The Real Face of a VTuber review

• Reviews by Richard Hoover
• Published:

It may resemble Phoenix Wright, but this visual novel-styled murder mystery finds an identity all its own

VTubers. Virtual YouTubers. If you’re not familiar with the term, rather than a real person hosting a stream or video, an anime version of the presenter with an alternate name appears in the video instead. Naturally, this virtual avatar need have no resemblance to the real person. Therein lies the challenge in Lilien Games’ visual novel-styled adventure The Real Face of a VTuber. When the founder of the in-game company Lilien Entertainment (no relation) is discovered brutally murdered at the office, suspicion falls on the staff. The company VTuber darling “Kuripa” was streaming live at the time of death, and with more than one person claiming to be the real Kuripa as their alibi, it’s up to prosecutor Justin Truth to sort out the baffling mystery, discover who the streamer is, and hopefully convict the murderer. While the similarities to another beloved courtroom mystery are many and obvious, VTuber adds its own gameplay twists and brings an often funny, sometimes emotional (if somewhat convoluted) character-driven story to make for an enjoyable time in its own right.

The victim is one Mr. Chicken, known as such because he wears a chicken outfit to work and when going online. However, everyone calls him Mr. C. Or rather, called. When his body is found in the office, Justin Truth is assigned to the case, arriving at the scene of the crime with his lawyer-in-training, the food-craving assistant Emily Close, and their colleague, the doggedly persistent policewoman Detective Zelda Hoss.  

In short order, the six Lilien employees show up. Through a heavy load of early exposition, Detective Hoss explains that the murderer is almost certainly one of them. Girlish Amanda Childs is the designer and illustrator of Kuripa, and as such is dubbed her “mother.” Stalwart Honor Chen is Kuripa’s 3D modeler, making her the anime character’s “father.” Sophie Allure, gal about town, is the company’s talent manager, booking events for Kuripa to participate in. Timid introvert Prudence Weeks is the product developer, arranging for the VTuber’s merchandising. Assertive Misty Rioux manages the company’s administration and is next in line for running the business after Mr. C’s death. Finally, there’s Faye Ward, an apparently out-of-touch-with-reality kook who is the team’s project manager but who doesn’t really have much interaction with the rest of the staff. 

When Amanda, Honor, and Sophie all claim to be the real face of Kuripa – with no one, not even the staff of Lilien, knowing the anime character’s true identity – Justin feels certain that one of the three must be guilty. He sets out to discover who and why, and the reason so many are claiming to be this virtual person.

The case takes place across five chapters. Each chapter is divided into two parts, similar to the Phoenix Wright series, which VTuber blatantly references and pays homage to on several occasions. First Justin and his allies do some investigating to gather clues, follow leads, and question the suspects. Once sufficient evidence has been uncovered, the option becomes available to accuse a suspect and go to trial, or players can continue to dig around for even more information.

This optional extra sleuthing isn’t just busywork, as there really are more clues that can be discovered. Combine that with some light choice elements when dealing with the suspects, and the game can go in a number of different directions rather than follow a rote linear path. Once I worked through the clues and multiple sessions at trial and arrived at my conclusion, I felt I had a pretty good handle on the story and had figured out who Kuripa really was. And indeed, I was given a finale as reward for my efforts. However, I was then informed in a post-game scene that I’d only found one possible outcome, and the most surface level one at that. 

A new interface then opened that allowed me to go back to different points in time to try other choices. That led to a second ending for the story. This one involved a subplot that seemed somewhat tangential, as it primarily concerned circumstances relating to side characters who are only ever mentioned a couple of times and never seen. Yet even that wasn’t the really real ending, as I was encouraged again to try different approaches, with the promise that the first two endings had laid the foundation for the third.

I must confess that the final, true ending of the game initially left me with mixed impressions. From a gameplay point of view, I found the most convoluted outcome was something of a cheat. It reveals, through flashback, that Justin Truth was made privy to certain details and facts about the case that both greatly changed the trajectory of the story and were held back from me as a player. However, having lived with the ending for a while now, I’m somewhat prepared to forgive this design choice as the ultimate finale is certainly the most emotionally powerful.

The Real Face of a VTuber

Genre:	Mystery
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D, Slideshow
Theme:	Crime solving, Legal, Whodunit
Perspective:	First-Person
Gameplay:	Investigative, Visual novel, Deduction
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Long (more than 10 hours)
Difficulty:	Medium
Graphic Style:	Cartoon

There’s no cheating on gameplay before that point, though. It took me nine hours of play time to reach the first ending alone. With the mechanism for jumping around scenes provided by the game – a brilliant mechanic that all choice-based games would do well to emulate – it then took nearly five more hours to attain the other two endings, for a total of thirteen and three-quarters hours. I mention this odd completion time because even after the final finale, a couple of additional scenes unlock to help fill in a few more narrative details. (These brought my runtime up to a nice round fourteen hours.) Note that the game consists almost entirely of reading dialog, as none of the characters are voiced, so its length could vary based on your reading speed. 

I was pleased to discover that the game offers a complete free save system, letting you manually record your progress at any time. Given how many games rely on single-slot progressive autosaves these days, I commend the developers on implementing a proper system. This can also help with navigating through alternate paths, as you can save before committing to any dialog choices presented. So too does VTuber’s dedicated interface assist with jumping to different scenes. Choosing between chapters and various decision points in a sort of graph of the game makes exploring other parts very simple.

This illustration of different paths, and the ability to move between them, is not the only difference from the Phoenix Wright games. The biggest come in the trial sections, where you’re playing the prosecutor instead of a defense lawyer. Here the game has more meat to it than its inspiration. During the trial scenes, either Justin or the attorney for the defense, Zoe Dunn, will call a witness to the stand. When it’s Justin’s witness, you must proceed through several rounds of questioning. You are given multiple options but must be careful not to pick ones that lead the witness, call for speculation, represent hearsay, are based on bad-faith assumptions, or are straight up irrelevant. If you pick such a question, Zoe will object and you will be presented with the same options to select a different question, making it impossible to fail. 

When it’s Zoe’s turn to interrogate a witness, you must listen to each question she asks and each response the witness gives to determine, within a relatively short time period, if the statement is legit or if it breaks one of the same rules that calls for an objection. If you miss objecting to something you should have, though, no worries, as your legal assistant Emily will step in and do so on your behalf. 

Once a witness’s main statement is complete, you are then provided the opportunity to ask further questions and press for more details. If you decide that a witness is lying, you can present a piece of evidence you collected earlier to prove that lie. In this way you work through the trial and unravel more of the truth.

Occasionally a new issue pops up that causes a recess, and between trial sessions Justin and his associates have the chance to conduct more investigations, and possibly even accuse someone else entirely of the crime. This again differs from Phoenix Wright, where you actually poke around in various locations looking for clues. In this game, both the pre- and between-trial sections consist mainly of interviewing suspects (again) and choosing different dialog options. At a certain point you also get the opportunity to go “online” (an in-game version, not real life) to view Kuripa’s Yotube channel (the non-trademark-infringing name of the video platform she uploads to) and to peruse the social media platform Y (equally non-trademark-infringing). 

I found the online part of the game dragged on far too long. There are over a dozen videos to watch but only a couple are actually relevant. As for the social media posts, they’re almost like a maze you have to search through as you follow the message threads. It’s vitally important that you click on every link, username, reply thread, and picture available, as only then will the game register that you’ve seen them. At one point, Justin will also ask Emily to arrange chats with various people in Kuripa’s fan community. In order to engage the chat, you have to find one of the social media posts by each particular character and then click on the plain white, non-interactive-looking background of the post to start the chat. I got stuck for almost half an hour on this and only discovered it by accident when my mouse slipped as I was clicking.

With the exceptions of Justin, the judge at the trial, and the deceased Mr. C., all characters in VTuber are women and the term “ample bosom” is quite applicable to a number of them. While there’s nothing truly scandalous in their visual portrayals, initially it does seem like the game is just an excuse to showcase cute anime girls. This first impression does a disservice to the game as a whole, however. There’s a fair amount of depth and complexity in these very different women and the relationships they share, which is the game’s strongest point. Each character is well delineated and their motivations make sense. Learning about them and their individual views on what it means to be a VTuber is definitely a highlight. The story even delves, in a mature way, into the ethics and morality of a real person presenting themselves anonymously online behind the mask of a digital character.

The game’s artwork is decent, although Justin himself looks a touch generic. However, for such a lengthy experience a bit more visual variety would have been nice. Each character typically only has one pose, though the emotions that register on their faces change. With no way to move about the environments and so much of the focus being on the characters, it leaves you looking at the same dozen or so images most of the time. This is occasionally broken up with small inserts of different pieces of evidence, or the X (formerly known as Twitter) and YouTube-esque styling of the online segments. However, these don’t really change the feeling that you’re just watching a series of talking heads for many hours.

With no voices and almost no sound effects, the game is very light on ambient audio as well. On the plus side, each character has their own synth theme that is reflective of who they are, and the music can get very tense during moments of high drama in the trials. In fact, the very first thing that caught my attention when playing this game was the soundtrack. When it starts there’s a bouncy tune that plays over the main menu, sounding mysterious, humorous, and exciting all at the same time.

Final Verdict

Both less and more than a Phoenix Wright game, The Real Face of a VTuber flips the tables and places you in the prosecutor’s seat. With the ability to make choices and a more in-depth trial system, this game provides an engaging play experience that may feel familiar but ends up being distinctly its own. Suspects and allies alike are well written and given distinct personalities, making for fun and compelling companions through the occasionally-too-complex-for-its-own-good murder mystery. The multiple endings are more than just a gimmick, with each one revealing more layers to the story and its surprisingly thoughtful cast. In summation, Your Honours, this game is guilty on all counts of being a fun whodunit that I would definitely recommend to fans of the Ace Attorney series, trial procedurals, or just well-realized characters. 

Richard played The Real Face of a VTuber on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.

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