The Beast has been forced by her twin brother, a manipulative asshole, to pretend to be him for mysterious reasons on this cruise where she wants to be sleeping around, but must keep up appearances so as not to arouse suspicion. You’re The Beast, a lesbian who isn’t shy from flirting or going back to the bedroom.

The setting is what rich kids might call a school trip and the rest of us might call a once-in-a-lifetime holiday on a cruise. As a somewhat traditionally styled visual novel, Ladykiller in a Bind is about socially manipulating a bunch of lusty teenagers. The full title of Ladykiller in a Bind is ‘My Twin Brother Made Me Crossdress as Him and Now I Have to Deal with a Geeky Stalker and a Domme Beauty Who Want Me in a Bind!!’ But try to forget that. The way that you, the player (as opposed to you, the character), can have knowledge that characters don’t, in a form of dramatic irony, is executed brilliantly when you have different timelines and endings to consider. Choices you make result in different endings, and the games play into it in a way no other visual novel really has. Zero Escape is grim, but the story is fascinating and well told. They never feel like a cop-out, there’s rarely anything as simple as having to solve a Tower of Hanoi puzzle for the umpteenth time. Some of these puzzles get pretty difficult as you go on, like having to decipher an unknown language made of symbols. Point-and-click segments challenge you to solve puzzles to escape through each door. You’re not just reading the whole time, either.

It all gets a bit Saw-like when people start dying in gruesome ways, such as acid showers and bombs inserted into people’s stomachs. They’re each fitted with watches that each display a number, and told that they must escape whatever place they’re in by working through puzzles contained by nine doors. In each game, nine people are locked in a place by a mysterious figure using the name Zero. The first two were only ported to PC in 2017 (with remastered visuals and new voice acting), as a pack called The Nonary Games, while Zero Time Dilemma stands on its own. There are three games in this series: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors Virtue’s Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma.

If you enjoy getting your hands dirty with puzzles, the Zero Escape series is perhaps your best bet. The Nonary Games/Zero Time Dilemma (the Zero Escape series)

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