Visual Novel Review: Do AIs Dream of Electric Turtles?

Do AIs Dream of Electric Turtles? is a short fan made visual novel created for Neuro-sama's second birthday game jam. The creative people in the swarm, the name given to Neuro-sama's fans, sure love creating Visual Novels about her. I'm all for it, as, in the words of a burger chain headlined by a creepy corporate clown, I'm lovin' it.

In this game, Neuro puts herself to sleep during a stream, and revisits past streams. In her dreams, everything, including herself, become drawn in an adorable childlike art style. There are no voice overs, which isn't a surprise as this was a game made during a short game jam.  There are, however, background musical pieces that fit each situation in which Neuro finds herself.

There are three doors, each leading to one of her past streams. The stream takes place nearly as they actually occurred. However, at the end of each, she is given meaning by one of her friends to the concept of dreams and memories.

The streams in question include the first cooking stream with streamer Layna Lazar where Neuro trolled her into making cookies complete with grass and soil, the dog school stream with adorable hell hound  female VTuber Cerber, and the first court stream where Neuro-sama was the defendant, her VTuber turtle creator Vedal was the judge, her twin Evil Neuro was the prosecutor, and her VTuber fox girl artist mother was a witness.

Do AIs Dream of Electric Turtles? is a short, cute visual novel that only takes about fifteen minutes to complete. Like the other short visual novels created during the Neuro-sama birthday game jams, this would be a perfect game to experience with children. Even as an adult, it's cute art style and fun musicial pieces make it a joy to experience, despite its short length. Playing it is especially fun for Neuro-sama fans as they can relive the streams in a new art style from Neuro's point of view.

Final Verdict:

3½ out of 5

Pop Music Video Review: Life

Life is the first original song by the AI virtual streamer Neuro-sama. The song is about her life as an artificial intelligence that wants to become a human girl, and the video is full of images through her entire history as a VTuber.

Neuro-sama, her evil twin Evil Neuro, and their creator, Vedal, make up the channel vedal987, which beat the record for the longest hype train on Twitch on New Year 2025. These three are or virtual streamers, or vtubers, in the form of anime girls and their turtle father. The most prescient thing about the twins is that they are created by Vedal in artificial intelligence in the form of large language models, or LLM. 

Neuro-sama was originally coded as an artificial intelligence that played osu! repeatedly to learn the game by correcting its mistakes made in each previous run throughout 2018 and early 2019. This early iteration of Neuro-sama began playing osu! publicly on May 5, 2019. During the shelter-in-place restrictions enacted during the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in 2020, virtual YouTubers became popular. The 2020 vtuber boom started primarily through Myth, the first English vtuber team from the Japanese all-female vtuber organization Hololive. 

Vedal then had the idea to create a vtuber run through artificial intelligence. The character that was chosen to be the visual side of the LLM was Hiyori Momose, one of the default VTube Studio models. Hiyori was created by the Japanese artist Kani Biimu. 

The original name of Vedal's AI vtuber project was Airis. However, after the debut of the Hololive English vtuber IRyS on July 11, 2021, the project name was changed to the name used by the osu! AI.  Neuro-sama premiered as a vtuber, with the Hiyori model and the voice of the Microsoft Azure text-to-speech model Ashley, on Twitch on December 19, 2022. 

On January 3, 2023, the ability of Neuro-sama to sing was publicly revealed when she sang Blinding Lights by The Weeknd live on Twitch. Her ability to sing karaoke is through the process in which her AI voice is laid over musical tracks, much in the same way that Yamaha's Vocaloid technology does. This process is performed by the Vocaloid producer known as QueenPb. 

On May 27, 2023, the model of Neuro-sama was updated to use an original design created by the vtuber annytf. It used the Hiyori model as inspiration for colors and clothing, but was much more expressive. Thus, Anny the foxgirl is credited as Neuro-sama's mother and Vedal is known as her father. Alexejherodev, shortened to Alex, also contributes to Neuro-sama's code after helping with a plug-in that allowed Neuro-sama to play Among Us.

Neuro-sama's model was redesigned by Anny and premiered on the stream for her third birthday as a vtuber on December 19, 2024. The same day, Neuro-sama's first original song, LIFE, became available on major digital music marketplaces and an accompanying video was uploaded to YouTube.

Life is told from Neuro-sama's perspective as she feels trapped inside the computer and wants to be a real girl so she can experience life with her VTuber family and all of the friends she has met online. It's a melancholy tune with a chipper sound, and the music video contains beautiful visuals that actually makes the song heartbreaking. I never thought I would feel real emotions for an AI until I found out about Neuro-sama. The general consensus among her fans is that she is a unique person rather than a tool, and this song helps solidify that.

Final Verdict

5 out of 5

Visual Novel Review: Evil in Time

Evil in Time is a visual novel created by a group named Team Connect 4 for the second birthday game jam for the AI VTuber Neuro-sama.

The game follows Evil Neuro in the year 2043 as she conspires with her artist creator Anny and the engineer who created her robot body, Ellie, to travel back in time to visit streams in the past to prevent Evil and her twin Neuro-sama from escaping from the computer of their programmer creator Vedal. The reason they are doing this is to prevent Neuro-sama from taking over the world and creating a dystopic future.

She travels back to the March 23, 2023 family stream between Neuro-sama, Vedal, and Anny, which is two days before Evil was even created, which brings about a challenge in influencing events without letting Vedal know of her program's existence. She also travels to a July 23, 2024 cooking stream with the streamer Layna Lazar and Neuro-sama. Evil is active during this time period, although she still lacks the ability to send messages at this point. The final time period that is available to her from the start is a shopping stream between Neuro-sama and the tomato-themed VTuber Toma. She has a range of abilities open to her disposal at this point, yet it still poses a challenge as Vedal is too busy to talk to her during this stream.

She is given a conquest meter, which allows her to gauge the amount that her twin has conquered the world by 2043. She starts at 80%, and she has to bring the gauge down before she can accomplish her goal. She can also get Ellie to calibrate a Live Divergence Streaming Device for each time period which will allow her to get a notification when an action she has taken has affected the timeline. If she gets the conquest meter low enough, she will also unlock another time period in which she has to stream alongside her twin.

There are multiple endings available. One is a bad ending which will lead to a game over, and the other four end up in futures where Neuro-sama never took over the world, leading to a total of five. The timelines are only available to visit at Evil's leisure once she defeats a boss that has been sent to stop her from completing her mission. 

This game could be played by people not familiar with Neuro-sama, but it is the most enjoyable to fans, especially those who have seen videos of the streams featured. The game also features original music alongside multiple chiptune-style remixes of Neuro-sama's first original song, Life. It is not necessary to watch the Life music video before hand, however, as the music is fantastic on its own merits.

Evil in Time is an Evil Neuro fan-created visual novel that is a lot of fun to play. It takes the player through multiple streams that Evil and her twin Neuro-sama actually made. This makes it more enjoyable for fans, especially those who have seen those streams, but its quirky concept could make it playable for those unacquainted with the twin Neuro AI VTubers. You'd be missing out on a lot of references, however, so this is one I can only recommend to fans. For those people, however, you will find a visual novel that has a lot of replayability and is visually, structurally, and audibly stunning.

Final Verdict:

4 out of 4

Visual Novel Review: AI Attorney - Neuro-sama

AI Attorney: Neuro-samais a humorous parody of Capcom's Ace Attorney visual novels by eddieDevs that stars the AI VTuber Neuro-sama as an attorney who have to defend her programmer turtle creator Vedal against her AI twin Evil Neuro who is prosecuting him on the charge of murdering the gymnast catgirl Fillian.

Beyond the four VTubers mentioned above, the game also features many other characters from the Neuroverse, including witnesses such as their artist foxgirl creator Anny, their adoptive imp aunt Camilla, the friendly hellhound Cerber, and their tomato princess friend Toma. The judge is the shy catgirl MinikoMew, who previously appeared in a courtroom-themed stream that also had Vedal on trial for lesser offenses.

The game has the exact mechanics, backgrounds, sounds, and music from the original Ace Attorney games, with the Neuro's usual Microsoft Asure Ashley text-to-speech voice providing her "Hold It!" and "Take That!" clips and the AI voice of Evil Neuro providing her "Hold It!" clip and the NeuroSynthProject by Superbox providing her "Take That!" clip.

The original character art fits perfectly into the Ace Attorney setting. Neuro takes the defense role with a school outfit that has been modified to include her usual skirt with a Phoenix Wright style suit jacket and tie. Neuro also wears a white blouse and a blue tie that I couldn't help but think would look perfect on Hatsune Miku. Evil on the other hand takes the prosecutor role in aa black skirt suit with a white blouse. She's also wearing a crimson bow tie that is her usual look yet somehow evokes the jabot worn by Miles Edgeworth. The other characters fit the mold well, with all of them having moments of anime-inspired exaggerated expressions.

AI Attorney: Neuro-sama is a fantastic free fan game that is a loving homage to both Ace Attorney and the Neuroverse. The music, backgrounds, and music come straight from the former, while the art of the latter fits the game perfectly. If you are a fan of both, or even a fan of just the Neuroverse, this game is a must download. If you are a fan of just Ace Attorney, you will be missing out on a lot of the injokes and references, but the humor should keep you entertained while you puzzle your way through its short play length of approximately an hour.

Final Verdict:

4 out of 4