It’s a time loop, baby.
Twelve minutes is a time loop game that is focused on uncovering a mystery. You’ll discover its many clues as well as their solution as you converse with a few characters and items around you all while in a tiny three-room apartment. With an all-star voice cast starring Willem Dafoe, James McAvoy, and Daisy Ridley, I expected and received some stellar performances, but the stilted and random way in which you can choose much of your dialogue causes many of its well-acted moments to feel tonally broken and disconnected from one another. Overall, Twelve minutes is a decent experience, but its time loop mechanics often get in the way of its discovery and trial and error gameplay.
Twelve Minutes is a time loop game that is focused on uncovering a mystery. You’ll.. um… discover.... uh, sorry… I’m not sure what is going on here. Ok… Um… In Twelve minutes, you’ll explore your tiny three-room apartment as you track down items, take part in information-gathering conversations, and eventually solve a mystery that is at the heart of its mostly well-told story. There are various outcomes based on your choices, including a few abrupt endings that result in the loop repeating itself yet again. The story begins with you spending a night at home with your wife, who is eager to share some important news with you before a man introducing himself as the police, enters your apartment and pushes you both down to the ground, zip-ties your hands behind your back as he attempts to get information out of your wife about a murder that took place eight years ago.
Twelve Minutes is a time loop game focused on.. Damn it! it happened again. Ok. Twelve Minutes is a point-and-click adventure where you attempt to solve a mystery around your wife’s father, a murder that happened exactly eight years ago. The characters are nameless but are voiced by Willem Dafoe, James McAvoy, and Daisy Ridley, I.. didn’t I already say.. that? What’s going on here.. Anyways… they play the cop, husband, and wife, respectively. You move around your tiny three-room apartment as you interact with mugs, knives, pills, a phone, and more. These items often will feel aimless on their own, and many of the puzzles won’t exactly be too clear on not just how to solve them, but how to even acknowledge you’re even in a puzzle in the first place. Some items will work together, such as using the sleeping pills, some water, and a mug, and while you’ll understand you can do that, the reason doesn’t exactly become too clear on why until you…
Twelve Minutes is a time loop… Oh god.. again? Damn it.. Ok…Um… As you move around your apartment, talking with your wife, or hoarding items to find a purpose for each of them, you’ll eventually have to work through a few loops to get an idea on how to progress, or how the information you gain from loop to loop is important to the next time you emerge from the start of the next loop. Your death, being assaulted, or simply leaving the apartment will result in the loop starting again, so messing up and needing to refresh the loop is sometimes your best option to push forward, that or waiting until twelve minutes has passed and the loop is forcibly reset. Now, knowing what to do and doing it is where some frustration occurs as you’ll often have to have the same conversations, same steps taken, repeated over and over again to progress the story bit by bit. While some dialogue does change after a few reveals, and some can be sped up, some of the information you’ve learned cannot even be used until you trigger a very specific moment to even use it.
Twelve Minutes is a time loop game... Goddammit. again? Ok, where was I? Ah, Right… This repetition is where Twelve Minutes lost me. While I enjoyed finding out new information about what went on those eight years ago, sometimes I would make the tiniest mistake and have to start the loop over again. While this did result in discovering I could accidentally electrocute my wife when she went to the bedroom, this sense of discovery feels far too thin in other scenarios and you start to notice the narrative barriers put in place that feeds into making each loop feel more repetitive than it should be. The story that is here among the repetition is solid, as you attempt to put the pieces together around what exactly happened those eight years ago. However; much of the story hinges on a big reveal that I honestly have to say, I didn’t see coming and is certain to be controversial to many. While some of the information about that reveal is only introduced in the late game, the developers did a good job at breadcrumbing it slowly, letting the other parts of the story shine until we gained that crucial bit of backstory.
Twelve Minutes is a.. Oh god.. This is getting out of hand… Ok, as you find out more information, some aspects of this repetition does lessen a bit, and loops can either dive into fact-finding excursions or built around plot progression and sometimes both. But finding out some of this information is where the acting performances could have benefited from a variety of alternative takes on the same lines. This is most apparent when you start to harass your wife about her possible involvement in her father’s death. She’ll eventually stonewall the conversation with a tone that felt like a dagger to the throat, to then responding to a different question as if you didn’t just piss her off, such as asking her to dance immediately after, effectively changing her tone to one of being joyful at the mere mention of dancing. Talk to her again through an unasked question pertaining to her father’s death and she’ll sound confused and surprised you even brought it, all in the same conversation.
Twelve Minutes is a time loop game… Oh no.. not again… Let’s uh… keep going. Shown via a top-down angle of each of the three rooms, including a small closet, and the hallway leading to them, you’ll point and click as you want to move around and interact with items. There are some obvious bland textures and some disappointing character models when viewed up close, but the angle in which we are almost always given does hide a lot of those imperfections. However; it is the controls where Twelve minutes suffer the most, at least on consoles. Nearly anything you do is based on selecting it with a cursor, this includes point-to-point moving and dragging items from your inventory to their respective objective points, such as guiding a key to a lock, or a knife to your zip-tied wrists. With a mouse, it’s business as usual for the genre, but its transition to consoles and a controller feels clunky at best.
Twelve Minutes is a time loop game that.. oh god.. why is this happening? Uh.. well, umm, games of this genre are often built on trial and error, but those comparisons also don’t have the 12-minute loop that requires you to repeat the same day over again as you attempt to experiment with various puzzle solutions. Sure, there is The Outer Wilds, but you have a whole galaxy to explore, not just three small locations. While you can explore the environments to try to figure out your next move, it’s mostly built around conversations, learning more information, and using the nearby items than the rooms themselves, often only having three or four hiding spots or things to interact with at most, one of which you can’t even see clearly and you’ll either stumble upon it as I did or wait for a line of dialogue to happen, should you overhear something. This causes the tight space you are in to feel even smaller than it is, but honestly, that could be the point as well. The game also has issues with keeping its serious tone when you notice some bad janky animations such as the awkward kiss at the start of each loop, or having the ability to shove a mug of water or a lit candle down your pocket.
Twelve Minutes is… Dammit… Wait... I... I think I know how to break the loop. Twelve Minutes is an interesting game for sure, but one that feels awkward to play on a controller due to its intentional mouse-focused design. And while some of its puzzles are a bit too obtuse for their own good, it is the restrictions placed in the repetition that often doesn’t reward the sense of trial and error that most other games of this type usually exceed at. Most of the resolution of its story comes from a very direct combination of dialogue and items, and while there are multiple endings, none of them feel entirely that satisfying, and while the reveal will keep much of the conversation about this game alive. it’s a shame the whole experience is just not as memorable. Twelve Minutes is certainly good, but its excessive repetition, disjointed dialogue, and controls, all hold it back from being a great experience. And I… wait.. did that fix it? Yes! I’m not trapped in a…
Twelve Minutes is a time loop game focused on wait… No… I broke the loop, I didn’t go over 12 Minutes, Dammit!
Developer - Luis Antonio. Publisher - Annapurna Interactive. Released - August 19th, 2021. Available On - Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, Windows. Rated - (M) Blood and Gore, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence.
Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Twelve Minutes was downloaded off of Game Pass by the reviewer.