999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

The gameplay alternates between two types of sections: Escape sections, where the player completes puzzles in escape-the-room scenarios; and Novel sections, where the player reads the game's narrative and makes decisions that influence the story toward one of six different endings. Development of the game began after Uchikoshi joined Chunsoft to write a visual novel for them that could reach a wider audience; Uchikoshi suggested adding puzzle elements that are integrated with the game's story. The inspiration for the story was the question of where inspiration comes from; while researching it, Uchikoshi came across Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance hypothesis, which became the main focus of the game's science fiction elements. The localization was handled by Aksys Games; they worked by the philosophy of keeping true to the spirit of the original Japanese version, aiming for natural-sounding English rather than following the original's exact wording. Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors was positively received, with reviewers praising the story, writing and puzzles, but criticizing the game's tone and how the player is required to re-do the puzzles every time they play through the game . In the Novel sections, the player progresses through the branching storyline and converses with non-playable characters through visual novel segments. Sections require little interaction from the player as they are spent reading the text that appears on the screen, which represents either dialogue between the various characters or Junpei's thoughts. During Novel sections, the player will sometimes be presented with decision options that affect the course of the game, resulting in one of six endings. The whole plot is not revealed in just one playthrough; the player needs to reach the "true" ending to get all the information behind the mystery, which in turn requires another specific ending to be reached beforehand. Some endings contain hints to how to reach further endings. In between Novel sections are Escape sections, which occur when the player finds themselves in a room from which they need to find the means of escape. At some points, the player may need to combine objects with each other to create the necessary tool to complete a puzzle. The player-controlled Junpei is joined by June, a nervous girl and an old friend of Junpei whom he knows as Akane; Lotus, a self-serving woman with unknown skills; Seven, a large and muscular man; Santa, a punk with a negative attitude; Ace, an older and wiser man; Snake, a blind man with a princely demeanor; Clover, a girl prone to mood swings and Snake's younger sister; and the 9th Man, a fidgety individual. The events of the game occur within a cruise ship, though all of the external doors and windows have been sealed, and many of the internal doors are locked.