Zero Context

Content warning: this episode briefly discusses gun violence, blood, on-screen suicide, the death of a dog, and attempted sexual assault.

It’s over. After being incinerated, dismembered, and blown up too many times to count, Axe and Nathalie have arrived at the end of Zero Time Dilemma, the end of Zero Escape, and the end of this podcast. As the sun sets on the Nevada desert, Delta informs our hosts that every terrible decision was necessary to bring them to this very moment transmitting live to you, dear listener. That through their suffering, the world may be saved. With the final decision staring our duo in the face, we leave it up to you to decide the fate of humanity…

This episode covers the fragments
- [C/Q/D-Team] -> Force Quit Boxes
- The Final Decision
- Payoff
- Epilogues

Things Discussed
- Nathalie's fan cast
- Carlos the sis-con, gay-coded, best friend firefighter who will never fuck
- Clipping through your daughter
- Putting a dollar in the swear jar for mentioning Her Story
- MIND HACKING
- The Zero Time Dilemma
- Blaming Telltale's The Walking Dead
- “Half to Whole” by Kizuna Chieda from Ai: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative
- Carlos giving a thumbs up
- Delta is baby
- The importance of the traditional family unit
- Streetpassing Delta
- “It's me, I'm Junpei!”
- Oneshot (Future Cat, 2014)
- Danger and epiphany at Spike Chunsoft
- Delta crying in the garden of Gethsemane
- Mira goes to jail
- End of the show sentimentality
- Nathalie's very good correct predictions

Intro: “Ustulate Pathos” by Shinji Hosoe
Outro: “Morphogenetic Sorrow -Piano-” by Shinji Hosoe

Subscribe on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. You can support Axe and Nathalie on their respective Ko-Fi pages, keep up with them on Cohost @wingblade and @BOOitsnathalie, and follow the show page for exclusive memes and research notes.

Send your questions/comments/complaints to [email protected], and tell your mom about us.

Content warning: this episode briefly discusses gun violence, blood, on-screen suicide, and the death of a child.

It’s the penultimate episode of Zero Context, which means Axe and Nathalie get to finally meet Zero in the flesh. With bloodshot eyes and cane in hand, he clues them in on the tragic truth of our favorite ball-headed boy, Mira’s bloody fate, and how he’s somehow been there the whole time just out of frame. Before our duo can process these revelations, Zero unveils new telekinetic powers and blows everyone away so he can spend a quite evening with his mom.

This episode covers the fragments
- [Q Team] -> Reality
- [Q Team] -> Q

Next time on Zero Context
- Play all the [Escape Box] fragments in the following order -> C-Team -> Q-Team -> D-Team
- Play the unlocked fragment
- Return to the start of the game

Things Discussed
- Gab's lounge for Gab
- Delta Ikari, the saddest boy
- “Choosing” to put yourself in the Matrix at gunpoint
- The Great American Dinner
- The Uchikoshi amnesia character triple twist
- Laughing and having a great time with Zero, just out of frame
- Professor Sean Layton, Boy Detective
- Answering questions I'm sorry to have asked
- Zero's creepy uncle fit
- President Delta
- Radical-6 Day Reunion
- PSA for all ice-cream men in Nebraska
- A text prompt to your brain
- Leftist Reading on the Abnormal Mapping network
- 999 Season 1 DLC
- Official alternate universes (but not in a metaverse way)

Intro: “Ustulate Pathos -Record-” by Shinji Hosoe
Outro: “Morphogenetic Sorrow” by Shinji Hosoe

Subscribe on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. You can support Axe and Nathalie on their respective Ko-Fi pages, keep up with them on Cohost @wingblade and @BOOitsnathalie, and follow the show page for exclusive memes and research notes.

Send your questions/comments/complaints to [email protected], and tell your mom about us.

Content warning: this episode briefly discusses starvation, sexual assault, domestic abuse, suicide and suicidal ideation, dismemberment, the death of infants, and gun violence.

Through a chaotic sequence of various form of time travel, Axe and Nathalie have finally ended up at Zero Time Dilemma’s apex. They bare witness to a cabin fever love story, learn about transporter cooldown timers, and send clones of doomed babies back to the turn of the 20th century. Shifting to another timeline, they discover the facility is not what it seems, get another round of snail story facts, and finally glance at that bloody anagram before our favorite boy Carlos blows the door off its hinges…

This episode covers the fragments- [Q Team] -> Pop-Off (new ending)- [D Team] -> Transport- [D Team] -> Door of Truth- [C Team] -> Get Back- [C Team] -> Anthropic Principle (new ending)

Next time on Zero Context- Choose [Q Team] -> Play the [ball boy in the matrix with Zero] fragment -> Play all outcomes- Choose [Q Team] -> Play the [ball boy in the transporter room] fragment -> Play all outcomes

Things Discussed- Why Obama sold Zero an alien transporter- The Swapper (Facepalm Games, 2013) and clone ethics- A game about dads- Getting played out during your love confession- Post coital, fully clothed pillow talk- Licking booze off the ground- Human Baby + Gab = Zero- Getting softlocked by birthdays- Zero's podcast- Turning on Joker mode- Uchikoshi decorating the fake lounge just for us- Post credits dance sequence- Writing budget constraints into the story- Ordinary everyman Carlos- Solving the trolley problem with clairvoyance- Zero, savior of humanity- Asking what YOU are doing about radical-6???- Carlos the taxi-driver- A thousand unfortunate accidents- Everyone and no one is guilty- Final Fantasy XIII-2 (Square Enix, 2011, and ⁠Abnormal Mapping’s Fabula Nova Crystallis episode⁠- ⁠Novel Not New⁠ and ⁠Say It In Red⁠'s episodes on AI: The Somnium Files

Intro: “⁠Ustulate Pathos -Record-⁠” by Shinji HosoeOutro: “⁠Morphogenetic Sorrow⁠” by Shinji Hosoe

Subscribe on ⁠Pocket Casts⁠, ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠, or wherever you get podcasts. You can support ⁠Axe⁠ and ⁠Nathalie⁠ on their respective Ko-Fi pages, keep up with them on Cohost ⁠@wingblade⁠ and ⁠@BOOitsnathalie⁠, and follow ⁠the show page⁠ for exclusive memes and research notes.

Send your questions/comments/complaints to ⁠[email protected]⁠, and tell your mom about us.

Content warning: this episode briefly discusses suicidal ideation, dismemberment, blood, and gore

After last week’s malaise, Axe and Nathalie have been orb launched into two bewilderingly dense fragments. Zero Time Dilemma begins to reveal its secrets, as first our hosts close the loop on the radical-6 outbreak, finding a far more familiar culprit than expected. Then, Akane’s murderous soul returns to her body and they bear witness to the worst time travel escape plan of all time. Just as the way out is at hand, the lights are cut and a boy without a name comes to end the episode for us…

This episode covers the fragments
- [D Team] -> Outbreak
- [C Team] -> Ambidex

Next time on Zero Context
- Choose [D Team] -> Play the [Diana and Sigma looking at a TV] fragment -> Play all outcomes
- Choose [Q Team] -> Play the new node under the [Pop Off] fragment -> Play to a natural conclusion

Things Discussed
- Voice actor corner: Sigma (JP: Daisuke Ono; EN: Matthew Mercer)
- Listening to podcasts on the Apple Vision Pro
- Securing your nuclear reactor with Chu Chu Rocket
- When your bones don’t have enough gravity
- Modern game UI as a woman
- Narrative stakes for branching narratives (or the lack thereof)
- Saw traps as personality quizzes
- Blackjack, Columbo, and The X-Files
- Invoking Jack Final Fantasy
- Time traveling murderer Akane
- Teaching people about the morphogenetic field IRL
- Posting on Gamefaqs about wood physics
- One punch ball ball
- ORB
- Legally distinct Back to the Future
- Everyone is Zero

Intro: “Ustulate Pathos -Record-” by Shinji Hosoe
Outro: “Morphogenetic Sorrow” by Shinji Hosoe

Subscribe on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. You can support Axe and Nathalie on their respective Ko-Fi pages, keep up with them on Cohost @wingblade and @BOOitsnathalie, and follow the show page for exclusive memes and research notes.

Send your questions/comments/complaints to [email protected], and tell your mom about us.

Content warning: this episode briefly discusses child abuse and death by suffocation

Happy New Year! Returning from an arguably better videogame, Axe and Nathalie are back in the Zero Time Dilemma bomb shelter with our favorite cast of disorganized sickos. They learn about game show probability puzzles, crunch the numbers on sci-fi virus mortality rates (they’re bad), and play an actual escape room game. In another timeline, Nathalie proposes that a dog could be behind the whole thing, Axe pleads for more mid-puzzle cutscene, and the duo collectively sigh at how still nothing is happening before being put out of their misery by a mysterious assassin.

This episode covers the fragments
- [C Team] -> Monty Hall
- [Q Team] -> Radical-6
- [D Team] -> Suppression

Next time on Zero Context
- Choose [C Team] -> Play the [Carlos and Junpei looking at monitors] fragment -> Play all outcomes
- Choose [D Team] -> Play the [Phi standing in front of a wall with Sigma and Diana out of frame behind her] fragment -> Play all outcomes
- Choose [D Team] -> Play the [Diana and Sigma looking at a TV] fragment -> Play all outcomes

Things Discussed
- Voice actor corner: Mira (JP: Maaya Sakamoto; EN: Rachel Kimsey )
- The Spike Chunsoft Gamer Survey
- Virtue’s Last Reward: Game Show Edition
- What if: a visual novel
- Horny for firefighters
- The Monty Hall problem, which you can read about for yourself at home
- A baffling lab puzzle
- Q Team best team?
- The Horizontal Tango
- A weird old guy
- Playing flash games in the Villanova University CAVE
- Getting the COVID vaccine in a “spa”
- Commissioning an oedipal reading of Sigma
- Top 10 things 20-somethings do

Intro: “Ustulate Pathos -Record-” by Shinji Hosoe
Outro: “Morphogenetic Sorrow” by Shinji Hosoe

Subscribe on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. You can support Axe and Nathalie on their respective Ko-Fi pages, keep up with them on Cohost @wingblade and @BOOitsnathalie, and follow the show page for exclusive memes and research notes.

Send your questions/comments/complaints to [email protected], and tell your mom about us.

Content warning: Kamaitachi no Yoru contains scenes of blood, dismemberment, murder, suicide, and transmisogyny, which are discussed briefly in this episode.

Axe and Nathalie take a break from Zero Escape for the holidays, having scored an all-expenses-paid trip to a ski lodge from a mysterious and generous listener. The time off gives them a chance to finally play the seminal sound novel, Kamaitachi no Yoru (Chunsoft, 1994) AKA Night of the Sickle Weasel, but unfortunately, the game becomes all too real as bodies start to pile up with the ceaseless snow. As frenzied accusations threaten to lock up our hosts for good, they search for a branch of the flow chart which will get them out of this nightmare…

This episode covers
- Kamaitachi no Yoru: Rinne Saisei (Chunsoft, 1994) AKA Night of the Sickle Weasel or Banshee’s Last Cry.

Next time on Zero Context
- Choose [C Team] -> Play the [Akane in front of Roman numerals] fragment -> Play all outcomes
- Choose [Q Team] -> Play the [team standing by a sink on broken glass] fragment -> Play all outcomes
- Choose [D Team] -> Play the [team looking at a blue button] fragment -> Play all outcomes

Things Discussed
- Otogirisō (Chunsoft, 1992)
- The Portopia Serial Murder Case (Chunsoft, 1983)
- HITME (xiri, 2021)
- Sharin no Kuni: The Girl Among the Sunflowers (Akabeisoft2, 2005)
- ryukishi07
- Project Kamai translation group
- Kamaitachi no Yoru’s storied history
- Canada names
- How to make better visual novels
- Making Silent Hill f in OnScripter
- Inventing visual novels to get your girlfriend into games
- Getting porn for finishing the book
- Never trying to solve the murder as a woman in a mystery novel
- Uchikoshi’s GDC presentation talking about KNY’s influence on Virtue’s Last Reward
- Not associating with Mikimoto
- The Transmisogyny Route
- The Chunsoft dungeons
- 12 persons, 12 hours, 12 doors
- Turning the game off from the inside
- Amr Al-Aaser’s excellent canon fire essay on the game
- Saying goodbye to Twitter

Intro: “Amber Crescent Moon” by Kouta Kato
Outro: “Wonderful Introduction Time” by Kouta Kato and Paul McCartney

Subscribe on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. You can support Axe and Nathalie on their respective Ko-Fi pages, keep up with them on Cohost @wingblade and @BOOitsnathalie, and follow the show page for exclusive memes and research notes.

Send your questions/comments/complaints to [email protected], and tell your mom about us.

Content warning: this episode briefly discusses suicide and child abuse

In an eerily brief set of fragments, Axe and Nathalie must contend with poison capsules, rotating rooms, and a belligerent shotgun wielding Eric as they scramble towards a still ambiguous resolution. They scan some brains and swing some hammers before confronting a troubling child abuse backstory and its many unfortunate connotations. After the dust settles, Nathalie unveils a new set of 10 predictions that just might be her ticket our of this twisted game, and our hosts look forward to a holiday reprieve from Zero as they jump to a different game entirely.

This episode covers the fragments
- [C Team] -> Poison
- [Q Team] -> Pop Off

Next time on Zero Context
- Kamaitachi no Yoru: Rinne Saisei (Chunsoft, 1994) AKA Night of the Sickle Weasel or Banshee’s Last Cry.

Next next time on Zero Context
- Choose [C Team] -> Play the [Akane in front of Roman numerals] fragment -> Play all outcomes
- Choose [Q Team] -> Play the [team standing by a sink on broken glass] fragment -> Play all outcomes
- Choose [D Team] -> Play the [team looking at a blue button] fragment -> Play all outcomes

Things Discussed
- Voice actor corner: Eric (JP: Akira Ishida; EN: Keith Silverstein)
- The terrifying passage of time (happy one+ year to us)
- How to pronounce Char Aznable
- Fentanyl
- #notmyculture
- Professor Akane Layton
- Eric gets the hammer power up
- The children’s puzzle game Rush Hour
- What’s Uchikoshi doing???
- Assigned serial killer at birth
- NScripter visual novels
- Fantasian (Mistwalker, 2021)

Intro: “Ustulate Pathos -Record-” by Shinji Hosoe
Outro: “Morphogenetic Sorrow” by Shinji Hosoe

Subscribe on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. You can support Axe and Nathalie on their respective Ko-Fi pages, keep up with them on Cohost @wingblade and @BOOitsnathalie, and follow the show page for exclusive memes and research notes.

Send your questions/comments/complaints to [email protected], and tell your mom about us.

Content warning: this episode briefly mentions alcoholism and suicidal ideation

After escaping from a eerily familiar shower game, Axe and Nathalie stand before the exit ready to emerge into the humid Nevada air. Instead, they are treated to incoherent asides about alien mouths, tournament statistics, and the existential weight of many worlds. In another reality, they trudge through the worst rec room puzzle yet, bearing witness to a particularly pathetic and angry Junpei, who is just as confused about this new pacifist Akane. Just as the numbers align and freedom appears in sight, something grabs our podcasters and pulls them back in. The show’s not over yet.

This episode covers the fragments
- [D Team] -> First Come, First Save
- [C Team] -> First Come, First Save
- [C Team] -> Anthropic Principle

Next time on Zero Context
- Choose [C Team] -> Play the [team standing in front of a red poster] fragment -> Play all outcomes
- Choose [Q Team] -> Play the [Eric staring at the camera next to someone in a tube] fragment -> Play all outcomes

Things Discussed
- Voice actor corner: Junpei (JP: Tatsuhisa Suzuki; EN: Evan Smith)
- Mother (as in mommy)
- Zero Reverse Theorem
- Alien hand syndrome
- Secret Agent Junpei
- Carlos the gay sis-con American Hedgehog
- Cat people brain worms
- Getting owned by a dice puzzle, again
- Divorce coded Akane
- How cool the American flag is
- Red River “admiring each other’s guns”
- The anthropic principle
- Existing in the universe God abandoned

Intro: “Ustulate Pathos -Record-” by Shinji Hosoe
Outro: “Morphogenetic Sorrow” by Shinji Hosoe

Subscribe on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. You can support Axe and Nathalie on their respective Ko-Fi pages, keep up with them on Cohost @wingblade and @BOOitsnathalie, and follow the show page for exclusive memes and research notes.

Send your questions/comments/complaints to [email protected], and tell your mom about us.

Content warning: this episode discusses scenes involving characters melting and being burned alive, and a brief mention of suicide

Awakening from an explosive nightmare, Axe and Nathalie are thrust into not one, not two, but three deadly decision games. First, they must choose whether to save themselves and doom the others to an acid grave. Then, they play a round of cosmic Russian roulette, potentially killing our favorite boy Sigma to save Phi from a familiar death by fire. In the timeline where they miraculously make it through, they are then suddenly poisoned and must decide if it’s possible to trust the antidote sent by supervillain girlboss Akane. Could she be behind Zero’s mask yet again?

This episode covers the fragments
- [Q Team] -> First Come, First Save
- [D Team] -> Fire

Next time on Zero Context
- Choose [D Team] -> Play the [team looking at a yellow button] fragment -> Play both outcomes -> Play the unlocked fragment
- Choose [C Team] -> Play the [team looking at a yellow button] fragment -> Play both outcomes -> Play the unlocked fragment
- [BONUS FRAGMENT] Chose [C Team] -> Play the [team in a rec room] fragment -> Play all outcomes

Things Discussed
- Voice actor corner: Q (JP: Aki Toyosaki; EN: Jonquil Goode)
- A callout post from Gab’s defense attorney
- Oh no this game has themes
- Inaction as a game mechanic
- The Sleeping Beauty Paradox
- Q getting arrested
- Diana x Phi
- Getting owned for not reading the puzzle instructions
- Sigma turning a woman that hates him into a robot servant
- The artbook prequel I forgot to link last time
- Snail lore
- Not trusting the process
- Diana’s Joker face
- Uchikoshi’s pony parade

Intro: “Ustulate Pathos -Record-” by Shinji Hosoe
Outro: “Morphogenetic Sorrow” by Shinji Hosoe

Subscribe on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. You can support Axe and Nathalie on their respective Ko-Fi pages, and keep up with them on Twitter @wing_blade_ and @BOOitsnathalie. You can follow the show and get exclusive research notes on Cohost.

Send your questions/comments/complaints to [email protected], and tell your mom about us.

Content warning: this episode discusses scenes involving heavy blood and gore, and briefly touches on suicide.

After a brief 90 minute absence, Axe and Nathalie return to Zero Time Dilemma ready to dive into the game’s first set of puzzles. Once again trapped in a pantry, Nathalie gets hung up on a sliding door diagram but eventually the pair unlocks the freezer and its gruesome rewards. Elsewhere, they fumble through yet another lesser library, unlocking a small arsenal in the process. Things quickly go south, however, when the duo comes face to face with an unexpected murderer…

This episode covers
- Repeating the [Vote] until each team has died once -> Playing the [Akane chainsaw] fragment -> Playing the [Q with a crossbow] fragment

Next time on Zero Context
- Choose [D Team] -> Play the [gun in front of Diana] fragment -> Play all described outcomes
- Choose [Q Team] -> Play the [Q in front of a yellow button] fragment -> Play both outcomes -> Play the unlocked fragment

Things Discussed
- Voice actor corner: Carlos (JP: Tomokazu Sugita; EN: Andrew Bowen)
- Cat ear headphones full of bombs
- Metatext and meta-metatext
- The iPod shuffle of inventory systems
- Skeuomorphism, baby
- Akane replacement theory
- Akane. Wielding. A. Chainsaw.
- Zero Escape movie fancast, Part 1
- Fragmented fragment writing
- Night of the Sickle Weasel (Chunsoft, 1994)
- The US health care system being so bad you join a death game
- Mira performing animal husbandry on her husband
- Dreading this game having thoughts about gender
- Blood Outfit cheat codes

Intro: “Ustulate Pathos -Record-” by Shinji Hosoe
Outro: “Morphogenetic Sorrow” by Shinji Hosoe

Subscribe on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts. You can support Axe and Nathalie on their respective Ko-Fi pages, and keep up with them on Twitter @wing_blade_ and @BOOitsnathalie. You can follow the show and get exclusive research notes on Cohost.

Send your questions/comments/complaints to [email protected], and tell your mom about us.