While a lot of this had been taken care of by Spike Chunsoft, many parts of the game required different word choices in English depending on if a character knew of a particular thing or not; in these cases, the localization team had to track the story backwards. Uchikoshi stated that Zero Time Dilemma, the second sequel set to be released in 2016, will "tone it up" in response to feedback from players who praised the sense of fear present in 999. [2] While he came up with the set-up, the setting, and the characters on his own, he had a sub-writer helping him with writing the second game, and two sub-writers for the third game. Instead, he chose to rely on players' imagination, saying that players can make things seem plausible in ways he had not even imagined himself.
[52] With the third game, the development team wanted to renew the series' image in Japan; to do this, they used the English series title, Zero Escape, instead of the Kyokugen Dasshutsu title that had been used for previous Japanese releases. [61] The title Zero Escape was decided on during the localization of the second game, when the localization team wanted to create a "branding umbrella" for both games. kawesor. [32] In the first game, the player has to start over from the beginning after completing each branch, replaying Escape sections;[33] in the second game, the branches are represented by an interactive flowchart, allowing the player to jump to any point in the game that they have reached, and try different outcomes. The final puzzle, however, is different. Players had to solve real-life escape-the-room puzzles in the spirit of the Zero Escape series within a limited amount of time. The updated version also includes a story flowchart, similar to the other two games in the series, to help players with getting to the game's true ending. They're pretty pixelated, especially around the edges. The gameplay is divided into two types of sections: Novel sections, where the games' stories are presented, and Escape sections, where the player solves puzzles in escape-the-room scenarios. The game's setting was meant as a depiction of two of humanity's instinctive desires: the unconscious desire to return to one's mother's womb and shut oneself away, and the desire to escape and overcome one's current condition.
[38] The second game focuses on game theory, specifically on the prisoner's dilemma. [31], The gameplay of the series is divided into two types of segments: Novel sections – presented in a visual novel format in the first two games,[5] and as computer animated cutscenes in the third[32] – and Escape sections, which are escape-the-room scenarios. [44] The inspiration for the first game was the question "where do mankind's inspirations come from? [51], The Zero Escape series has been positively received by critics, with the first two games in the series attaining perfect scores in reviews from various publications. Virtue's Last Reward was featured on Gamasutra's and Game Developer's jointly created list of the ten best games of 2012 for having storytelling as gameplay rather than aside from gameplay.
In 2015, development for Zero Time Dilemma was announced to have been resumed, due to fan demand and the hiatus becoming big news.
[59] He designed the flow of the story by using a spreadsheet, and wrote prototypes of potential outcomes of the different scenarios in the game; after this, he matched it with the flowchart he had made, and came up with the details of each story.