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Zero Escape, formerly released in Japan as lead=yes, is a series of directed and written by Kotaro Uchikoshi. The first two entries in the series, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2009) and (2012), were developed by Spike Chunsoft (formerly Chunsoft), while the third entry, Zero Time Dilemma (2016), was developed by Chime. Zero Escape is published by Spike Chunsoft in Japan, while Aksys Games and Rising Star Games have published the games for North America and Europe respectively.
Each game in the series follows a group of nine individuals, who are kidnapped and held captive by a person code-named "Zero", and are forced to play a game of life and death to escape. The gameplay is divided into two types of sections: Novel sections, where the story is presented, and Escape sections, where the player solves escape-the-room puzzles. In the first two games, the Novel sections are presented in a visual novel format, whereas the third uses animated . The stories branch based on player choices, and include multiple endings.
In addition to Uchikoshi, the development team includes character designers Kinu Nishimura and Rui Tomono, and music composer Shinji Hosoe. The series was originally conceived when Chunsoft wanted Uchikoshi to write visual novels for a wider audience; he came up with the idea of combining the story with story-integrated puzzles. While Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors was initially planned as a stand-alone title, its success in the international market led to the development of two sequels, intended to be paired as a set. Both Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward were commercial failures in Japan, and the third game was put on hold in 2014, only to resume the development for Zero Time Dilemma the following year, due to fan demand and the hiatus becoming big news. Critics have been positive to the series, praising its narrative for being experimental and for pushing boundaries for what can be done with video game narratives.
A bundle containing the first two games, titled Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, was released for Windows, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita in the West on March 24, 2017. In Japan, the Windows version launched on March 25 and the console versions on April 13 the same year. The European PlayStation Vita version was released on December 15. The Nonary Games was also released for Xbox One on March 22, 2022.
The updated version of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors has separate Adventure and Novel modes; the Adventure mode presents the character interactions similar to the top screen of the original game, while Novel mode uses the additional narration from the bottom screen. Both modes have animated characters and voice acting. The updated version also includes a story flowchart, similar to the other two games in the series, to help players with getting to the game's true ending. It does not include the additional story content that was part of the iOS version, but the final puzzle is different. The new version of Virtue's Last Reward is primarily based on the original PlayStation Vita version, but corrects some typographic errors.
Aksys and Spike Chunsoft worked with the Japanese puzzle event studio SCRAP to create Real Zero Escape: Trust on Trial, a real-life room escape game based on the Zero Escape universe, which was held at SCRAP's studio in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles for several months, starting in April 2016. Players had to solve real-life escape-the-room puzzles in the spirit of the Zero Escape series within a limited amount of time.
The games are non-linear: the first two games' stories branch depending on player choices, and lead to several different endings, with a final true ending that the player can only reach by playing through various different branches; the third game divides the story into chapters called "fragments", each representing a 90-minute period, which can be chosen from a "Floating Fragment" menu and played out of order. In the first game, the player has to start over from the beginning after completing each branch, replaying Escape sections; in the second game, the branches are represented by an interactive flowchart, allowing the player to jump to any point in the game that they have reached, and try different outcomes. This flowchart was also implemented in the iOS and The Nonary Games versions of the first game. In the third game, fragments are placed in a flowchart upon completion, indicating where they take place in the story.
The series has science fiction and Horror fiction elements, and philosophical and supernatural themes. A recurring theme is the concept of morphogenetic fields, which is explored in different ways in each game, and is the main theme of the first game. The second game focuses on game theory, specifically on the prisoner's dilemma. The third game's main theme is morality, and it is the game in the series with the largest focus on philosophy.
Uchikoshi had initially written 999 as a stand-alone game, but its positive reception led to its sequels' development. The tension present in its first sequel Virtue's Last Reward was deliberately toned down from that in 999, as the results of a survey indicated that some Japanese people had not bought 999 because it seemed "too scary". Uchikoshi stated that Zero Time Dilemma, the second sequel which was released in 2016, will "tone it up" in response to feedback from players who praised the sense of fear present in 999. The two sequels were specifically intended to be "paired as a set": the second game has a cliffhanger ending, while Uchikoshi intended for the third game to resolve all mysteries left from the second game, as well as all introduced in the third game. While he intended for the series to be a trilogy with a story that ends on the third game, he is open to "new incidents arriving" if fans still request it.
While the first game performed well enough in the West for Spike Chunsoft to decide to develop a sequel, both games were commercial failures in Japan. Because of this, the third game, which had originally been mentioned in 2012, was not approved by the management at the company. By February 2014, the development was put on hold indefinitely. Uchikoshi examined the possibility of financing the development through the use of crowdfunding on a website like Kickstarter, but felt that the idea would not be persuasive enough for it to meet the goal; he also sought out opportunities with executives and investors. As a response to the news of the game's hiatus, fans of the series created Operation Bluebird, an online campaign to raise awareness of the series and support the development. By July 2015, the development of the third game had been resumed; the game being put on hold becoming big news, and fans being vocal about wanting a third game, was what led to the game being reevaluated. With the third game, the development team wanted to renew the series' image in Japan; to do this, they used the English series title, Zero Escape, instead of the Kyokugen Dasshutsu title that had been used for previous Japanese releases.
Uchikoshi prioritized storylines over characters, and used the feeling of discomfort as the foundation of the narrative. He first came up with a setting, and then made characters along with the drama and stories behind them. After this, he decided on the core of the game's story, and created a flowchart based on it, which became the "bone structure of the story". According to Uchikoshi, it did not matter that the setups of the games were far-fetched, as long as their internal logic worked; he said that as long as the story is interesting and immersive, implausible situations feel plausible to the player. On the other hand, he felt that if he had specifically tried to make it more plausible, by forcing explanations that justify the situations, the story would become boring and the implausible would look even more implausible. Instead, he chose to rely on players' imagination, saying that players can make things seem plausible in ways he had not even imagined himself. One thing he did to make the stories more believable was adding concepts such as Schrödinger's cat, which he felt added flavor and kept players wondering whether a particular concept could be the main idea of the game; he felt that when players wonder that, it makes the story feel more real, as they create the game world in their minds.
After deciding on the story and the main character, he would balance the characters, in terms of genders, personalities, and ages represented; when making character personalities, he used the Enneagram of Personality as reference, which classifies people into nine groups; the decision to do this came from the importance of the number "9" in the storyline of 999. An important thing to him when making characters was to create a mystery behind them, to make players curious about who the characters are and what their pasts are like. Another important element was the use of misdirection: by deliberately making certain characters seem like bad people, he would aim to get players to focus on them more, making it more difficult for them to see who the "real bad guy" is. He aimed to not give the player characters strong personalities, in order to make it easier for players to empathize with them. He chose to have the games be played from a first person perspective as he felt it makes for "a stronger impact" and is more interesting than a third person perspective; it was also used to limit the information that is available to the player in a realistic way, as the player only knows what they experience or are told. Because the player characters in most games can die many times, Uchikoshi felt that video game characters' deaths may be taken lightly, which he saw as a weak point in games. To combat this, he focused on trying to get players to want to keep the story alive, rather than trying to keep the player character alive; as a result of wanting to keep the story going, players would also avoid the death of their character.
When writing the stories, he started with their plot twist, and then worked his way back from that. He designed the flow of the story by using a spreadsheet, and wrote prototypes of potential outcomes of the different scenarios in the game; after this, he matched it with the flowchart he had made, and came up with the details of each story. As he wrote each scene, he imagined what the player might be thinking as they play through it, and decided what to write based on it; this was one of the most important things to him when writing. A key element to Uchikoshi when writing the outcomes of player decisions is that the importance of the decision usually is much greater after the player has made it, with the consequences only being revealed later on as the player learns more information; this was to maintain the high suspense level, and to avoid situations where choices end up not actually mattering. One big challenge for him was to maintain player interest through all branches; he tried to have each branch develop differently, as to avoid repetition and fatigue, and keep the player motivated. While he came up with the set-up, the setting, and the characters on his own, he had a sub-writer helping him with writing the second game, and two sub-writers for the third game. They would help with brainstorming ideas and finding what does not work so well and how to improve scenarios.
While the first game was in 2D, the second game features 3D graphics; this change affected the puzzle creation, as the development team could choose to layer objects behind each other or have them all visible at once. As the second game was made with a worldwide release in mind, Japanese characters and references to Japanese culture were avoided in the puzzle design; the puzzles ended up using numbers a lot since they are internationally used symbols. For the iOS version of the first game, the puzzles were removed and replaced with new story sequences; this was done as the development team wanted to reach people who are not good at solving puzzles, or who do not play games at all and who might not have a game console, but according to Uchikoshi, the staff felt that the game was incomplete without the puzzle sequences of the original version.
The biggest challenge with localizing the series was to keep track of everything, as the games feature branching paths, and the characters learn different things in different branches, affecting word choices and attitudes. While a lot of this had been taken care of by Spike Chunsoft, many parts of the game required different word choices in English depending on if a character knew of a particular thing or not; in these cases, the localization team had to track the story backwards. During the projects, Aksys Games would do email correspondence with Spike Chunsoft, to make sure that they conveyed the message of the games as intended. The title Zero Escape was decided on during the localization of the second game, when the localization team wanted to create a "branding umbrella" for both games. They chose the title based on what they thought defines the first two games and is common to both of them, concluding that it was the character Zero and how both games involve "a dangerous escape"; the title also has the double meaning of "you have zero chance to escape". The title was later used as part of the Japanese title for Zero Time Dilemma, and replaced the previous Japanese title Kyokugen Dasshutsu for the re-release of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward.
For the first game, a big challenge was getting the localization done in time; Nobara Nakayama, the game's translator, worked on it for 30 days, and the editing process took two months. Because of this, Bateman had to do most of the work "on the fly". Nakayama had started playing the game prior to starting work on the localization, but did not finish playing it until she was more than halfway through translating it; after learning that the plot hinged on a Japanese pun, they had to halt the localization, discuss it with Uchikoshi, come up with a solution, and go through the whole game to make sure that it still made sense. The second game took around three months to translate and four months to edit. A big challenge in localizing it was catching the several subtle hints to the game's ending that appear throughout the story. Unlike the previous two Zero Escape titles, the North American version of the third game was produced alongside the Japanese version.
Several critics have praised the series' stories: Andy Goergen of Nintendo World Report commented on how 999 "truly expands what narrative video games can be capable of", and Christian Nutt at Gamasutra said that Uchikoshi is "pushing the boundaries of what video game narrative can be". Tony Ponce of Destructoid called 999 "one of the greatest videogame tales ever told", and a great example of how engaging and powerful narratives in video games can be. Bob Mackey of 1UP.com featured 999 on a list of "must-play" Nintendo DS visual novels, citing its story and themes as being among the darkest on a Nintendo platform, and called Virtue's Last Reward "one of the biggest, boldest visual novels to ever hit America". Writers for Famitsu liked the tense story and the sense of accomplishment when solving puzzles in 999, and the intertwined story and flowchart system in Virtue's Last Reward. Jason Schreier of Kotaku included both 999 and Virtue's Last Reward on a list of "must-play" visual novels worth playing even for people who do not like anime tropes. Schreier also wrote for Wired, calling 999's narrative "innovative" and saying that he liked the game's ending and cast, but that he thought that some of the game's prose was "sloppy" and that there was no sense of real danger.
Reception of the games' puzzle sections has been more mixed. Virtue's Last Reward was featured on Gamasutra's and Game Developers jointly created list of the ten best games of 2012 for having storytelling as gameplay rather than aside from gameplay. Schreier disliked having to repeat puzzles in each playthrough of 999. Mike Manson of Nintendo Life and John McCaroll of RPGFan found problems with the controls used in the puzzle sections of Virtue's Last Reward. Austin Boosinger of Adventure Gamers felt that while the puzzles in Virtue's Last Reward were thematically appropriate, he thought they were "relatively uninspired in their variety" and that not many of them were fun or engaging.
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