Stop the presses! I have found the single best game to come out this year. It’s for the DS, and its name is 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors.

This game is advertised as a psychological thriller, and it did exactly what it was advertised to do. It engaged me in a deep story, gave me challenging puzzles to solve, and kept me at the edge of my seat with actual narrative-induced panic attacks. This one game managed to scare me in a deep and profound way that even big budget thrillers haven’t done for me recently. I’ve long said that we have needed an example of truly professional writing in video games, and I would not hesitate to say that this is it.

Before I continue to sing this game’s praises, and don’t worry I will, let’s start out by saying that 999 is a visual novel. This means that you will be reading … a lot. In fact there is far more reading in this game than there is pressing buttons or tapping on the touch screen.

The basic flow of the game is actually pretty simple. Story progress until you either A, have to make a decision that will alter how the story progresses or B, are put into a situation that has you seeking an exit from a Saw-like puzzle room. If reading isn’t your idea of a fun time, turn away now. Story comes first in 999, and if you aren’t a story comes first gamer, then you simply won’t like it. So go play an FPS or something and leave the rest of us to our reading.

The story is kind of like Saw with a bit of an anime twist and an emphasis on interpersonal drama and problem solving. Destructoid actually describes it as Saw if it were written by Michael Crichton and that’s pretty accurate.

You are Junpei, a college student who comes home one day only to find a sleeping gas canister in your apartment. It explodes and you pass out. When you wake up, you realize you have been kidnapped by Zero, a mysterious man in a mask, who wants you to play a sick and twisted game for your life. You are on a ship which will sink in 9 hours, and what’s worse, you have a bomb in your stomach that will explode if you disobey any of Zero’s rules. Your only clue to start with is a bracelet that has been strapped to your arm that constantly shows a digital readout of 5, and its only a few seconds later that water starts flooding the ship at an alarming rate. Good luck!

Stuck on the ship with you are 8 other kidnapped victims, each with similar bombs in their stomachs and bracelets that show different integers from 1-9. The overarching rules of Zero’s game, the Nonary Game as he calls it, are simple and math based. There are doors with numbers on them scattered throughout the ship. Only 3-5 people whose numbers total up to a digital root that matches the number on the door may pass through.

(A digital root, for those of you who don’t know, is what happens when you continue to add the individual digits in a number together until you get a single digit. So for example, the digital root of 1469 is 1+4+6+9=20, 2+0=2, so the digital root of 1469 is 2.)

On one side of each numbered door is a verification device and on the other side is a deactivation device. If an incorrect group of people use the verification device, then the bombs go off. If more people walk through the door than verified, then the bombs go off. If everyone who passed through the door doesn’t deactivate their bombs at the deactivation device in 81 seconds, the bombs go off. Hell, basically if you do anything against the rules, the bombs go off.

Zero tells Junpei and the rest of the group that the door marked with a number 9 is their way out. Unfortunately, the rules state that only 3-5 people can walk through a numbered door. This means at least 4 people will have to die. However, you need these people to pass through the other numbered doors, and so a psychological game of life and death ensues. Characters get paranoid, many start to betray each other, and at one point you even theorize that one of the very participants in the game is Zero himself. It’s a thrilling story that is masterfully written and manages to keep you in suspense even when totally divorced from the gameplay.

As I said before, most of the time you will be reading dialogue between the many characters, and narration about Junpei’s actions as he wanders through the ship. However, the game very frequently asks you to make decisions for Junpei as the story progresses. Some of these decisions seem trivial, such as deciding whether or not to listen to one of your fellow companions talk about the mystery of the Titanic. Others seem “life or death” in nature, such as deciding who will be left behind when you encounter a door that not everyone can walk through. Junpei will have to decide who to trust, which doors to go through, how to navigate the ship, and eventually he will have to try and figure out who everyone is and why they were chosen to play the Nonary Game in the first place.

The story is broken up by interactive puzzle segments where Junpei and the other victims look for clues in their environment. Most of the time, this is to escape a locked room or other trap that Zero has set for them, but you’ll also search prisons, laboratories, and even an on-ship casino for clues about where you are and why you are here.

Investigation is entirely handled with the DS’s touch screen. You tap to choose where to go, tap to look at an object, tap to pick something up and put it in your inventory, and pretty much tap to do anything else. Everything you can tap is outlined in bright yellow, so you never find yourself stuck in a room, relentlessly pixel bitching to find the one thing you haven’t examined yet.

In your inventory, you can rotate the objects you find in full 3D space, examine them more closely, and you can even combine them with other items you have acquired. By using your inventory and the strange devices Zero has set up about the ship, you will eventually find your way out, or at least find your way to the next torturous puzzle room.

The reason why this game is so good is the integration of puzzle segments and story. The game never has a boring rhythm of reading, then playing, then reading, then playing, because the two segments rely heavily on each other. For example, while you are solving a puzzle, characters will actively engage in conversation, not only to give you hints but also to give you important pieces of information about the overall plot. On the flip side, many of the story segments provide clues as to how to solve future puzzles or where to go next in the ship. Even when you aren’t gathering clues to solve puzzles, the whole game is set up as a mystery novel, so your brain is constantly trying to figure out who Zero is and what connects him to the kidnapped victims. Essentially, the majority of the game takes place in your own head rather than on the screen.

So you wander through the ship, solving puzzles, and watching as some companions betray you while others meet an untimely demise. After about seven hours the game ends, and this is where the game actually begins. You see, there are multiple endings to this game, and your first ending probably won’t leave you feeling very satisfied. Junpei then wakes up in his cell at the beginning of the game all over again, but this time you have the knowledge of everything that happened in your previous playthroughs. The game makes absolutely certain to let you know this, by clearly labeling the choices you have made and actions you have taken in prior playthroughs. You can even skip dialogue you have seen before and go directly to any puzzle you want from the main menu.

If you make different decisions this time around, the story will unfold in an entirely different manner. You will grow to trust different people, and you will learn different pieces of information you overlooked before. You can then put this together with info you got from your previous playthroughs to get an even clearer picture of what is actually happening. It’s an entirely different game with an entirely different outcome each time you play it, and you’ll know if you are just getting the same story because you can skip anything you have already seen. The only downside the game has is that you can’t skip puzzles you have already solved. It’s a little annoying so you might as well download a cheat sheet to make the redundant puzzles go quicker.

You actually have to see several of these other endings before you are allowed to see the “true ending” so multiple playthroughs are a must. Even if you use a walkthrough guide you are looking at a solid 14 hour experience just to get the true ending. However, if you want to see all six endings, solve all sixteen puzzle rooms, and figure out everything about the game’s backstory, it will easily take you nearly twice that amount of time.

Oh, and the true ending of this game is good, really good. The twist that the plot pulls on you in the end is so astounding; I don’t even know how to describe it. It actually manages to work the very concept of a person playing a video game into the plot. You will be stunned, in a word, and you will certainly remember this game for your whole career as a gamer. It’s really just that powerful.

999 is really all about narrative quality. It doesn’t patronize you with jump out scares or create artificial tension by giving puzzles time limits. It just guides you through your environment slowly, with each item having a purpose and each character being important. The game lets your own paranoia of making a wrong decision and natural fear of imminent death grip you from the inside. When stomach bombs explode, you never actually get to see the dead body. Instead, the camera focuses on some remote blood splatters caused by the explosion, and the whole grisly scene is described entirely through text. Sure, it wlj.d have been easier to simply throw gore at the screen, and the game is rated M so you know the designers could have gotten away with it, but it’s simply more sophisticated to let the reader’s mind dream up their own ghastly scene of carnage and violence than it is to show a picture of a mutilated body.

The best part about 999 isn’t the mind bending puzzles, the exquisitely written narrative, or the edge of your seat atmosphere. It’s the price. The game is only thirty five bucks. THIRTY FIVE BUCKS! This is one of the best games to come out in our current gaming generation and it’s only thirty five dollars! People everywhere are dropping sixty dollars for Call of Duty: Black Ops, and here I am 25 dollars richer because I decided to play a game that put some actual thought into its narrative.

Honestly, the puzzle portions of 999 sell the game by themselves, but the story is just so well constructed it can’t be ignored. This, is a perfect example of video games as art and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It literally made me laugh, made me cry, and gave me real life panic attacks, when all I was really doing was sitting on my ass with my DS in hand. I can’t say anything else other than GET THIS GAME NOW! The creators of this game deserve those thirty five bucks, and then some.

Related posts on 30ninjas.com:

• Ghost Trick Review — The Fastest Visual Novel In the West
• Okamiden Review — The Best the DS Can Offer
• A Review of Marvel VS Capcom 3’s Event Mode
• PS3 Hacking Opens the Doors for Cheaters
• Fight Night Champion Review — A Sports Game With a Story
• Who’s That Flying!? Review — An Invincible Shoot ‘Em Up