999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors coming to North America

It looks like the lackluster success of the DS visual novel/mystery/adventure game Lux-Pain isn’t dissuading publishers from investigating text-heavy DS games. It looks like Aksys has picked up the Japanese DS adventure game Koukugen Daisshutsu: 9 Jikan, 9 Jin, 9 no Tobira (Extreme Escape: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors). That isn’t the name the game will carry in the US though, of course. Here it will be (slightly) shortened to 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors.

999 is a visual novel/adventure game, starring nine random people. They find themselves on a cruise ship that they can’t seem to escape from. Your job, as the player, is to find a way to get them off the ship. The problem is that there’s someone who placed them there and if they don’t follow strict guidelines (like only five people can work together at a time), they could get blown up. Getting blown up is bad, of course. Depending on the choices you make, you could end up seeing one of multiple endings.

There’s no word yet on an official release date or pricing. The GameFly listing does mention a November release date (November 18, 2010), which doesn’t seem too far fetched. That’d mean it’d be out in time for the holiday 2010 shopping frenzy.

999 could have a lot of potential. After all, Chunsoft seems to know what it’s doing when it comes to adventure games with loads of text – it created 428: Fuusa Sareta Shibuya de. 428 was a blockbuster Wii visual novel adventure that tasked multiple characters with multiple scenarios to work together to try and uncover the truth behind a mystery. It was so successful that it also received PS3 and PSP ports.

Read [Siliconera] Via [Joystiq] Product Page [GameFly] Site [Aksys]