Something to file under “things that may be of interest”, out on Steam and PS4/Vita today is Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, a remastered collection of 999 and Virtue’s Last Reward previously released on Nintendo DS.
I have played neither of the games previously, but I’m totally on board with the theme – nine people trapped in an unusual situation and having to solve puzzles and team-up/betray each other in order to survive a deadly game. They sound like The Genius meets Saw, basically, but done as an interactive visual novel. A jumped-up Choose Your Own Adventure by the looks of things.
£55 on the PS Store feels a bit steep really but I think it will be my next purchase after I’ve finished Zelda anyway. Did you play them when they first came out? I’m aware there’s a third in the series also on 3DS released quite recently.
Edit: H/t Alex McMillan on Twitter, you can buy it for £43 at Base.com physically. It’s £45 at Amazon.
Edit edit: Some stuff about the Red Bull Mindgamers thing in the comments.
999 is one of those games that I REALLY wanted to play and really should have imported it, but never got round to doing it.
The whole game is a story-based one, the time limit doesn’t actually apply to the player, and you do really have to play it repeatedly to discover all the endings.
Yeah same here, so I’m really looking forward to getting a chance to play them now.
I’ve played 999, haven’t played VLR or ZTD yet. 999’s got some excellent ideas and the story is fun and interestingly twisty-turny, although I wasn’t happy about *all* the puzzle design choices.
And yes, to reiterate Alex’s comment above, you need to play to multiple endings.
999 has the best story, but VLR and ZTD have much better puzzles and work better as actual games, less as visual novels.
I enjoyed the mechanism and most of the story of 999, but found some of the endings a bit… random, and I didn’t have enough patience to map out all the endings to work out all the plot.
As such, I didn’t play the sequel as that appealed less as a result.
I think if my understanding is correct VLR and this remastered version of 999 basically plots the map for you so you can just jump back to different bits.
Of interest, there’s a live Escape Room Championship thing on Redbull.tv Saturday night from 7pm.
Ex-Exit Games has details:
http://exexitgames.co.uk/blog/2017/03/23/second-hand-bits-and-pieces-from-budapest/
A preview clip of the action from the semi-finals is available at https://www.redbullcontentpool.com/international/AP-1RFQCJJQN2111 for the next week.
For one night only, the Response Revolve lives again!
Well that all looks rather nifty, I may well tune in LIVE! tonight.
I will be liveblogging it at Ex Exit Games, tech permitting, for that second screen experience, communal snark and so on.
I’ve just discovered I can get Red Bull TV on my smart telly so I can watch it live on a big screen. Exciting!
Sorry your connection flaked out Chris would have been interested to read your live thoughts.
It wasn’t really an escape room so much as a bunch of escape room-esque challenges. Some takeaways:
1) Alex Zane doesn’t look much like Alex Zane these days.
2) I really loved the scale of the thing, even if an international internet production aimed at young people comes across as unescapeably naff.
3) I admire the fact that they did it live, but they really needed to pick better shots…
4) The Krypton Factor did it with Gordon Burns explaining during the commentary, and usually with a worked example before the test. The Crystal Maze was the master of explaining a game through exposition, choice of camera shots et al. This really failed on all counts – of the first three quickie games they declined to tell us what the challenge was for the first two and by the time we worked them out it was over. I spent twenty minutes listening to commentary to the very pretty vortex tube challenge and was still not really the wiser as to what the solutions are and how you could arrive at them.
In all these types of shows the audience should be in a privileged position – we ought to know more and have more information than the contestants, we don’t need the complete solution straightaway but we ought to be able to follow the correct logic and entertainment is derived from watching the contestants make those connections, or indeed not, in lieu of being there ourselves. This really could have done with a short example VT, some graphics, anything really. Using the story as the hint is not helpful and increasingly annoying.
5) It’s ‘lose’ guys, not ‘loose’.
6) Did they skip the sixth game or was playing the Vortex twice both five and six?Ignore, I’m an idiot who can’t count.7) The trophy was *excellent*.
In conclusion not great but quite interesting and brave doing it live. Hopefully they’ll learn some lessons for next year if they do it again.
Is there anywhere to catch it now it has been broadcast?
Thanks
Here:
https://www.redbull.tv/live/AP-1QCP1D8X11W11/red-bull-mind-gamers-world-final
Perhaps game five was the one that came at the end of the four head-to-heads? They talked about one team having won four games to nil, but that makes sense in context.
Ah yes, no that’s my mistake – I forgot the wires game evidently.
My big issue with the vortex thing was that The Creator said that they had been told two verbal instructions before going in, both of which were patently ignored by both teams. Really, stuff like that needs to be in the game design, not part of ‘noises off’ (not least for the benefit of the viewer).
And the main reason they failed at the Vortex was that it wasn’t a single number they needed to enter but a single DIGIT. I wonder if there was some kind of unfortunate translation error in the instructions there?
Mr Creator’s just confirmed to me on Twitter that the Vortex keypad ought to have only accepted single digit inputs, which ought to have forced an eventual winner even if they had to keep entering random guesses every 20 seconds or whatever.
All said, though, even if the solutions came across as what maths grads call ‘handwaving proofs’, they’ve shown it can work despite the challenge of international teams. And it looked really great.
Not sure what the co-operative game was about, other than a bit of a chuckle, given that it can’t possibly affect the scores.
The keypad was an eye-catching UI failure, and it was placed at the end of the tunnel that would deprive us of a dramatic final shot.
However, I fault the “helping” numbers for the mess. They were silly to begin with: Who needs help remembering three small numbers? How would they have even been used – let me abandon my line tracing so I can take a six out of Tracy’s hands and put it into mine? More importantly, how could giving players new, fitting things covered in matching lines *not* lead to them trying to match them, especially if the alternative is spending time in your nausea machine?
As for the sequences, I think both of the mentioned ones, so perhaps all of them, were arithmetic sequences. Chinese whispering phrases like “arithmetic sequence” and “digit” through a couple of languages to frazzled people dragged through a set is obviously a WIDM challenge doomed from the start. Why does the design include unfilmed/unfilmable info to begin with?
A better design would have used IQ test-like puzzles instead of numbers, and an even better design would have dropped the extra keypad, used “quantum wormhole” stickers to rejigger the maze into something involving more silly walks across the drum and called it a day.
The choice of puzzles for the filmed final was bizarre. Almost everything in the semis looked more explainable, photogenic and filmable. Space issues maybe?
The presentation made me laugh a few times, and not just at the professor getting more frazzled:
1) Let me, the male presenter of a duo, explain how the man of the film’s duo turned evil during my oddly-framed shot.
2) Detail into my microphone how you lost your voice.
3) “I’m so excited – let’s dance””No. Now explain your excitation to me”
Played all three, love all three. Heck, current Twitter handle is a tribute to the series. Probably won’t pick up the remaster, though.
Basically a standard visual novel, but with the odd “Escape the Room” bits in between. VLR had the best of the three. And was the best in general.
Not sure what the co-operative game was about, other than a bit of a chuckle, given that it can’t possibly affect the scores.
Scott sez: “It was to have a good story moment, where the players got to tell us how the story ended.” – and, paraphrasing, partly being experimental for experimentation’s sake.
I got my first 999 ending.
I enjoyed the escape rooms a lot. I quite liked the story. I dislike having to re-sit through various swathes of story bit so I can explore a different path. It does still look and feel like a DS game.
That is my review.
Edit: just reading around, apparently there’s a fast forward button I’ve missed. Nice.
Imagine getting to your FOURTH Phoenix Wright game and THEN discovering there’s a “Skip forward” button…