One of my favorite feelings in the world is when there is a game, movie, or a book that is finally coming out. All of this anticipation that has been building between the trailers, exclusive looks, showcases, etc is finally coming to an end and what you have been looking forward to is coming. Then the other shoe drops and it turns out that what you were looking forward to is not what you thought it would be. That is what happened with Twelve Minutes.
Twelve Minutes is a game by Luís António and published by indie publisher Annapurna Interactive. The story follows a man returning home after work and coming home to his wife who has a surprise for him when he gets home. They get ready for desert when a knock on the door happens and a “cop” shows up accusing your wife of murder of her father. The day then restarts and the main story beat with 12 Minutes happens: the time loop
The first hour of Twelve Minutes was were I had the most fun with it, after that it all kinda went downhill. Starting with the way that you interact with the world. It is very classic adventure game, to the point that you have an item bar inventory at the top of the screen and you are dragging and dropping items to combine them together. I played this with a Xbox Series X controller, I imagine that the controls translate better to a mouse and keyboard, but even than the husband character moves so slow, you really have to be on it when it comes to completing goals. There is also not that much interesting to interact with. For example when going to the fridge, the only thing ever you interact with is the picture and the desert inside. One of the key elements with classic adventure games is experimentation, there really is not a lot of that here.
Where I think the game starts to fall apart is the writing. The conversations between the husband (James McAvoy) and the wife (Daisy Ridley) are not interesting and having to hear the same dialogue over and over again (I know you can skip a little ahead by tapping A while it is happening) is laborious. I don’t think the game really gained anything by having them voice the main characters. I did enjoy William Dafoe, but that is mostly that I am just glad for him getting work. It is also a little much with the amount of drugging you have to do with the wife, you pretty much have to treat her like garbage to advance the story at all.
One of the only things that I did like about Twelve Minutes is the art and style of it. Lighting and shadows definitley had a lot of work put in them and it really shows. When the lights turn off for the desert scene that can happen between the two main characters, the light from the fake candles works exactly how you would it expect it too in real life. I really think that the concept of this game is amazing.
I love a really good time bending story where you can mess around with time and events. Having that all take place in one area, with a time limit should make this a fun spin on the Groundhog Day story, but it really does not. On paper, this game should be incredible my thing, but once we put all the pieces together and then add on a twist at the end of the game that really made me audibly groan at my screen it became so far my biggest disappointment of the year.
This game fails to live up to what it could have been. It gets crushed under its own weight of trying to seem like it is a "smart" game that is going to teach you about the psychology of these characters with using a time loop setting to do that with, but is way off the mark of what could have been. It reminds me of student films I saw while in film school at the University of Alabama, trying to show the audience how "smart" we are by going over the line and twisting expectations.
Even with all of that, if a classic adventure game with Groundhog Day style time stuff and Hollywood voice acting seems interesting to you and you have Xbox Gamepass, then give it a shot. If you do not have that, I would at least wait for a sale. Hopefully Luís António gives this concept another shot because I think there is something there, but it is not here.
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