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Zero Time Dilemma Review
Damien King @meetdamien

Nine people trapped in an underground shelter. One locked door to freedom. Six passwords needed to open that door — each of which will only be revealed once a person dies. Who will survive the night?

Zero Time Dilemma is the third game in the Zero Escape series, a combination of escape the room puzzles and visual novel dialog and decision making. While it loosely continues from previous titles — a few earlier characters return, and a couple of brief nods to older events — knowledge of other games isn’t necessary to enjoy Dilemma. We dove into this one blind, and enjoyed it all the same.

Live or die: Make your choice

Taking more than a few (OK, a whole lot of) cues from the infamous Saw movies, Zero Time Dilemma puts nine unlucky protagonists into a disused bomb shelter where, thanks to their mysterious host Zero communicating through TVs and monitors, they discover that at least six of them will have to die in order for the rest to escape.

Split into three groups and separated into different wards, conflicts quickly arise as people argue over how to escape, who is to blame, and whether they’re comfortable with the unfortunate deaths — or even murder — of those on the other teams.

ZTD_SS1a

A major plot element and mechanic for Zero Time Dilemma is that gameplay is split into multiple fragments, each representing a particular block of time and involving one particular team; for instance, C-Team may wake up at 4pm and find themselves in the infirmary. Dilemma defies expectation by offering up most fragments from the start, allowing and even forcing you to play them out of chronological order, as there’s no way to know the “correct” order of events until you play each.

This is reinforced and explained by each team only being allowed a short window of ninety minutes of consciousness at any one time before being drugged, falling asleep and forgetting everything that happened during that period, including any discoveries or killings. Each time a team awakens, they have no idea whether this is the first time they’ve woken since events started, or what they may have missed.

Strange things soon become apparent as you start playing Dilemma, especially as you start following the perspectives of every team. Regularly scheduled notices of deaths inform you of casualties on other teams that you were unaware of — when did they die? How? Things start getting a little weird, but there’s a solid explanation.

ztd-dec

Characters and teams are often faced with “decision games”: choices that impact who gets to live. Teams sometimes get a choice that can wipe out those from other teams, contributing to the six deaths required for escape; other times, perhaps a weapon is conveniently discovered, and just how well do you know the other people on your team really?

Regardless of outcome, you’re able to go back to any decision point and change your mind. Where you had before chosen to kill off somebody to escape, perhaps you want to try and save them all with a different plan. Each decision branches off into its own timeline — you can’t follow D-Team’s exploits in a timeline where they had been executed, for example — and this leads to a crazy flow where each critical decision forms a new potential history.

ZTD_SS3a

Between watching plots unfold and making critical decisions, you’ll be figuring out a number of escape the room style puzzles. Teams typically awaken locked in a particular room of their ward, and you’ll need to discover a way out through collecting and combining items, solving puzzles, and a little good old-fashioned thinking. While these puzzles can be a little tricky and can require some math skills and deduction, they’re certainly not as esoteric or obscure as many titles in the room escape genre — nothing stands out as a “what the hell?” logic jump or ridiculous notion.

One area in which Zero Time Dilemma does falter, however, is exposition and dialog. Conversations can feel stilted at times, and much of the dialog feels forced; it lacks an organic feeling where you can imagine real people saying or feeling the same as the protagonists do. Story writing and dialog writing are very different skill sets, and while Dilemma does a good job of the former, the way characters talk and interact has a janky “off” feeling. In reality, people simply don’t finish each others’ thoughts or randomly bring up some psychological or philosophical dilemma out of the blue.

Conversations also fall prey to an occasional holier-than-thou attitude when they begin talking about paradoxes, philosophical arguments, and backstory, taking far too long to explain basic concepts as if they were trying to explain things to a five year old. While well-meaning, it comes off condescending — and yes, repeatedly telling a story of something that happened years ago for the umpteenth time gets annoying, especially when the game isn’t difficult to figure out as you go. Grating, but not obnoxiously so, and it doesn’t detract too much from the overall experience.

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma — the lowdown Game Windows 10
  • Easier to get started with than the others in the Zero Escape series
  • Puzzle rooms are fairly solid, feeling fair and logical
  • Enough surprises to keep you guessing
  • Disjointed, unrealistic dialog and character actions
  • Non-linear approach may put off some
  • Sometimes overly heavy-handed and condescending
  • Summary

    If you can look past the awkward animation, poor dialog and condescending tone, Zero Time Dilemma offers a short but interesting mystery murder experience and set of puzzles, if only to fill the gap between other new decision-heavy (or Danganronpa) titles.

    7.1
    Awful
    Avoid this game. You'll have more fun burping into a blender.
    Mediocre
    Average at best. Consider if cheap or part of a bundle.
    Good
    Grab this if you're a fan of the genre. If not, rent or demo first.
    Great
    Recommended. You'll probably enjoy this game. Thank me later.
    Must-have
    Buy this immediately. Seriously. Go out and get this ASAP.
    GameCynic purchased a copy of this game to review. This does not impact our review or score. We reviewed the PlayStation 4 version.

    Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma

    Spike Chunsoft PC • PS4 • PS Vita • 3DS Release: August 18, 2017 Play now

    Author: Damien King

    A quintessential Englishman now living in the United States, Damien is a born-and-raised gamer since the Atari 2600 days of antiquity. Husband, puppy parent, and workaholic entrepreneur, he spends most of his time in some form of creative capacity — be it web design, consulting, or writing as a games critic.

    BNet: Sacrilege#1973 PSN: SacrilegeGG Steam: SacrilegeGG Twitter: @meetdamien

    Games currently in review

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    • CrossCode
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    We write richer, more in-depth reviews than most outlets, so our reviews take more time and we have to be very selective about which games to review. We believe the quality and integrity of our reviews makes up for the wait.

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