999: 9 hours, 9 persons, 9 doors

Chunsoft - 2009 - DS

Yet another interactive story game feeding my newfound love of games like this.. After playing Heavy Rain and To The Moon, I wanted more games like this and 999 delivers. 999 is probably what you’d get if you made the Saw movies into a Japanese Anime. And then made that into a video game.

In 999, your character wakes up locked in a room with no memory of how or why he’s trapped there. You’ll eventually escape the room to find that you’re one of 9 people trapped on an old cruise ship. You learn that you've been imprisoned by someone named “Zero” who wants the 9 of you to play survival game that involves solving puzzles to find a sequence of 9 hidden doors somewhere on the ship that supposedly lead to your freedom. The problem is that your party only has 9 hours to find the doors before you’ll all be dead, hence the title 9 hours, 9 persons, 9 doors. Sounds like something Jigsaw would cook up in one of the Saw movies except this game was made in Japan, so all of the characters are very anime looking and have ridiculous goofy looking colored hair.

The writing in this game is pretty strong. The characters are distinct and well developed and the story seems pretty well thought out. There are a few times where this game’s attempts at humor will fall flat, but it does a masterful job of creating and maintaining suspense throughout the story. It’s one of those games that will keep you thinking about the story even when you’re not playing it. The game is mostly just reading text and making dialogue choices, but there are a few puzzle solving sections as well. The puzzles usually involve searching a room for items or solving some simple math based problems. If you don’t figure out the puzzles on your first few tries, the game will automatically start providing hints until you understand what the game wants you to do, so you probably won’t ever be stuck on a puzzle in this game for very long.

I was really all set to love this game and start singing its praises - until I finished it. Based on some of the decisions and dialogue choices you make in the game, you will get one of several different possible endings when you finish the game. What broke my heart about this game is that you’re guaranteed to get a “bad ending” on your first playthrough. In order to get the “true ending”, you have to play through the game several times. Screw that. This is a narrative based game! That would be like reading through a book several times before you’re allowed to see what the “real ending” is. And it’s not just that there are “bad endings”, it’s that the bad endings leave so many loose ends and unanswered questions that are only given in the “true ending”. But I don’t want to re-solve puzzles I've already solved, nor do I want to re-read text I've already read. Ugh. I was so disgusted by the design choice here that I just looked the true ending up on the internet.

Summary:
What a shame, I would have really liked this game… Apparently there’s a sequel for this on 3DS, but I need to make sure they don’t repeat this forced bad ending crap before I check it out. If you can overlook this game’s flaws, it does tell a compelling story. Just expect to be disappointed at the end.