Goonhammer Reviews The Real Face of a VTuber

Editorial Note: A copy of the game was provided to us for this review by the publisher.

In a previous review, I mentioned that I have had a long history and love for puzzles and puzzle games, and recently I noted that I felt Thousand Line: Last Defense Academy was my favorite game of 2025. I love mysteries and detective fiction, and I can actually trace most of my adult life to my playing and enjoying Ace Attorney, through which I met my partner. Detective stories, movies, and games make up a big part of my formative media identity, and I've loved Detective Conan since it's been around, so to say that these types of games are something I know very well and also take very seriously is a bit of an understatement, so when we were offered a review copy of The Real Face of a VTuber from Developer 莉莉恩工作室 and publisher WhisperGames, I accepted eagerly. After spending about 7 hours with the game from start to finish, I'm glad that I did, but does that mean you should pick it up? Let's crack the case and get to the real truth.

VTuber Stands for Virtual YouTuber

So true, queen.

Around the Goonhammer office, I've been responsible for a few things, but one of them was introducing the term "VTuber" to the Discord, and after having to try to explain the concept a few times, I feel like the best way to sum it up if you are unfamiliar is that a VTuber is a performer who uses an animated, digital avatar to represent them as a persona, through which viewers can interact with the streamer as they talk, play games, make music, paint minis, or do just about anything you can think of. They are essentially avatars that relieve the pressure of having to be live on camera, and help create a bond between viewers and performers. There is probably a VTuber that exists for just about anything you can think of, because they're just people using a persona to engage in a hobby or passion; some of them are "corporate", meaning they have a large media company that helps manage and promote them, while others are "indie", meaning they do most of that themselves.

Yes, this is really the victim.

The Real Face of a VTuber begins with the murder of the president of a VTuber company that is responsible for managing the wildly popular talent named "Kuripa", and prosecutor Justin Truth (you) are tasked with discovering who killed the president and why from amongst the staff of Lilien Entertainment, as well as figuring out the real person behind "Kuripa" and how her true identity plays into the solution to the mystery. There are various red herrings you can fall into and determining the real killer and their motives will lead you to the solution, but getting there requires careful attention to details.

I liked the little ways in which the game changes if you are or are not streaming it; while most people won't be, it was still a cool option that shows they know their audience.

The developers are pretty obviously VTuber fans, or at the very least extremely familiar with the culture; Lilien Entertainment and their business concerns that pop up during the narrative are realistic, from concerns over talent privacy, doxxing from rabid fans and trolls, to even engaging in the debate about whether adult content will hurt or help the brand. I'm fairly familiar with VTubers (an understatement really), but even if you are not, the game does a good job of explaining the concepts and not spending more time than it needs to on the concept; the protagonist, Justin, essentially has no idea what a VTuber is, so other characters fill him in to assist unfamiliar players, which I appreciated.

The meta use of streaming and other tech in the game felt honest and real, rather than where most games or media fail completely at understanding the media they're 'about'.

The game also uses Kuripa in interesting ways, having her streams become part of the game and a larger concept of the narrative wrinkles and mystery, with Kuripa promising that "Only Kuripa Speaks the Truth", reminding me of colored text from games like Umineko Ni Naku Koro Ni, which encouraged me to pay close attention to her streaming segments in the game and discovering key clues to the overall mystery through them, which really felt rewarding; there is nothing worse than mysteries not rewarding players for figuring things out on their own and piecing the case together without being explicitly told the solution.

Un-Objectionable Fun

Yes, your name is Justin Truth. No, the name puns are not the best part here, but that's fine.

I don't think it is dismissive to note that The Real Face of a VTuber is heavily inspired by Ace Attorney, as the game even has an "Objection!" animation during cross-examination sequences, and much of the gameplay loop is very similar to that of the AA games. You talk to witnesses, collect evidence, and then need to present relevant information and items at specific times to "crack" the case (or witnesses). There are some interesting wrinkles that I enjoyed, though, such as how cleanly the log keeps all of the information you receive, or how the game does not hold your hand in terms of figuring out the case. You can absolutely make wrong choices and mess up, but you also are rarely forced to "wait" for the game to let you make the right call (a pet peeve of mine that Ace Attorney sadly never grew out of); if you figure out what you need to do or the hint you needed to uncover to move to the next step, the game lets you take advantage of it.

Since there is only one real "case" in the game, the six hour~ time to complete also felt just about as long as I would have tolerated. I also liked that the game broke up the flow of the game into various stages, starting with investigating the crime scene, interviewing witnesses and gathering information, and then the courtroom sequence as the finale. The biggest thing I loved about this game, though? I know this may seem silly, but I loved that the auto-text scroll feature had a speed function and actually could move as fast as I could read. I read exceptionally fast, and I often find that any visual novel style game I play has the slowest auto mode in the world, meaning that I am furiously smashing my space bar or M1 button to speed up the text to match my literacy rate. You can adjust it as you like, but I loved that I could set it to auto, get comfortable, and settle in as the game told the story in a speed that matched my comfort.

The mystery itself was also fun; I haven't quite mentioned it yet, but the game is a comedy, often taking things not overly seriously and getting somewhat meta with the narrative and game experience (the victim is a literal giant chicken, so let's be real). There is a murder at play and a crime to uncover, but the game doesn't take itself exceptionally seriously, while still ensuring that when it gets silly it doesn't get distracting. I will mention that I, personally, could probably have done without the "Flirt" text option that pops up at some point. Justin doesn't come across as a creep inherently, but the fact that you can flirt with almost every female character in the game was a little silly for me; it never took me out of the game entirely, and I debate if the developer included this as a slight meta joke about visual novel protagonists in general, but it also is the type of joke that doesn't "do" anything with it if it is being meta.

Zelda Hoss, you get it.

That nitpick aside, I actually did appreciate that the game was low on fanservice, sexual innuendo, or other aspects that would have cheapened the game. I also found the women to be fun and far more dynamic personalities than I expected. Some of them certainly fit specific archetypes (the "young", girly airhead, the disaster shut-in), while others felt more nuanced, like the woman who states blatantly that she uses flirting to help social situations because of how people treat women, or the woman who notes that she dates men only because society seems to imply she should, not because she likes doing it. I knew very little about the game going in, so these last two details made me think on them a bit more once the lesbian characters and relationships started to pop-up in the game, which I was happily surprised by. I would hesitate to say this is a "Yuri Game", but really I just enjoyed seeing lesbian characters who weren't played as jokes or fanservice for straight players.

There Is Always One Truth

I appreciate that if you don't actually pay attention to what is being said, even though you are often allowed to ask every question, it still relies on you knowing what you need to look for.

I mentioned my love of mysteries, and part of that love comes with being overly critical in them when it comes to how the crime plays out and is exposed. I often dislike mysteries that seem ill-thought out or rely on far too much happenstance or accepting extreme circumstances to be plausible, and my plausible deniability tolerance for mysteries is exceptionally low. As mentioned, I can tell that Real Face of a VTuber draws inspiration from Ace Attorney, but there were times in Ace Attorney that the cases were highly out of the realm of plausibility (even using literal magic in some circumstances), and while that was fine, those were often my least favorite moments.

Here, though, I found that the mystery was well done and reasonable, and although I had figured out some of the twists ahead of time, I feel as though that's more to the fact that I spend a lot of time around mysteries than anything else, and that also is not meant as a negative. Sometimes, knowing you solved the puzzle and seeing how you did so is the best part, and I still hold that the mystery here was well constructed and used the VTuber industry effectively to make for interesting twists, turns, and stumbling blocks for the player's attempt at uncovering the murderer. There are also plenty of ways the game tries to throw you off the case, and at the end, tells you how well you did, how many hints you needed, and even teases you if you had to save-scum to get the right answer or better outcome.

The reason I applaud this so much is that a good, well constructed mystery can play with reality a little bit; we have to accept that certain things could have happened, and the more of those we have to accept, the less convincing a mystery is. Perhaps a bit unlike dominoes placed in a line, more of them does not make for a better showing at the end with mysteries; I feel The Real Face of a VTuber did a great job with the mystery at the heart of the story, and doesn't try to pull anything outlandish or unbelievable from it; in fact, I actually really applaud the game for having a fairly grounded murder mystery where the victim is ostensibly a giant chicken. I also appreciate that the player character, Justin, is never portrayed as a super-human detective, but instead comes up with plausible ideas for solving the case.

Final Verdict: Not Guilty of Wasting Your Time

I really enjoyed playing The Real Face of a VTuber; I had to play it over the course of a few days while attending to my day job, but I found myself thinking about the mystery on my downtime and drives, wanting to know how the story would go and if my theory about the mystery was correct. Even though the game relies on VTubers as a main thematic dressing, it never felt like it was exclusively for VTuber fans or those aware of the concept to enjoy. If you like mystery novel games and solving murder mysteries, then The Real Face of a VTuber is a great time, and I'm curious to see what games might come from this developer in the future. The localization by WhisperGames is also very good; as someone who had a history of working in localization, I really appreciated that the game's translation was effective, simple, and ensured the consistency of the story made sense (I have certainly played a few mysteries where bad or confusing translations made the mystery nearly impossible to piece together), and after playing Type-Noise: Shonen Shojo from the same publisher, I think it is safe to say WhisperGames has earned my trust in doing a great job with their projects. If you want to give the game a go, it is available on Steam and less than 15 dollars, so I hope you end up enjoying solving the mystery as much as I did if you give it a play!

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Tags: Review | video game | video game review | vtuber | vtubing