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999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors
Genre: Puzzle
System: Nintendo DS
Release Date: November 16, 2010
Company: Aksys Games
Website: www.aksysgames.com/999

Choose Your Own Adventure, Saw, and Phoenix Wright.
What do these have in common?
This game!

999 Is a digital novel, puzzle, horror, mystery, thriller game for the DS. It contains 5 endings and each one is just as twisted as the next. You play as Jumpei, a normal guy who along with 8 other captives must escape this prison they have been taken to.

The biggest part of this is that all 9 characters in this game all have 9 hours to escape and the only way out, is the door with a 9 marked on it. This wont be an easy task as each door has a certain criteria to get in. On each persons arm is a watch device with a number on it and only a certain criteria will let your though so there’s times you are given the choice to go with a set of 3 or 4 people or another set of people. Each person has nicknames to suit their character. You’re number 5 Jumpei but there are a wide variety of other characters; Ace an older wiser man, Snake a blind yet intelligent man who is with his bubble pink haired sister Clover, an older lady Lotus who has some of the biggest knockers in videogames, a large man Seven who has lost his memories, Santa a crude young man who has a mouth a sailor would blush to, a no name man who seems to be a bumbling scientist, and lastly a girl from your childhood, Akane

The puzzles in this game are very intelligent. You pickup items in each room you’ve entered and try to find  a way to use them to get out. From playing piano to intense games of Sudoku, the puzzlers in this get very complex and challenging. Sometimes one of the other victims will help you out giving you hints or their insight to the situation, like one of the characters having hacking skills to get you through a computer problem or the blind characters reading braille. This game works perfectly on the DS too because each room has a lot of things lying around to investigate and find out what is needed to get out.

There’s some real life references found in this game too. At one point the team realizes the place they are trapped in could possibly the Titanic or a sister ship of it. There’s also really complex math references like Base-10 and Morphogenetic fields. You’ll definitely get something out of this if you read up on some of the points discussed in the game.

This game is absolutely for adults! A lot of the dialogue is way intelligent but also very vulgar. Given the situation they are in the team isn’t going to just take this in strides, they want out and will do whatever it takes to escape. Whether it be killing off the other players or conjuring up a plan to escape and leave someone else behind, nothing gets past them. Breaking the “Rules” of the game like going into a door without two other people triggered a bomb inside the person resulting in some pretty messy results. Some of the endings range from depressing to just psychotic, it’s very intense!!

With multiple endings to shoot for and different paths to play the game, there’s a lot to do here. The plot and reason for everyone being inside this trap weaves all over the place with extreme detail to continuity. The creators definitely spent some time weaving the story in all kinds of twists and turns. To help out playing the game another time around you’re also given the ability to fast forward dialogue scenes on parts you’ve already experienced to get to the new paths and endings.

Trailer: