Recent reviews by Gen 1 Ivysaur

VTube Studio is a perfectly functional piece of software that clears up some of the mysteries behind the technical side of bringing a Live2D model to life. As a free download that seems marketed more as a toy than a practical element in the vtubing pipeline, I didn't have very high expectations for VTube Studio. I'm glad I gave it a shot because it inspired me to go ahead and finally create my own Live2D model.

Brief disclaimer, VTube Studio does not let you create your own Live2D models. Live2D Cubism is the software you're looking for, plus some form of illustration software that will allow you to export the texture maps for your model to PSD files. Basically, be prepared to do a lot of research on your own if you decide to dive into creating your personal Live2D model. If you know how to draw, you're already halfway there to becoming a Vtuber. Seriously, it's less difficult than you might expect.

VTube Studio currently comes with a few pre-built Live2D models to play with and pretty much full functionality out of the box in order to jump-start your Vtuber career. You can cue up canned animations to hotkeys, stick PNG props to your model, and set backgrounds to transparency before sending the model to OBS or a similar program. Caveats include the fact that literally everyone using VTube studio has these default characters so while you can impress your friends for a few minutes by turning into a cute anime girl, don't expect the Superchats to come piling in without putting in a little more effort. The one DLC on Steam right now is the ability to remove the watermark from the recently-added webcam support, so try it out in the free version first to see if it works for you. My computer is very potato these days so the software running alongside Streamlabs eats up all my CPU power, but I'm certain any build constructed in the past five years will do just fine.

Face tracking was originally accomplished by linking a phone with a decent camera to a computer but I imagine a lot of people have been waiting for a plug-and-play option like a standard USB webcam. Some users claim that phones offer superior tracking and I'm inclined to believe them without seeing it for myself, given the gulf in quality between consumer webcams and something like an iPhone camera. I think the devs recommend a 1080p camera as the minimum but I didn't have any problems using a 720p camera.

Where VTube Studio really excels is the amount of control it gives the user in fine-tuning every little motion, while also allowing the user to hand-wave away things they don't want to consider right now with auto-setup. There were a lot of moments where I would make a small adjustment, like for example setting a different sensitivity to eyelid tracking, and it would simply work right away according to what I wanted. Most of the hard work is done by spending hours tinkering with parameter values in Cubism first, but it's in VTube Studio where you'll see tangible results. VTube Studio has been essential in previewing every iteration while I work on my model. I'm definitely not on the level of the pros that have been at this for years, but doing everything yourself is, of course, infinitely cheaper than trying to commission someone with a backlog of work. Plus, there's nothing quite like seeing something you worked hard on come together.

I'm used to fighting with my programs to get them to do what I want so just for functioning as intended, I really can't recommend VTube Studio enough for anyone curious but unsure of how big a commitment they're ready to make. VTube Studio works equally well for anyone serious about becoming the next million subscriber streamer, and also for anyone streaming as a hobby without a big concern over the financial viability of becoming popular on the internet.

"The EASIEST and FASTEST tool to make your own multi-platform visual novels," or so they say. Depending on what you want to make, TyranoBuilder is either exactly what you need or another troublesome node in the development pipeline that you have to wrestle and beat into obedience.

Everyone else has already said what's great about the product: $15 price, the ability to export to any platform imaginable with the click of a button, and a mostly coding-free experience if you're fine with sticking to a lot of default settings. Without discrediting anyone's artistic aspirations, if you're not totally committed to creating a "professional" VN from the ground-up, TB is more than ideal for slapping together a quick and sloppy game jam submission.

TB begins to unravel once you're ready to graduate from the stock options, which won't take long. Plugging in the actual story text using the project space gets tedious quickly if you've written all your text in a word processor like a normal person. I started using a code editor and learned how TB's components worked in a scenario file to bypass the UI entirely. Copy-pasting TB tags around every block of text is still horribly boring but it's much faster than clicking and dragging thousands of components per scene. I don't even believe the UI is all that bad considering it's meant for novices terrified of coding, but it doesn't work at my pace for the high volume of writing I need to adapt to the software.

I used to believe VN development would be a simple matter, just put the text in a box and stick a pretty picture in background, but the truth is that development gets harder the more committed you are to making something genuinely polished. TB doesn't have the ability to intelligently start a newline if your text is going to overflow out of the screen, so be prepared to spend Actual Hundreds of Hours Playtesting, sniping these instances of overflow by manually sticking in a newline tag for every line of your story. Developing with TB has a lot in common with web design in that you will devote most of your energy and frustrations into making something look presentable. Not even good, just correctly aligned.

If you can't code, you'll be extremely limited in your ability to make your game look and behave the way you envision it. No-brainer assets like backgrounds and character art can be set easily enough, but if you want to add some style to the game UI, be prepared to go deep into the files that comprise the engine running the game. Documentation on this is obscure, half of it being in Japanese and sometimes not even doing the thing it says it should be doing in the code. There are files in here you can't edit because another part of the code is programmed to overwrite it the moment the program loads, and you would never know unless you search the right terms online to read an ancient thread where someone ran into the same issue.

Even though software support is mostly nonexistent (literally one guy representing the publisher picking and choosing what questions to answer from the Steam discussions page), TB is consistently updated a few times every year. Sometimes you get a mission-critical feature added that makes your life vastly easier, other times the update will break your game and you'll need to back up your assets, create a new project, and seed your files back into the new project while playtesting to see exactly what's broken. There's a high chance you'll be on your own if something breaks in a new and mysterious way, especially if you were digging around the engine files, so definitely keep stable builds backed up as you go. You can rollback to previous TB software versions if your project goes totally kaput with an update, if worst comes to worst.

I'm split on TB; it does a few important things very well and it's unavoidably nightmarish more often than not when it comes time to polish the game. I started designing my game at the most simple, basic level, and even then TyranoBuilder will fail to meet my expectations. Whether you end up loving it or hating it, using this software to create your dream VN may serve as a potent reality check at any level of talent you possess walking in to the project.

Ultimately, it all boils down to that one common refrain: learn to code lol