ZERO ESCAPE
gameplay
cutscenes
The game has fully animated visual novel parts, but they are in the form of more cinematic cutscenes. The usual narration is all replaced by voiced dialogue.
The text skipping function from Virtue's Last Reward that doesn't skip new text returns.
escape rooms
There are 13 escape rooms, 3 less than the 16 of both 999 and VLR.
The escape rooms have additional objectives similar to the Secret Archives of Virtue's Last Reward known as "Quest Files" and serve the same purpose they did in Virtue's Last Reward.
decision games
Zero Time Dilemma does not feature a Nonary Game, but instead, a Decision Game. Each team from time to time are presented with a series of tragic, heartbreaking, sadistic, horrifying, intense and emotional mini-games. Each entails lethal risks to the participants, often resulting in one or more player's deaths.
randomized outcomes
The Decision Game has some randomized outcomes, utilizing elements of pure luck and chance instead of skill.
Randomness, chance, and unfairness is a core theme of the game, just like how life operates under these principles. A major component of life does not rely on actual effort, talent or skill.
The player may replay sections of the game to trigger alternate probabilities. The game's probability generator is also heavily weighted to outcomes that have not yet been seen. Like Virtue's Last Reward, some fragmented events are required to be seen in order for certain endings and decision choices to be available.
floating fragment system
Zero Time Dilemma features three main playable characters, taking control of the three Team's leader's Carlos, Diana, and Q. However, due to the nature of the Decision Game where at the end of each round, the cast is subjected to a powerful drug that erases all events that occurred during their investigations, the chronological events of the game are unclear as the player begins a new Event chain. Until the puzzle room and the respective decision game are completed, the player won't know where in the global flowchart this fragments falls into.
Using the Floating Fragment system, the player can freely jump to different event fragments for each team at their own leisure. This also allows them to revisit old Decision Games and choose other outcomes. The fragments have no set order in which they are completed or randomization. Players can choose to complete all events of a singular team at a time or jump in between team events.
Several Event Fragments require that the player have seen/completed another fragment however - these are known as Fragment locks which are similar to the locks in Virtue's Last Reward. An example of a fragment lock is not knowing who the murderer is.