Main Walkthrough

This guide is a work in progress. I'll keep updating it as I play through the game and learn more.

Welcome to Yog-Sothoth's Yard! A visual novel / dating sim / resource management game, Yog-Sothoth's Yard places you, the player character, in charge of a spooky hotel. The hotel quickly becomes overrun by monstrously-pretty ladies, and your job is to expand the hotel, keep the guests happy, and perhaps meet the love of your life. (And hope they don't eat you.)

Despite how much text you'll run into during the introduction of the game, Yog-Sothoth's Yard is not strictly a visual novel. There are plenty of systems you need to juggle to keep your hotel running and reach the finish line. This guide will take you through the basics of Yog-Sothoth's Yard's many, many mechanics.

Gameplay

When you're not listening to anime banter between Yog-Sothoth's Yard's many characters, you'll need to actually manage the hotel. You do this by unlocking new rooms, gathering resources via Tasks, collecting money from Guests, and otherwise managing your time. There's a lot that you can do during each work period, once you've unlocked everything, and you can only handle so much.

Yog-Sothoth's Yard gameplay is divided into units of time, like so:

  • Each day is divided into day and night. You can perform tasks during both periods of the day.
  • Seven days is equal to a week. Weeks are divided into Chapters, usually introducing a new character.
  • Four weeks (28 days) is equal to a month. At the end of each month your hotel is scrutinized and rated, and if it meets specific requirements it will receive a Hotel Star Rating boost. (More on that below.) At the end of each month there is also a Blood Moon, which plays a role in Divinations. (More on that below, as well.)
The visual novel storyline kicks in at pre-determined times throughout the year, advancing the plot. Between these story sections you are given Tasks to complete, and if you fail to complete them before the story picks up again your hotel may not prove adequate for the story's needs. Your goal is to maintain and expand the hotel without falling behind on the story.

The two sections of each day - day and night - consist of a static turn. During these times you are given a specific amount of AP, which you can use to fulfil your duties. If you run out of AP that section of time will automatically end. You can also choose Rest (top-right corner) to end a section of day prematurely, which will restore some SAN. More on SAN a bit later. (Generally speaking, you'll probably use up your AP rather than Rest. There's a lot to do)


Your screen is divided into a few important sections:
  • The main menu is in the upper-left corner of the screen. You can use these icons to open the Settings, check the game's tutorials, or save / load your game. Make sure you save often, and occasionally create multiple saves, so you don't get stuck thanks to poor Task management.
  • In the top-right corner of the screen you'll find your current resources, as well as a breakdown of the state of the hotel. We'll get into these numbers below, though if you want more information now you can hover over the various icons for a bit of an explanation. You can also find the option to Rest down here.
  • In the bottom-left corner of the screen you'll find your current Tasks. More on Tasks below.
  • In the bottom-right corner of the screen you'll find more menu options that will appear as you progress through the game. These include Operation (changes based on the room you're in), Affinity (list of your relationship with your Staff Members), Oracle (which Divination option is currently active), and Switch (allows you to change your current location in the hotel).

Stats

If you check the menu in the top-right corner of the screen you'll see a breakdown of the hotel's stats. This list includes your current resources, state of mind, and the condition of the hotel. 
  • Gold - How much gold you have in your coffers. You need gold to expand and upgrade the hotel, as well as to earn a higher Hotel Star Rating.
  • SAN - Your Sanity level. A measure of how your mind is doing. Look under Divinity for a more thorough explanation of SAN.
  • Clean - The cleanliness level of the hotel. You need to maintain a Cleanliness level of 600 or more to receive a higher Hotel Star Rating. Little Leaf can help you clean if you visit her room.
  • Guest - The number of Guests currently staying at the hotel, as well as how many Guests you can accomodate in total.
  • Souls - A special form of currency. We'll look at it in greater detail below. (Once I get that far.)
  • Evil - A measure of the evil deeds you've committed while running the hotel. (I'll get back to this.)
  • AP - A measure of your stamina. Most activities require 1 AP to perform. Once you run out of AP the current half of the day will end, moving you either to the second half (day to night) or to the next day. If you choose to Rest while you still have AP you'll regain some SAN.
You'll also find the current day and week above this menu.


Locations and Rooms

If you trigger the Switch option (bottom-right corner of the screen) you'll see that the hotel consists of a series of different floors. Each one fulfills a different function:
  • The 1st Floor consists of the Front Desk, as well as the rooms for your various Staff Members. You'll spend most of your time here.
  • The upper floors contain rooms for Guests. You'll need to visit these floors to collect gold from Guests, assuming you haven't unlocked every room on a given floor.
  • The Yard is the front of the hotel. Here you can use AP to clean up the grounds in exchange for resources. You'll also run into the occasional Special Guest out here, and seeing to their needs can earn you bonuses. Note that you can click and drag the Yard's map around, revealing more interactions.
Each room has a Level. You can expend AP and resources to upgrade the rooms. Doing so will improve the room's overall rating, as unlock extra bonuses. Upgrading the Front Desk, for example, will unlock the other floors of the hotel, while upgrading the guest rooms will allow you to cram more Guests into each one - as well as charge extra.

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Guests

A hotel is hardly a hotel without Guests, and you'll need a regular stream of Guests to expand your services. The Guests will occupy the rooms on the upper floors of the hotel, and each Guest has their own store of gold and selection of items. Clicking on the Guest will give you a breakdown of what they have. Note that you have to Enter the room (click on the room from the outside view) to view their belongings.

The quality of your Guests is determined by the Hotel Star Rating of your hotel. The more you refurbish your hotel and upgrade the rooms, the better your Star Rating becomes. Hover your mouse over the ? mark in the top-right corner of the screen to see your current Hotel Star Rating, and to see what level of Guests will visit your hotel. Hotel Star Ratings only change at the end of each month, assuming you've fulfilled the prerequisites for the next level.

The important thing to note about Guests - especially early on - is that you need to collect their fee for staying at the hotel manually. The Guest's fee appears as a gold coin above the room. If you don't collect the gold before the Guest leaves the next day you'll lose out on their fee. Once you've refurbished all of the rooms on a floor you'll no longer have to collect the fee manually.

Guests have items in their inventory. Occasionally when a Guest leaves they will forget one or more of their items in their room. These are yours to keep.

A bit later in the game you'll unlock the Strategy Operation. This allows you to dictate the flow of Guests into your hotel, and what they're like. If you prefer Guests with more money, for example, you can set your Strategy to Richer. If you're looking for Guests with lots of items for you to snag, by contrast, you can set your Strategy to More Items. The Strategy will come into effect the next day.


Staff Members

As the story progresses you'll meet a cast of oddball characters, and many of them will decide to remain in the hotel. These characters will eventually become Staff Members, and you can refurbish a room on the ground floor for each one. The first one you'll meet is Little Leaf, and more will be unlocked in relatively short order.

The various Staff Members unlock a different function in the hotel. Little Leaf, for example, allows you to Clean the hotel, at the cost of one AP. Other characters can do other things, all of which are beneficial in the long run. You can trigger their unique abilities by clicking on their rooms, choose Enter, and then choosing Operation (bottom-right corner of the screen).

Each Staff Member is a vital part of the story, and you'll see them a lot in cut scenes. Quite often you'll get a chance to respond to them in conversations, and if you do so favorably you may raise your Affinity with that character. Raising your Affinity enough with a particular character can unlock different endings to Yog-Sothoth's Yard.

In addition to raising Affinity through cut scenes, you can get a boost by Dating your Staff Members. You'll find the option to Date Staff Members under the Affinity menu, in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Tasks

As the story progresses you will be given a series of Tasks. The more important of these are the Main Tasks. Main Tasks are storyline requirements which will unlock elements of the hotel, expanding the things you can do. In order to get everything up and running properly you'll want to complete Main Tasks as quickly as you can.

Alongside the Main Tasks of the game you'll also receive the occasional Side Task. These Tasks are not mandatory, but they will improve your hotel if completed, and earn you some extra resources. Completing Side Tasks is useful, but you should focus on keeping the hotel operating smoothly rather than go out of your way. You'll usually complete Side Tasks while accomplishing other goals.

All assigned Tasks appear in a list in the bottom-left corner of the screen. You can scroll down to see all of the Side Tasks currently available.

Hotel Star Rating

If you hover over the question mark in the top-right corner of the screen you'll see a breakdown of the hotel's current achievements. This list shows you how far you need to go before reaching the next Hotel Star Rating level. At the end of each month the hotel will be evaluated, and if you fulfill each of these four requirements your hotel will rank more highly. This means better-quality guests, which in turn means more money for your hotel.

There are four areas in which you need to excel to boost your Hotel Star Rating:

  • Summary - Your total income from renting out rooms. The more Guests you have, the more money you'll make.
  • Clean - The cleanliness of your hotel. You need to get this number over 600, and keep it there, before your hotel is evaluated. Little Leaf can help with this.
  • Build - The number of times you've expanded your hotel. The more you unlock and upgrade rooms, the higher this number will climb. Eventually you'll need to expand onto unused floors, so don't neglect to upgrade your Front Desk.
  • Insight - The number of Catalog entries you've unlocked. You'll boost this number by meeting new types of Guests, acquiring new items, unlocking new Oracles, and so forth.
Your Current Hotel Star Rating is located at the bottom of this list. Beneath it is a brief outline of the quality of guests you'll receive at your current rating.


Hoshino

Early on in Yog-Sothoth's Yard you'll meet Hoshino, a traveling merchant. During the second week of the game he'll offer to join the hotel as a permanent fixture, and if you take Hoshino up on his offer he'll remain in the Yard at all times. Hoshino sells a variety of unique items which can come in handy in a pinch - for example, you can purchase Premium Vouches from him to quickly add to the Clean stat, assuming you ran out of time to clean the place yourself.

Hoshino's wares refresh every Monday, so it's worth checking in on him regularly. You can also sell unwanted items to Hoshino, though his sell prices are much lower than his buy prices.

(Note that you can buy Hoshino himself, albeit for a ridiculous amount of gold. What does this do? Well, save up and find out...)


Divination and SAN

Once you've reached the first Friday you'll begin receiving a daily Divination, allowing you to choose an Oracle. Oracles grant a minor bonus to the hotel's operations. You can choose from one of three Oracles each day. Oracles also show up if you receive a Soulless Bubble Special Guest. You can also choose to ignore the Oracles altogether, if you prefer. This guide provides more information on Divination.

Each time you choose an Oracle you will lose a bit of SAN (Sanity). You can check out your SAN in the top-left corner of the screen, and if you hover over the SAN score you'll see your character's current condition. This starts out as Stable, but losing too much SAN will cause your score to degrade. Your Guests become a little more... monstrous... when your SAN is low, and you'll get a Game Over if you reach zero SAN. Choosing to Rest while you still have AP will restore some SAN, as will choosing to Date your Staff Members.


Alchemy

Once you refurbish a room for Yevna you'll unlock Alchemy. Alchemy allows you to combine lesser resources into greater items. Alchemy takes on four different forms:
  • Random Alchemy, wherein you combine two or more items and receive a third, not-really-randomized material
  • Formula Alchemy, wherein you combine specific items to create a specific resource, according to a Formula
  • Summoning, wherein you sacrifice resources to forcefully pull Guests into the hotel to fill vacancies - Summoning requires AP
  • Soul Alchemy, wherein you sacrifice resources in exchange for Souls - this doesn't unlock until Week 12


Restaurant

Once you've refurbished a room for Haa Lou Ling and set up the Restaurant, you'll unlock the Restaurant function. The Restaurant offers meals to Guests on a daily basis, bringing in extra coin. You can affect the number of interested Guests via specific Oracles, or by simply upgrading the Restaurant.

In order for Haa Lou Ling to prepare meals for guests you need to fulfill three prerequisites:
  • Find Cookbooks that teach a recipe 
  • Determine which ingredients are needed to create the recipe under the Cookbook tab
  • Prepare the recipe under the Cooking tab - you can buy the ingredients you need from Hoshino
The Restaurant is a complex enough topic that we'll look at it in greater detail in another section of the guide. In order to make the most of the Restaurant you'll also need to delve into the next topic that pops up...


Forest Exploration

During the fifth week - shortly after you get the Restaurant up and running, which is convenient - you'll unlock the Forest Exploration activity. This allows you to send a shadow of I out into the forest to explore, and, more than likely, bring back items. You can expend resources and AP to upgrade your Shadow's Exploration level, which boosts its Stamina and increases the chances of it bringing back useful items.

For the most part Forest Exploration is used as a means of finding ingredients for your Restaurant. To determine which section of the forest your shadow visits you need to set the Main Food in the menu on the right. The shadow will then head out into the forest at nightfall if you expend 1 AP, and you'll receive the ingredients it finds the next day.

We'll look at Forest Exploration in greater depth in its own section of the guide. If you plan to make lots of money from the Restaurant, however, it is essential that you not neglect Forest Exploration.


Slaughter

Once you've recruited Tlipoca, during the ninth week, you can unlock the Slaughter command by refurbishing a room for the reaper. If you choose Slaughter Tlipoca will murder all of the current Guests. You'll receive all of their money and items, as well as some Soul Fragments and Soul Drops. (For obvious reasons, you won't get any money from the Daily Account if you do this - unless people visited the Restaurant before they died, anyway.) Upgrading Tlipoca's Room will increase the efficiency of this command and earn you more Souls.

Using the Slaughter command will immediately empty the hotel. It will also take a heavy toll on your SAN and Clean, and increase your Evil stat. Unless you're determined to be a crazed villain, use Slaughter sparingly. Note that you can only use Slaughter at night.


Mine Excavation

During the thirteenth week Little Leaf will develop a machine that allows you to go on Excavations. Accessible in the Yard, Mine Excavations allow you to dig through the earth and pull up precious metals and other items. We'll look at Mine Excavations in another section of the guide, though if you've played Minesweeper you probably understand exactly how the minigame works.

Work in progress!