Zero Escape: The Nonary Games

Zero Escape: The Nonary Games for PC, PS4 and PSV is a collection containing remastered editions of two adventure games developed by a Japanese studio known as Spike Chunsoft, including the 2009 release 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward – released three years later. These games are the first two installments in the Zero Escape series, which was initiated by Kotaro Uchikoshi. A gamedev that produced several popular visual novels, such as Never 7: The End of Infinity, Ever 17: The Out of Infinity or 12Riven: The Psi-Climinal of Integral.

Plot

Zero Escape: The Nonary Games for PC, PS4 and PSV completely reproduces the storylines of both games without introducing any changes or additions. The first installment, that is, 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, tells a story of a student called Junpei, who along with eight other wretches, gets kidnapped by a mysterious sadist by the name of Zero. The protagonist is forced to take part in a brutal game, in which failure means death. The action takes place aboard a luxury cruise ship that is slowly sinking, which additionally makes the characters hasty.

In Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, the titular character called Zero (from the previous installment) kidnapps another group of nine, and organizes a new version of his sick game for them. This time, the characters are trapped in a complex of industrial warehouses filled with threats.

Because the storylines of the games are strongly connected, it is better to play through them in chronological order – otherwise, Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward can spoil many of the surprises and twists that can be found in its prequel.

Mechanics

The games within this collection utilize very similar mechanics. In both the cases, gameplay consists of phases played-through alternately. The first comprises story-based sequences typical for visual novel as a genre; the player follows the developments in the story here and makes choices from time to time – those affect further course of the story to a significant extent.

The adventure-like sequences build up the second of the phases mentioned. Those take place in three-dimensional locations, which are explored in the first-person view. The player's task here is to solve puzzles, the majority of which are based on coming up with a way to get out of closed rooms.

Technical aspects

Compared to the two games' original releases, Zero Escape: The Nonary Games for PC, PS4 and PSV brings improvements typical for remastered editions. Different parts of the head-up display were improved apart from the visuals – both in terms of the 3D and 2D elements. A large difference is visible especially when looking at 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, which originally came out for Nintendo DS and offered low-resolution graphics. Remastering this title also encompassed the addition of sound to the in-game dialogues - those were represented solely by text in the original release.

Last updated on 02 March 2023