Twelve Minutes Review

Twelve Minutes was reviewed on a PC

Imagine having to re-live the same evening over and over. After the first few times, you’d start to memorize every single little detail. The cat’s meow, every single step in the hallway, your wife’s humming note by note and even the words to that enchanting Italian song on the radio. Now imagine there’s a violent cop who’s coming to kill you in 10 minutes, how would you react? How would you change things? How would you break free of the never-ending time loop?

With Twelve Minutes, you’ll get a sneak peek into your own psyche, as you’ll have to resort to trying out unconventionally disturbing solutions in order to discover the next piece of the game’s convoluted puzzle of a story.

What is Twelve Minutes?

Twelve Minutes is a top-down point and click adventure game starring three unnamed characters, played by James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley and Willem Dafoe. You’d think that hiring big budget Hollywood stars for an indie game such as Twelve Minutes is a bit of an overkill, but their excellent voice acting really does elevate the game into the status of a true cinematic experience.

The game takes place entirely inside the world’s smallest house; a one bedroom, one bathroom apartment as you re-live the same evening of the world’s most unfortunate couple.

Groundhog Night

You play as the husband, voiced by McAvoy, who’s married to an unnamed woman, voiced by Ridley. The game starts with you stepping out of your building’s elevator and going into your apartment. Home from work, you hear your wife cheerfully humming in the bathroom. Once she steps out, she gives you a passionate kiss and reveals that she made your favorite dessert because she has some big news to share. It’s not long though before the couple are disturbed by a violent cop, voiced by Dafoe, who accuses the wife of murdering her father 8 years ago and handcuffs both her and her husband.

Resist and he will not hesitate to choke you to death. Once you die, you instantly respawn in the room, with your wife once again humming cheerfully in the bathroom. The same events unfold in each time loop. With you peeling away a new layer of the story bit by bit, with every new information or secret that you uncover. If you die or leave the apartment, the evening restarts.

Twelve Minutes gives you the ability to unleash your creativity, as it already has most of the logical actions you might take already built-in. You can call the police, but they need 15 mins to come to your aid. Try locking the door, he’ll break it down. You can try attacking him with a kitchen knife, but he’s much stronger than you are. This trial and error will push you to experiment further and cross the line between what a normal person would do, and what a person stuck in a time loop would do instead. Would you sacrifice your wife knowing that the evening would just restart in a few minutes? Well, you’ll have to either way.

Running out of time

During my playthrough of Twelve Minutes, I was so immersed by the time loop of the game that I knew instinctively when each subsequent event was going to happen. The cat meows, Thunder strikes, the cop’s talking with the downstairs neighbors, the elevator pings, and he knocks on your door before attempting to break it down. This sequence of events will become deeply rooted in your head. By the time the credits roll on your 8-hour playthrough, you’ll know what it felt like to be Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day.

The game’s dedication to its time loop concept is inspiring. Things often unfold the way you’d expect them. There aren’t any traditional puzzles to solve, what you’re required to do to progress is often the logical thing to do. In the first few hours, the game does a good job of guiding you to the next clue. However, as you get closer to the ending, knowing what the game wants you from you next gets a bit vaguer each time. This made the second half of the game less enjoyable than the first half.

Twelve Minutes isn’t a traditional point and click game, but when it comes to solving its puzzles and gathering its clues, it suffers from the same pitfalls. You need to trigger a specific sequence of events to progress. No matter how many times you try to attack the cop with a knife, he’ll always overpower you, even though your character’s animations change as the loops go by. He’ll even get a hit or two near the end of the game, but it’s always the same outcome, the husband will die and the evening will restart.

Rinse and Repeat

It’s worth noting that you’d have to have a certain tolerance to being stuck and to a bit of repetition if you’re going to enjoy what Twelve Minutes is trying to accomplish. After all, the only way to get out of a time loop is to experiment, and that means hearing the same lines of dialogues and doing the same few successive actions repeatedly.

Gameplay wise, the game does tend to lag behind the thrilling narrative. The dialogue options are often limited, and the game has a few issues at times with registering any new clues and adding them as dialogue choices. There’s also quite a few clipping issues where the couple’s bodies overlap as they’re pushed around by the cop. These issues are minor though, so they won’t negatively affect your playthrough much.

As stated before, Twelve Minute’s last few hours are frustrating. The closer to the truth you get, the more confusing it gets to reach the next clue. At one point, it honestly felt like I was grasping at straws, trying every combination of actions possible to progress, even if they didn’t make any sense. If you’ve ever played a point and click game, then you’ve probably felt the same way when trying to combine every item in your inventory with one another.

American Psycho

If you’re wondering what I mean by experimenting, then you’re a normal sane human being whose first instinct isn’t to pick up a knife and try to stab yourself, or electrocute yourself with a faulty light switch, or take sleeping pills when you know that in 10 minutes a cop is about to kill you. I’m not a normal and sane person, I tried all of the above and they are in fact all viable options for restarting the time loop, and trying them out was a lot of fun, mainly thanks to McAvoy’s performance.

Your nameless protagonist shows his weariness after the first few loops. At first, he’s hesitant to give homicide a try. After a few loops though, all you have to do is ask and he’ll turn into American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman in an instant. Want to get some alone time with the cop, why not just straight up murder your wife!? These moments of experimentation were some of the best moments of Twelve Minutes.

Overall,

If you’re worried about the game getting stale after the first few loops, then you’re right, it will. However, the slow drip of constant new clues coupled with the game’s hard hitting and thought provoking narrative will keep you glued to the screen for the entirety of your playthrough. Besides, hearing Dafoe’s threatening voice, as the cop, never gets old. The story also goes places I never imagined it would, and it’s a fresh breath of air to play a game that tell such a provoking story.

Story wise, this star-studded cinematic thriller game is a masterpiece, in every sense of the word. It’s captivating, engaging and throws more twists and turns at you than a M. Night Shyamalan movie.  Even if you don’t enjoy Twelve Minutes as a “game”, you’ll at least appreciate its novelty and its time loop concept. It’s a memorable game despite its shortcomings.

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You should play Twelve Minutes if you

• Are interested in an intriguing story
• Enjoy a gripping narrative
• Would love the time loop concept
• Don’t mind the repetition
• Don’t mind being stuck
• Love hearing Willem Dafoe talk

Twelve Minutes’ Score

8.5/10