999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is a visual-novel puzzle-type game for the DS, developed by Chunsoft and published by Aksys Games. There are two main parts to the gameplay; one consists of heavy amounts of reading and decision-making, and the other is comprised of puzzle-filled rooms not unlike those point-and-click room escape games that flood most browser game sites (albeit much better). The story follows the player character, Junpei, as he works to escape a sinking ship with eight other players of the "Nonary Game" headed by the mysterious Zero. The ship is filled with doors, labeled with numbers, that can be opened with various combinations of the players. Each player has a numbered bracelet, which determines what doors they can go through and with who. The exit is beyond a door labeled with a 9. The game has 6 different endings, one of which is the "True Ending". The ending you get is determined by which doors you choose to go through over the course of the game, and upon receiving an ending, you may play for a different one with your previous choices greyed out and the ability to fast-forward through entire scenes of dialogue you have gone through before.
Story - 10/10
As a visual novel, 999's story is its main selling point. And boy, does it deliver. Of the 6 endings, there are 4 "Bad" endings, one "True" ending, and one "???" ending, which must be achieved before the True Ending can be gotten. The two required endings are both expertly written, and contain many interesting real scientific concepts that play into the game's major story with genius levels of subtlety and foreshadowing. I guarantee after playing this game, you will be reading Cat's Cradle, performing telepathy experiments, and calculating digital roots until the day you die.
Gameplay - 8/10
I'll be the first to admit there's not much in the way of gameplay here. There is a ton of reading involved, and if you don't like that, then you can stop reading this review right now. But I for one see the heavy reading as a positive thing. Most of the decisions the game lets you make have no significance to the story other than the option to see some funny dialogue. The decisions that do matter are the ones about which doors you want to go through. The doors you go through will affect what characters you end up spending more time with and talking to, and certain dialogue snippets and character choices will point you in the right direction about which door combinations will lead to the right endings. That said, though, you will probably need a walkthrough if you don't want to play the game a billion times to find out which paths are the right ones. The puzzle segments, however, are very intuitive, and though some of the puzzles are difficult, they can all be solved with thought and logic, unlike some other puzzle games where the solution is sometimes stupid or nonsensical unless you look at it just the right way. If you really do get stuck, though, examining the same things multiple times will led to increasingly less and less subtle hints (which often make for some funny moments).
Graphics - 10/10
This is where I stress that 999 is a horror game. An M-rated horror game. And it pulls off the unsettling, scary feel without even a single jump-out scare or torture segment. That said, there is plenty of gore, and it does want to make you throw up. But what makes 999 different is that it doesn't actually show you anything beyond a simple blood spatter; it depicts the gruesome sights before you in chilling textual detail, leaving you not only seeing but feeling and smelling it. Thus, 999 becomes the only game where half the graphics I'm reviewing are in my own head.
Music - 10/10
As an atmospheric game, 999 has to have good music to succeed. And it does. Many of the themes are recurring, based not on an area but on a story point, and as such you'll hear these themes much more often. Luckily the more recurring themes are the better ones. The themes fit their environments to a T, with most of the puzzle rooms featuring simple, rhythmic tunes to help focus. Sad parts have emotional background music (some of the best I've heard actually), with two main "sad" themes (one for the bad endings and one for the required ones, for the most part). But what pushes the music to a 10 is some of the most panic-inducing music I've ever heard, despite its simplicity. The "Trepidation" theme, which plays whenever someone gets murdered, may just give you panic attacks if it's dark enough.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ius54l96xe0[/media]
Overall - 10/10
As much as I wanted to give this game a 9 to fit the theme, I just couldn't. Of course, My giving it a ten doesn't mean you should immediately go out and buy it (though of course I recommend it). It is a reading-heavy puzzle visual novel, and I know that's a niche genre, but if you're willing to invest the time to get at least the two good endings (and if you want, the Submarine one is pretty interesting too), it turns out to be more than worth it. And after you beat it, head to the TV Tropes page and go to Foreshadowing if you want to appreaciate how truly genius the writers are.
So yeah, that's my first review in a while. There's a sequel coming out in the fall for the 3DS, and after hearing about it I had to make sure everyone bought it.
Last edited by a moderator: