Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward
2012
- point-and-click
- puzzle
- adventure
- visual novel
- science fiction
- horror
- thriller
- survival
- mystery
- single player
The story
The second game in the Zero Escape series. Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward is a mystery/thriller visual novel. It is story focused with multiple endings that use player choices and puzzle rooms to progress. Additions to the game include an 'auto-advance text' mode, so players can listen to the voice acting without clicking through dialog, a memo function that allows players to note anything they feel is useful, and a flow chart that shows how alternate choices unfold. The in-game calculator has been removed.
What it’s like
Clean anime character portraits sit against flat, schematic backdrops of steel corridors, cramped cabins and sealed rooms, lit in cold fluorescent white that flares to red when the mood turns. The score mixes pulsing electronic beats with eerie piano, dropping to near silence during long reading stretches, and the voice acting carries much of the performance. Pacing is talk-heavy: long scenes of nervous banter and mounting mistrust, broken up by puzzle rooms where players work through codes and mechanisms against a ticking clock. The tone is paranoid, cerebral and sharply twisty, a slow-building dread that snaps into sudden shocks. Violence is present and bloody: deaths and murders appear as graphic, stylised still images, with cruel moments that land hard, though sexual content is absent. Intensity comes in bursts rather than as a constant. Auto-advance lets you sit back and listen through the dialogue, which suits a long evening. It is for players who enjoy twisty mysteries, branching choices and puzzle-solving, and for anyone after a tense sci-fi thriller they can pause and mull over between sessions.
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