Zero Escape Virtue’s Last Reward

Zero Escape Virtue’s Last Reward is a 2012 adventure game developed by Chunsoft. It is the second installment in the Zero Escape series, and was originally released for the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita. The story follows the player character Sigma, who is abducted and forced along with eight other individuals to play the Nonary Game, which puts its participants in a life-or-death situation. As the story progresses, the characters unravel the secrets behind the Nonary Game. Virtue’s Last Reward features nine main characters who are kidnapped by an unknown individual called Zero. 

The player character Sigma is joined by Phi, a girl with a “no-nonsense attitude”; Dio, a rude and insensitive man; Tenmyouji, an elderly man; Quark, an energetic young boy; Luna, a kind and quiet woman; Clover, an unpredictable girl who appeared in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors; Alice, a commanding and focused woman; and K, an amnesiac man who wears an irremovable, full-body suit of armor. Zero III, an artificial intelligence who appears in the form of a CGI rabbit, controls the Nonary Game. Zero III is nicknamed “Zero Jr.” by the participants to distinguish the entity from the human Zero, who is in turn nicknamed “Zero Sr.”

The game is set in an abandoned warehouse-like facility containing rooms filled with puzzles, where Zero forces the characters to participate in the Nonary Game. The characters are affixed with bracelets that display a point value that is initially set at three. During the game they participate in rounds of the Ambidex Game, in which they have to choose to “ally” or “betray” the other characters. The choices made affect the players’ bracelet points: if two opponents both choose “ally”, each individual gains two points.

If the two opponents both choose “betray”, no change occurs; and if one opponent chooses “betray” while the other chooses “ally”, the opponent who chose “betray” gains three points while the other opponent loses two points. Participants who gain at least nine points are able to escape, while those who reach zero points are executed. The gameplay of Virtue’s Last Reward is divided into two types of sections: Novel and Escape. In Novel sections, the player advances through the storyline and converses with non-playable characters through visual novel segments.

These sections require little interaction from the player other than reading the dialogue and text that appear on the screen. During Novel sections, the player may be presented with decision options that affect the course of the game. One recurring decision option is a prisoner’s dilemma-type choice where the player must choose to “ally” or “betray” the characters they are pitted against, with different results depending on what choices the two parties picked.