• Halloween Casquette
• Light Up Cat Ears (3 colors)
• Light Up Bracelets (3 colors)
• Pumpkin Pocky
• Pumpkin

☆ More details for the Taiyaki Shop – a grill stand with sweet potato, lanterns, new signboards. New snacks in the shop: baked sweet potato and grilled octopus.

☆ Night squirrels will appear in the school area instead of regular red squirrels.

☆ All Yandere Simulator mini-figurines are redone with better quality. Now they have more polygons and new textures. A new Musume Ronshaku figurine is added and can be obtained from the same UFO catcher machine. Now there are six Yandere Simulator collectible figurines in total.

☆ All game texts and translations are updated according to their current status in the wiki.

There was a significant bug in the previous release, reported by Hatsune Elissu – if you were arrested while using smartphone camera, your character would become invisible. This issue is fixed now in alpha 0.3a (download links are in the sidebar menu).

Also, all translations in alpha 0.3a are updated according to their current status in the wiki. If you want to help translating the game into one of languages listed above, or into a new language you know but which isn’t available in the game as yet, please send me an email (check about/contact page for email address). All translations are done by volunteers, so availability and completion status for all languages (apart from English and Russian, which are handled by me) depend solely on whether there are people willing to translate game texts.

Note: due to implementation of various new features, all save files from alpha 0.1 and 0.2 are incompatible with this update, you’ll have to start a new game.

Updages Log:

$ New NPCs

NPC characters now have new behavior scripts. Thus far there are two types of NPC behaviors implemented: shop seller and student council.

Shop sellers will look at you when you are close, and can say a few lines.

Student council patrols an area around the school and will arrest you for walking around without skirt or dress, and for attempting to kiss your girlfriend within her patrol range. Once the chasing sequence starts you can attempt to run outside school gates and thus escape. If you are caught by student council you will be fined for 1,000 Yen.

$ Hide and Seek (new dating activity)

Instead of completing one date to proceed to next day, now you can choose a dating activity to do, which can be dating, or playing hide & seek. In the future there will be other activities added, so you can do different things on different days instead of repeating the same date every day.

To start playing hide and seek, walk towards “H&S” icon and click on it. Your girlfriend will hide somewhere in the school area, and you’ll have to find her within a limited amount of time.

$ A recipe book

Now you’ll have a recipe book in your inventory, containing all recipes for cooking. Drop it on your hand slot to open and read. Optional ingredients are hidden, so you’ll have a choice to cook the basic recipe with lower quality, or attempt to add more ingredients to unlock full recipe. Once you manage to cook something with 100% quality for the first time, the full recipe will be added to your book.

$ New clothes & accessories

• a slot for hand accessories is implemented. Right now you can use it to wear wristbands, which can be bought in the clothes store: pink wristband and panda wristband
• new hats: pink casquette, blue casquette, blue baseball cap (all meshes for baseball caps are redone with better quality)

$ Ice cream vending machine

Ice-creams you can buy: strawberry, chocolate, matcha, mango, coffee, and watermelon flavors.

$ UFO catchers improvements – while operating UFO catchers now you can rotate camera to sides for more precise positioning of the crane.

$ Additional objects in the school area

• more interior details in the fashion store
• teacher desks in all classrooms first floor; all student desks are remade with better quality
• swim boards storage spot, racks and lockers in the pool building
• a few additional background buildings

$ New food & recipes

• pancakes
• leek can now be used as a cosplay item

$ Miscellaneous

• stationary camera view controllers inside the pool building and gardening storage, near the entrance door in the apartment room
• a new poster in the apartment room explaining item zoom mechanics (since many people didn’t know how to place figurines on racks and how to examine them with item zoom feature)
• when using right-click in inventory, camera now zooms by default on head instead of hips
• increased girlfriend’s running speed to prevent her being left too far behind on fast running

$ Fixed bugs

• disappearing hats and held items when swapped with stacked squirrels
• wardrobe door animation error – when opened and closed fast, sometimes the door remained open after closing wardrobe menu
• sky shader issues – when tree foliage was overlaying sky while viewed through in-game smartphone, occasionally it was producing small graphics artefacts
• wrong animation for cosplay tails during walking and running
• several camera clipping issues on transition between different modes
• errors in ramen recipes
• numerous small issues with textures for various objects
• missing previews for crab and squid sishi

$ Translations

• thanks to contributors, Thai, German, Chinese, and Czech were added to game languages
• all translations and texts are updated according to their current status in the game wiki
• the language selection menu is redesigned to fit more entries (language now can be set only from the main menu, the smartphone language menu was removed as unnecessary)

Shoujo City alpha 0.3 with new features and content is coming on October 12!

Also, Czech and German were added to the list of supported game languages. If you know these and want to help translating the game, please send me an email.

A recipe book is coming in alpha 0.3 update! Now you won’t have to feed your girlfriend by burned food any longer. I still wanted to leave some room for exploration and experimenting, so the recipe book will work as follows: in the beginning you’ll know all basic recipes, but with optional ingredients hidden. You’ll have to choose to cook either the basic recipe with lower quality, or attempt to add optional ingredients. Once you manage to cook something with 100% quality for the first time, the full recipe with all optional ingredients will be added to your book.

If you have other ideas about improving cooking and recipe gameplay, please post them in the comments sections of this article!

A video by Newzkung Raccoonza (Thai language).

I know there are a lot of fans of Shoujo City in Thailand, but there is no Thai language in the game as yet – because we don’t have any translators for that language. If somebody wants to begin translating Shoujo City into Thai language, please send me an email to get an account at the game wiki, where all texts are stored and managed. If we find people willing to help, this language will be added in next update!

We are also looking for active translators willing to help with other already added languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Indonesian. The game grows every day and new texts are added all the time. Maintaining and updating all texts in different languages requires an active community of contributors willing to help with translations. My email address and more information for translators can be found at http://wiki.shoujocity.com

UPDATE (Sep 27): several contributors have contacted me and started translating the game into Thai language already, so this language will be included in alpha 0.3 release. Thank you everyone!

UPDATE (Sep 29): one person have contacted me offering to contribute Polish language translations. If anybody else reading this wants to help translating game texts into Polish language, please send me an email. If we find a few people willing to contribute, this language will be included in alpha 0.3.

Updates Log:

1. Yandere Simulator collectible items

• Mini-figurines of Ayano Aishi, Kokona Haruka, Oka Ruto, Osana Najimi, Midori Gurin;
• Yandere Simulator t-shirts (4 designs).

All these items can be obtained from two new Yandere Simulator UFO catchers. After obtaining a mini-figurine, you can place it on a rack in your apartment. By clicking on an item on a rack, you can examine it in detail.

Note: “Yandere Simulator” is copyrighted by Yandere Dev ( http://yanderesimulator.com ). All “Yandere Simulator” characters and images are used with official permission by Yandere Dev.

2. New UFO Catchers physics and designs

All mechanics for UFO Catchers were redone. Now they have more accurate physics and collisions, a new system for detecting won prizes. In addition to “catching balls” type, now there is also another UFO catcher type, where you’ll have to push boxes from racks.

3. Item zoom feature

After placing an item on a rack in your apartment, you can click on it (in 3D space, not in your inventory) and go to a new mode where you can rotate item to see all details.

4. A new clothes store (WIP) where you can buy clothes for you and your girlfriend. New clothes:

• School sailor fuku (long and short sleeves)
• School bloomers for PE (red and blue)
• 6 new sandals
• Cotton tights (18 colors)
• School dress (4 designs, with black and white aprons)
• School bows (4 designs, white and brown)
• Tops (8 designs) – in a new gachapon machine
• Android Girl ears (cosplay accessory)

5. New items in the convenience store

• Food: Octopus, Squid, Crab, Leek, Scallions, Ramen Noodles, Udon Noodles, Soba Noodles, Flour, Pork, Chicken
• Umbrellas (5 designs)

6. New recipes for cooking

• Octopus Sushi, Squid Sushi, Crab Sushi;
• Pepper Tempura, Onion Tempura, Shiitake Tempura, Salmon Tempura, Tuna Tempura, Yellowtail Tempura, Shrimp Tempura, Takoyaki, Squid Tempura, Crab Tempura;
• Chicken Ramen, Pork Ramen

Note: to cook tempura, use a frying pan, add a basic ingredient (e.g., shrimps for shrimp tempura), flour, eggs, and oil. Cook for 5 minutes.

7. Additional objects in the school area: desks in all classrooms on the first floor, air conditioners in shops, a new shop entrance (WIP) next to “taiyaki shop”, redesign of the area behind the school (across the street).

8. Item description in shops on click.

9. Keyboard shortcuts: “E” key can be used instead of clicking on “action” icon on screen, “Q” can be used for quick access of camera in your in-game smartphone.

10. New custom shaders for all trees and plants. This (hopefully) solves issues with overlaying semi-transaparent objects (windows, umbrellas, etc.), atmosphere effects, smartphone camera issues.

11. Fixed bugs:

• the pocky game now can be started if you OR your girlfriend have pocky in hands (in alpha 0.1 it worked only if you had it in your hands). This isn’t really a fixed bug, just an improvement to game mechanics
• black screen when using smartphone camera (please report if you still encounter this)
• a few minor errors in title menu/inventory navigation
• collision issue when you approached a railing corner in the gym second floor
• a few camera transition issues when it was switching between different modes
• numerous minor issues with various textures and sprites
• a typo on the plates near the school gates
• error with price calculation in the squirrel exchange service
• several issues with body blendshapes and clipping clothes
• navigation map errors that occasionally would cause gf to get stuck near the entrance door in the apratment

12. Updated translations

All translations are updated according to their current status in the game wiki as of Sep 22. If you want to help translating the game into one of supported languages, please visit http://wiki.shoujocity.com