The Real Face of a VTuber

Introduction

The Real Face of a VTuber, released 13 January 2026 by Lilian Studio and published by WhisperGames, is a courtroom murder mystery visual novel that drops players into the fallout of a death connected to a popular VTuber's real identity, investigating suspects and cross-examining witnesses across a handful of chapters. It sits Positive across a 24-review English sample and Very Positive across the full multilingual pool, though this review also drew on a much larger 118-review Simplified Chinese sample, which runs noticeably more mixed at roughly 81% positive. Reading through both, this review found two genuinely different pictures of the same game.

A small, enthusiastic English-speaking audience

Within this review's English sample, the response is close to unreserved enthusiasm. Reviewers repeatedly and specifically praise the mystery's construction and the courtroom pacing, several directly comparing the experience favourably to Ace Attorney while acknowledging the game's more modest budget, and multiple reviewers specifically credit the incorporation of VTuber culture, citing an in-fiction stream archive players can review as evidence and a social-media investigation system that explains VTubing's mechanics to newcomers without derailing the central mystery. This review found consistent praise for a strong, memorable cast, several reviewers naming specific favourites, and multiple reviewers separately credit the game's soundtrack and its willingness to be self-aware and funny about its own limited production values.

A larger, more critical Chinese-language sample

Set against that enthusiasm, this review found a substantial and detailed cluster of complaints in the game's largest single-language review pool. Several reviewers independently and specifically describe a recurring fairness problem with the game's core deduction design, citing evidence the protagonist visibly knows but the player is never shown or given a fair chance to reason toward, several using language equivalent to "deus ex machina" to describe how key revelations arrive. Multiple reviewers separately criticise the courtroom's "objection" system as functionally meaningless, several specifically noting no reward exists for a correct objection and no penalty for an incorrect one, an absence of risk or reward these reviewers say drains tension from what should be the game's biggest set-pieces. Several reviewers also specifically criticise the eventual culprit's plan and disguise logic as illogical once fully explained, describing motivations and staged evidence that don't hold up to scrutiny, alongside a related complaint that the game's meta, fourth-wall-aware narrative framing feels gimmicky rather than purposeful. This review treats these as credible, since the complaints appear repeatedly, independently, and in specific enough detail across a genuinely large sample that they read as a real design weakness rather than an isolated dissenting reaction.

A structure that splits opinion sharply

This review also found a specific, recurring complaint about the game's multi-route structure. Reaching the "true" ending requires playing through at least two of several possible endings first, and while some reviewers in the English sample describe this positively as a satisfying way to piece together the full picture, multiple reviewers in the Chinese sample specifically criticise the same structure as tedious and poorly signposted, describing story content split unevenly across playthroughs and forcing replays through content that doesn't meaningfully change. A smaller number of reviewers across both samples separately criticise practical issues: cheap-looking backgrounds and a simple UI, text that occasionally overflows its textbox, and a small number of specific continuity oddities in later-chapter dialogue.

Investigation depth and a short runtime

This review also found a smaller, more practical thread worth addressing directly. Several English- sample reviewers specifically note that the investigation segments amount mostly to talking through dialogue trees with suspects and witnesses rather than the hidden-object-style evidence gathering Ace Attorney built its reputation on, a structural simplicity this review found several reviewers accepted as a budget trade-off rather than a fatal flaw. Reviewers across both samples report a fairly short runtime, most citing around eight hours to reach a full clear including achievements, and while several reviewers explicitly recommend picking the game up on a discount given that length, this review found the near-universal response to price and length was measured rather than disappointed. A handful of reviewers separately flag small, specific bugs worth noting, including at least one account of a dialogue choice returning an unexpected blank response and a report of an epilogue character appearing regardless of the ending the player believed they had reached, though neither reviewer describes these as affecting the game's overall completability.

Why this review lands where it does

It's worth being direct about how this review weighs a small, genuinely enthusiastic audience against a larger, more critical one raising specific, repeated concerns about whether the central mystery plays fair. What The Real Face of a VTuber sets out to do, tell a characterful, VTuber-flavoured courtroom mystery on a modest budget, it does well enough to win real affection from a meaningful share of players, and the praise for its cast, music and VTuber-culture integration is genuine and consistent across both language pools. But the deduction-fairness complaints and the toothless objection system are not a minority translation quirk; they're specific, repeated, independently argued criticisms from a large sample that this review treats as a real weakness in the game's core premise as a mystery. This review scores it as a likeable but genuinely uneven mystery VN that works better as a story than as a fair-play deduction game.

Final Verdict

The Real Face of a VTuber delivers a charming cast, a strong soundtrack and a genuinely thoughtful integration of VTuber culture into its courtroom mystery premise. What holds this score back is a substantial, well-corroborated cluster of complaints about unfair deduction design, a courtroom objection system several reviewers call functionally pointless, and a multi-route structure that splits opinion sharply. Worth a look for VTuber and visual-novel fans, ideally at a discount, with expectations set for story over rigorous fair-play mystery design.