Thirteen sick minds. One murder that must never be solved.
Psycho-Sleuth (異病偵探) is a single-player deduction visual novel from the Taiwan-based team PHOSEPO, published by Thermite Games and Smilegate STOVE. A cult called the Rational Order has seized a gothic cathedral and summoned thirteen people it calls the Diseased — each carrying a cognitive disorder that lets them project a contagious power of madness that distorts what you see. The cult leader is one of the thirteen, and only one of them can walk away as god. You play as Lain, who carries synesthesia and a power of world-creation that can make others see his hallucinations — and who may be deceiving you. It released on PC on November 5, 2026 with full voice acting in Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean.
Press Tab to run a Perception Scan over a scene. Highlighted objects are real clues; greyed-out ones are scenery. You are never guessing blind into a debate — but the scan only tells you what is there, not what it means.
Present evidence and the room pushes back. Wrong evidence costs HP, and zero HP is a failure ending, not a retry prompt. Every confrontation is a resource you are spending, and the game keeps score.
Reconstruct the crime as a five-step card chain: motive, then the activation of the madness power, then the killing, then the staging of the scene, then the forging of an alibi. The order is the answer.
OCD, hemispatial neglect, prosopagnosia, hyperthymesia, Alice in Wonderland syndrome, acropagnosia and more. Each Disorder grants a power of madness that distorts what you see — and spreads to the people around them.
Psycho-Sleuth — 異病偵探 in its original Chinese, published as Psychi-Sleuth in some regions — is a single-player deduction visual novel made by PHOSEPO, a Taiwan-based studio whose team came out of the now-defunct Reversal Ark project. It is published by Thermite Games and Smilegate STOVE, and released on November 5, 2026 on Steam, Epic Games Store and the STOVE platform simultaneously.
The premise is a locked-room murder staged by a cult. The Rational Order — 理教 — has taken over a gothic cathedral, and its leader has summoned thirteen people known as the Diseased (病能者). The ritual is a selection: commit a murder that is never caught, and the survivor becomes god. The cult leader is one of the thirteen, which means the ritual is also a lie, and the players know it.
What makes the game unusual is not the whodunit. It is the fact that every one of the thirteen carries a cognitive disorder that grants them a power of madness (病能) — a contagious condition that changes what the player sees. Some hide half the screen. Some make every face in the room faceless. One cannot stop lying. And the protagonist, Lain (萊爾), carries synesthesia and the power of World Creation, which lets him make others see his hallucinations — and may mean he is deceiving you the entire time.
The presentation is unusually polished for the genre: Live2D characters, full voice acting, and a script long enough to be a real experience rather than a two-hour demo. The English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean versions all carry full voice. The project won the Streamer Award at the SHIBA GAME AWARD 2025 Winter before it had even launched.
The facts below are the ones worth having in one screen.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Original title | 異病偵探 |
| Developer | PHOSEPO (Taiwan) |
| Publishers | Thermite Games · Smilegate STOVE |
| Release date | November 5, 2026 (PC) |
| Platforms | Steam, Epic Games Store, Smilegate STOVE |
| Steam App ID | 3432860 (demo: 3753800) |
| Genre | Deduction visual novel, Live2D, horror mystery |
| Play time | About 1,200 minutes (20 hours) |
| Cast | 12+ characters, full voice acting |
| Languages | TC, SC, JP, EN, KR — all with full voice |
| The Diseased | 13 cult members, one of whom is the cult leader |
| Award | SHIBA GAME AWARD 2025 Winter — Streamer Award |
| Demo | Released September 24, 2025 (prologue + Chapter 1, 1–2 hours) |
That twenty-hour run time is worth paying attention to. A deduction visual novel that runs twenty hours is not a puzzle to be finished and shelved; it is a story with multiple chapters, branches and endings. It also means every character, every Disorder and every chapter is a separate thing people will search for by name — exactly the shape of traffic a wiki can capture.