Zero Time Dilemma (ZTD) is the 3rd and for now, final, game in the Zero Escape series. There is a loose narrative tie between the games, but strictly speaking it's not necessary to have played the previous two.

This is an M-rated game and the next paragraph will describe the nature of the M rating. I opted not to flag this post mature, as I think describing the nature of the game is fair game, but I am giving you a chance to nope out.

ZTD takes the form of a heavily narrative-focused puzzle game with a serious M rating for brutal , bloody animated violence, extremely dark themes including world-ending diseases being deliberated unleashed and of course, up close and personal murder. Oh yes, and impersonal murder too, as the game will start out by diving the 9 players into 3 teams and telling each team to vote for another team, and if any team gets 2 votes, that team will be executed by strapping explosive collars around their necks. There is also one scene of where a male character holds down a female character implying intent to assault further, but he is interrupted by a 3rd person who starts a full-blown MMA fight with the attacker (there's more going on here than it seems, but it would be a spoiler). If you haven't lost your appetite yet, let's dive in.

All three games and this one in particular feature a flowchart with branching outcomes. Which team got eliminated at the start of the game changes which rooms you can explore, since each team was in a separate ward of this facility, with no way to cross between. Further decisions may appear as you finish a room; for example, finishing one room leads to a giant button with "do not push" written next to it, and you as the player will have to decide whether to push it or not, each of those will lead to a further branch of the flowchart.

You can return to earlier decisions on the flowchart and play them out differently, and the game helpfully features a fast-forward button that can quickly get you right back to that decision while not fast-forwarding any new text that might appear as a result of changes upstream in the timeline.

As the player, you can use meta-knowledge to solve puzzles that the in-game characters shouldn't be able to, and the game will eventually provide an explanation for this, but I'll leave that for you to discover.

While the previous titles placed a heavier emphasis on solving the rooms, this one feels something like 40% solving the rooms, 60% watching the plot unfold. The original Vita and 3DS release did not have voice acting as far as I know, and the VA is hit or miss here. You can also just read of course, if you prefer, and that's what I remember doing when I originally played this on 3DS. There's a few things that are less convenient now with only a single screen, but those are very minor (such as having the instructions for a mini-game/puzzle on a separate screen from the actual puzzle, you just toggle now where before you could have them up together).

If you're up for a puzzle game with an unhealthy dose of murder, and a lot of reading / listening, the entire series is worth a look (the first two are available in a bundle @zero-escape-the-nonary-games ; for some reason they did not package this with those).