Zero Escape: The Nonary Games

About Zero Escape: The Nonary Games

Zero Escape: The Nonary Games was released by Spike Chunsoft in March 2017 for PC and PlayStation 4, and came to Xbox and Windows in 2022. It brings together the first two games of the Zero Escape series: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, first made for the Nintendo DS and here remastered with high-resolution art and English and Japanese voices, and its sequel Virtue's Last Reward.

Both start the same way. Nine people are kidnapped, wake in an unfamiliar place and are told by Zero, a figure in a gas mask, that the Nonary Game is the only way out. In 999 the group has nine hours to find a way off a sinking ship through numbered doors; in Virtue's Last Reward a new group is locked in a facility and must vote to ally with or betray each other. Why they were chosen, and who among them can be trusted, drives everything that follows.

Play alternates between two parts. In the novel sections you read, listen and make choices that send the story down different branches. In the escape sections you look around a locked room in first person, pick up and combine items, read notes and solve logic puzzles to open the way. A flowchart lets you jump back to any branch you have reached, so you can follow the story to its other endings without starting over.

The horror is a death game, closer to a thriller than a monster story: lethal rules, threats and mistrust rather than jumpscares. It suits readers of long mystery visual novels and players who like escape-room puzzles, and it asks for many hours: HowLongToBeat puts the main story of both games at about 33 and a half hours.

It is rated Mature by the ESRB for blood, drug reference, sexual themes, strong language and violence, and 16 by PEGI. On PC it runs on Windows only and has partial controller support; it sells for $29.99 on Steam, the PlayStation Store and Xbox, where it is a Play Anywhere game for Xbox One, Series X|S and Windows.

How to play Zero Escape: The Nonary Games

1. Choose which game to start; most players begin with 999, then play Virtue's Last Reward.
2. In novel sections, read the story and make choices about doors, allies and votes.
3. In escape sections, search the room, collect items, combine them and solve the puzzles to get out.
4. After an ending, use the flowchart to return to an earlier choice and follow another branch.

Tips

• Play 999 before Virtue's Last Reward; the second continues threads from the first.
• Take notes in escape rooms: codes and clues are often spread across several objects.
• Do not worry about a bad ending; the flowchart lets you go back and the story expects several routes.
• Pick the easier difficulty in Virtue's Last Reward if you mainly want the story.

Questions