Twelve Minutes

Twelve Minutes is a puzzle game built with a top-down perspective and a time loop. Players must make different choices within a 12-minute loop to prove their wife is not the murderer in a certain case. Players need to click and drag various objects and characters in the scene to solve puzzles in the room, find clues about the case, and complete puzzle challenges in a suitable loop, thus advancing the plot in different directions. Will you ultimately be able to prove your wife's innocence?

Gameplay of Twelve Minutes:

Twelve Minutes is played from a top-down perspective and is set in an apartment suite shared by a husband and wife (voiced by James McAvoy and Daisy Ridley, respectively) which includes the main living and kitchen area, their bedroom, a bathroom, and a closet. The player controls the husband during these events in the style of a point-and-click adventure game, where he is free to do various actions. Without doing certain actions, over the course of 12 minutes, the husband learns his wife is pregnant. A self-identified cop (voiced by Willem Dafoe) arrives at the apartment and accuses the wife of murdering her father several years ago, and in trying to arrest her knocks out the husband and kills the wife and her unborn child.

Time resets at the point where the husband enters the apartment, with the player now free to attempt to figure out why the cop suspects the wife of murder, how to prevent her arrest, or several other possible actions in order to find a way to end the loop. If the husband dies or leaves the apartment, time is reset. However, the player is not given any exact information of what this goal is, leaving it up to them to find a way to resolve the situation. The husband is the only character that retains knowledge of the prior cycles (such as knowing about the impending arrest) and this information can be used to perform other actions in future cycles. This gameplay loop has been compared to The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. While the main loop lasts only 12 minutes in real time, the game is expected to take the player between 6 and 8 hours to complete.

Features of Twelve Minutes:

Real-time decision-making: Players will experience a tense and thrilling scenario in real time. You will play the role of the main character to witness and find ways to handle all the problems around you. Players will encounter danger in any situation. That is why they try to overcome them, survive, and break this loop.

Alter event course: The horrifying events will be repeated after twelve minutes. The horror story keeps repeating, and the player will again be in danger. The game requires you to use the knowledge you have gathered to change the course of events. Important clues will be found in familiar locations for you.

Replay value created: Every player’s decision affects the outcome of this story. You are trying to find clues and make this dangerous loop disappear. The interesting story will be experienced in each player’s way. So you can enjoy it and play it repeatedly if you want.

Talented voice actors: The highlight of this game is the presence of James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe. Famous voice actors have participated in this project to contribute to increasing the authenticity of this experience for players.

Immersive emotional depth: Players will enjoy the smooth and modern animation series of the game. In addition, the extremely immersive acting ability of the characters also increases the emotional tension for players. You will experience a wide range of emotions as you take on this challenge.

Narrative-driven performances: The voice actors’ voices add depth to an already engaging storyline. All events and stories are narrated in an engaging voice. Players get a more realistic feel for each mission and challenge.

Useful Tips of Twelve Minutes:

There's No Shame In Checking A Walkthrough: Most people consider it heresy to check walkthroughs for any adventure game, and it's easy to see why players may judge someone who resorts to using outside help for 12 Minutes. However, players don't have to feel any shame here.After all, the game is notorious for having puzzles that aren't well-designed, with the trial-and-error nature of the gameplay making repeated loops feel unbearably frustrating. In these cases, using a walkthrough can actually prevent players from tearing their hair out and giving up.

Take A Break If The Repetition Is Getting To Be A Bit Too Much: Time loop games need to be executed properly for them to hold a player's interest. Titles like Outer Wilds understand how this mechanic can be used to great effect, but 12 Minutes makes the critical mistake of not making up for the repetition that accompanies this concept.As a result, many people find it irritating to play this game for long stretches, and that's fine. Since the game is available via Netflix, players on their phones can easily crank out a few minutes of gameplay before stopping and preventing the experience from getting on their nerves.

The Broken Light Switch Is Something To Fiddle Around With: One of the most annoying parts of the game is figuring out the significance of everything in the apartment. Despite the reactive nature of the game's many elements, some players find it annoying that some solutions bear results while others don't.The only way to make some tangible progress in the game is to knock out the assailant breaking into the couple's home by either drugging or killing the wife and then using the short-circuiting light switch to incapacitate them. Without doing this, players will be stuck in a rut for an annoyingly long period of time.

Leave The House When Something Fails: Going through the time loop over and over again can be pretty frustrating, especially when players make a mistake that costs them the run in one particular loop. Having to wait for time to reset so that the player can start their progress again becomes quite grating after a point.Thankfully, this is where players can simply walk out of the house to restart their loop, negating their frustration. If leaving the house is more complicated than it seems, then players can always dispose of themselves to start another loop instead.

Always Try Building Up Towards The Next Loop: Each loop in 12 Minutes marks a step that players need to take in the right direction to uncover the mystery of the narrative. As a result, each loop should be viewed as a building block that guides players towards the end.Pursue every course of action in each loop, and think about different ways in which a particular situation can be tackled. Doing so ensures that players make some tangible progress in the game instead of repeating their mistakes in every loop.

Player Comments of Twelve Minutes:

As like some other reviewers, I have been waiting for this game to come out for a long time; ever since it was announced. I like choice making-like games and the concept of time-loop in a game, so this game was perfect for me. I pre-ordered as soon as I could and once I was able to download it, I played it for practically 9 hours straight.The gameplay and story is very interesting and the graphics and art of the game are great. The voice acting is awesome and love the actors they chose for it. The game is fun though after like my 20th loop, it eventually got tedious for me but then again its a time-loop game so bound to be repetitive and tedious. I won't put that as a con for it being repetitive as its a time-loop game after all. Its a game where you got to try new approaches or same approaches over and over again to find out different pieces of information or outcomes with stuff you learned from the previous loop. The game had me thinking about love but also about doing the right thing which i believe was idea in the end. Overall the game was fun and I enjoyed it.The cons were that it can be frustrating/confusing at times to figure out what to do next but it is a mystery/thriller story so perhaps expected (lol) and the ending could be more desirable(though still made me think)I say if you like the time-loop idea, mystery solving, dialogue choice making, the voice actors, point-click gameplay, and its art style, then its the game for you. I say its an 8 - 9 out of 10.

The background setting of Twelve Minutes has a unique, eye-catching charm, coupled with excellent publicity and promotion, so that this work once became a hot topic when it came out in 2021. As a point-and-click adventure game, this one places players in a confined space with a time loop. The plot, which revolves around an unreliable, stream-of-consciousness narrative, is full of ups and downs and twists and turns, presenting a story that leaves players wanting more in just a few hours. However, the game's simple graphics, a plot with too many blanks and extremely unexpected trends, as well as an over-emphasis on exploration and highly repetitive content, may be contrary to the expectations of many players, and has also attracted a lot of criticism.

This review took longer than expected, not because I didn’t finish the game (in fact I finished it the very same release week) but because my own opinion about the title has been changing since I finished it. Not going to lie, every Annapurna published title excites me a lot as it’s a publisher that offers a very specific type of experience that I enjoy a lot, 12 Minutes wasn’t the exception, since the reveal trailer in June 2019 the game has been under my radar due to the core mechanic of time looping (Annapurna wasn’t an stranger for this as they already published Outer Wilds by that time) and here we are 2 years later, before I start with the review I must say this, even at this point I’m still undecided about how to feel about this particular game, here’s why.Game’s premise is quite simple but gets deeper with each time loop, we start this story by coming back to our apartment after a long day, wife is waiting to enjoy dinner with us and perhaps surprise us somehow, the moment gets interrupted by a mysterious detective that muzzle both of you while asking again and again about her father and a watch we don’t know nothing about, after this the time loop will start rolling over and over again until we discover what’s going on with this detective, our wife and that watch.I must say that the story at first sounds interesting and the more you learn about it, the more interesting it gets, each time loop is an opportunity to learn more details about your wife’s past, knowing more about that detective and of course unveil dialogs that will open new paths to new situations, you could say that both the characters and your own apartment are both part of a giant puzzle that you will be completing piece by piece and everything goes well until we reach a certain point on the story.Without spoiling anything about the story, there’s a twist in this story that should have been the “Woah” moment of this game but it just doesn’t work, why? Because it’s an unlikely situation based on the chances, not only that, it feels completely disconnected from the main plot line and yeah, it explains the why, the who, the when and the where but I still don’t think it works at all, I’m going to say that it’s sad that a promising starting point gets smashed by a disappointing ending but I don’t think it ruins what the game does right.

Final Verdict:

With an incredibly thick plot paired with a realistic setting, Twelve Minutes takes players on an emotional ride as they continue to progress further in the game. While it does have higher storage space requirements, it can easily be forgiven given the thrilling experience you get to enjoy when playing through the numerous plot branches. You’ll even get to hear voice lines from some of your favorite actors.