Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

After a brief scene that shows me getting kidnapped by some guy in a gasmask, I wake up in what looks like an elevator. Except it's full of weird signs and contraptions and this girl:



Her name is Phi and my name is Sigma. She knew my name was Sigma before I told her, but she doesn't know how she knew it. We've never met according to her, but somehow she just knew my name. She directs my attention to the bracelet on my wrist.



She's wearing one too. It's identical to mine, a number 3 andd the word "pair" in red text. She says she was wearing it when she woke up, and she can't get it off. I can't get mine off either. While wondering what it means, a noise alerts us to a small screen above the elevator buttons, which is now displaying this:



This odd rabbit says his name is Zero III, and announces that we are there to play the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition. No idea what that means, and he doesn't bother to explain it before telling us that the elevator we are in is going to drop if we don't escape in time. He says goodbye and we're left in the first trap room.

This elevator trap is simple. There's some coloured screwdrivers and some coloured screws and a few buttons to press. I won't be going into great detail about solving the puzzles, but I'll explain the basics of how the traps work. Each trap room has a safe. Finding the password to this safe is how you escape, as the safe will contain the key to get out, and any other important items Zero III wants us to have. If you've played any other trap-room games you should know how it all works. You're in a room filled with odd stuff that all contains clues or puzzles in need of solving so you can escape.

Anyway, inside the safe is a key, which causes a hatch in the ceiling to open, allowing myself and Phi to escape. It's odd for an elevator to have a hatch in the ceiling, but as it turns out it's not an elevator at all. It's just a little box room next to 5 other similar rooms in a big warehouse. When we get out see some other people in the warehouse.

Time to meet the cast.







(couldn't get an image of Quark on his own, but it should be obvious which one he is)



It seems they were all kidnapped and locked in those "elevators" too, and they are all wearing bracelets. No one has any idea where we are or why we are here. But Alice has noticed something important. She was the first one to escape, so she saw the rest of us emerge. Herself, Luna, and Tenmyouji were all alone in their rooms. Dio and Quark were paired, and Phi and I were paired. So far, 5 of the rooms have opened, but there is 1 more than hasn't.

Just then, it opens. These two mysterious figures pop out.




The robot-looking guy is K, although he hasn't remembered that yet. He's not actually a robot, as far as I know, but is wearing some kind of robot suit. He can't remember anything about his life or who he is, and claims to have woken up in the suit. Clover was unconscious when they came out of the room, but she woke up soon after. She didn't seem scared of K so I guess he didn't do that to her. We were all unconscious in the rooms, so she just woke up late I suppose.

As we're all standing around talking, Zero III pops up again, and we all gather round to listen.

Zero tells us a bit about himself. He's not the real Zero, he's just an AI character who runs the facility. The real Zero, he claims, is one of us. He then explains a bit more about the Nonary Game's rules and our bracelets. Upon examining everyone's bracelets, a pattern emerges.

Phi and I both have the word "pair" in red text, which makes us the red pair. Dio and Quark have "pair" in blue text, while K and Coco have pair in green text, making them the blue and green pairs respectively. Each pair was in the same trap room at the start of the game. Luna, Tenmyouji and Alice are all "solo". They were alone in their rooms. Luna is the blue solo, Tenmmyouji is the green solo, and Alice is the red solo. Everyone's bracelet has the number 3 on it.

Zero explains that the numbers are a point system (called BP), earned through playing the Nonary Game. The goal of the game is to reach 9 BP and escape through the Number 9 Door.



There are 3 rules about this door:

1. The door can only be opened by someone with 9 or higher BP.
2. The door will only open once and it only stays open for 9 seconds.
3. If anyone with less than 9 BP tries to sneak through while it's opened, they will be penalised.

The penalty, of course, is death. Zero reveals a bit more about our bracelets.



There are needles in the bracelet which are remotely activated to inject us with a fatal dose of some drug I forgot the name of. This happens to anyone who breaks the rules.

Now, how to get BP? We have to play the Nonary Game. Zero directs our attention to 3 coloured doors in the warehouse.



These Chromatic Doors lead to the next trap rooms, but we need to split up to open them. Beyond each door is a secondary door of the same colour, which will only open when the first door closes, and which also will only open if there are exactly 3 people in the room. These initial doors open at a set time, and stay open for a set time, indicated on our bracelets and by loud speaker announcements. If we do not go through them in time, we're locked out forever according to Zero.

The colours of the doors relate to the colours of our bracelets. Zero explains that the 3 primary colours are red, blue, and green (even though green isn't a primary colour, yellow is), and that they can be mixed to create the colours on the Chromatic Doors, which is how we unlock them. So each pair has to be partner with a solo and each team can go through one door. Partnering with the solo of the same colour allows you to open the door of the complimentary colour.



So my options are:



I can't pick Alice because I did that last time, so I choose to team up with Tenmyouji to go through the yellow door.

So that's all settled. After going through the yellow door, I end up in the next trap room, which happens to be an infirmary.



So let me explain how the trap part of the game work properly this time, because otherwise this is going to be very short.

You have a first person view of the room and you can pan around left and right to see everything. You can look up and down to but everthing you need to interact with is easily visible just by looking left and right. You touch the items you wan to interact with.



I just tried to interact with the door. It's kind of a habit. Even it's clearly locked and locked doors can never be forced open, I still try every time. I'm a bit dumb.

Some items in the rooms can be picked up and carried around.



Like this "Metal Stake", which is actually part of a key. When you pick something up it goes in your item menu, and from there you can combine it with other items (like the other half of a key), or use the items on objects in the room.

Let's talk about the menus.



Archive lets you view all the files, passwords, and secrets you have found. Memo gives you a couple pages to write stuff down, which is a pain with a small touch screen and no stylus. Flow shows you the story chart and lets you skip to any scenes you've already done to avoid doing everything again when you hit a story block. Save let's you save, and Log shows the the conversation transcript so far.

You can also switch to Easy mode if you like. There is no Normal, just Hard and Easy. It's on Hard by default, and once you switch to Easy you can't change back until you've beaten that particular trap room, at which point it goes back to hard automatically.

After figuring out all the clues you find a password like this:



This is the password that opens the safe and lets you out of the room. Every room actually has two passwords. The green one, as above, and a blue one. The green one gets you out of the room and the blue one gets you some secret files. So now that I've done that it's time to open the sage and see what's inside.



Phi is being nice all of a sudden. She's been aloof and snarky so far. Even though I was the one solving all the puzzles she was never impressed.






In the safe we find:

A map of Floor A, the foor we are on.

The key cards to get back into the Ambidex Rooms (those elevators from the start). It's in the Ambidex Rooms that we actually earn our BP.

Some more rules. This tells us that once a door has been opened and the trap room has been solved, the doors remain open and anyone can use them. No colour or number restrictions. So once a floor has been cleared everyone is free to go wherever.

Finally, a newspaper clipping about the Radical 6 virus. Apparently it's spreading rapidly, with 100'000 deaths already, and no cure in sight. Victims are being quarantined. But I've never heard of it, and neither has anyone else. But we decide to leave it for now until we're out of the room.

There's also a key in the safe, which unlocks the exit door.