Zero Time Dilemma

Zero Time Dilemma, also known as Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma, is an adventure video game developed by Chime, and published by Spike Chunsoft and Aksys Games. It is the third entry in the Zero Escape series, following Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2009) and Virtue’s Last Reward (2012). The game was released for Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation Vita, and Microsoft Windows in 2016, for PlayStation 4 in 2017, and for Xbox One in 2022. As of December 2021, it is no longer available for purchase on the North American and European Nintendo eShop.

Zero Time Dilemma is set between the events of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue’s Last Reward. The game follows nine characters who have been locked up in an underground nuclear bomb shelter and are forced to play a death game called the Decision Game, which is led by a masked person known as Zero. The shelter is divided into three wards, with three people placed in each section, making up three teams: C-Team, Q-Team, and D-Team. To get to the central elevator hall and escape, the characters need six passwords; one password is revealed each time one of them dies.

The characters are all wearing watches that inject them with a drug every 90 minutes, inducing memory loss. Heavily involved in the game’s lore is the many-worlds theory, where every decision made creates alternate universes where the opposite was chosen; these timelines make up the game’s multiple routes. Zero Time Dilemma is an adventure game consisting of multiple chapters, representing 90-minute periods; chapters consist of narrative sections and escape-the-room puzzle sections.

The chapters, referred to as “fragments”, are chosen through the Floating Fragment system, in which the player gets to choose a fragment to play based on an image and a vague description. The fragments can be played out of order; the characters lose their memory after each 90-minute period, and do not know where they are in the timeline. When the player completes a fragment, they are returned to the Floating Fragment screen, and the completed fragment is placed in a narrative flowchart, indicating where it takes place in the story.