Twelve Minutes Review
One of the most important movies in my family is Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day. When I was in elementary school, my family began the tradition of watching Groundhog Day every year on February second, copying the family of one of my brother’s friends who did the same thing. More than two decades later, we still keep the tradition alive, in spite of me running off with the DVD when I moved out. It was my first introduction into the now well-tread time loop genre and its weird mix of comedy and morbid hopelessness established it as the best of the genre to me. Though it’s only ever been equaled by Edge of Tomorrow and Palm Springs, my enjoyment of Groundhog Day has made me a lifelong fan of time loop media. So when Twelve Minutes released last week, I was an easy sell.
Twelve Minutes tells the story of an unnamed man stuck in a twelve minute time loop that sees his entire life fall apart. What should be a joyous night in with his wife becomes a harrowing ordeal when a police officer with a mysterious agenda forces his way into their apartment. Questions and peril abound during the invasion and as soon as the protagonist runs afoul of any of the dangers, or if the titular twelve minutes pass, he finds himself back at the start of the loop, having entered the apartment only seconds before. Players must harness the temporal repetition to learn the cop’s objectives and how to stop them. However, they can only use what they can find in the one bedroom apartment, because whatever force has trapped them in time also keeps them from leaving tiny abode.
As of this writing, the only other game I’ve reviewed involving a time loop was Outer Wilds, a game about a solar system trapped in a loop around an exploding sun. Though the celestial distances were scaled down for ease of use, Outer Wilds still presented players with an expansive playground. This is very much not the case in Twelve Minutes which is both a strength and a weakness. The player’s apartment is composed of a kitchen/living room hybrid, bedroom, and cramped bathroom, as well as a small closet. With each room having only a few interaction points, players have to get creative to discover solutions to their problems. Without this pressure, I never would have thought to do something like using a spoon to pry out screws. Most of the time, I enjoyed this challenge because it pushed me to be more creative than I might have been otherwise, but every now and then it frustrated me in the same way that most point-and-click adventure games do. Because there are limited options, some actions that seemed obvious to me were impossible, such as being unable to use anything in a full dresser as a makeshift bandage.
Something about Twelve Minutes I unequivocally enjoyed was the game’s method of handling things I’d already experienced. In all great time loop media, focus is quickly pulled away from things that are the same between every loop. This is because audiences understand those things don’t change and seeing the same thing over and over doesn’t do much for entertainment. If a player is in a conversation they’ve previously seen, they can hit a single button to fast forward through it. This still eats up the same amount of time in the game’s twelve minute timer, but saves time for the player themselves. Additionally, the protagonist has an excellent bit of programming that causes him to automatically include related conversation topics and discoveries in discussions in future loops. This was especially helpful for me, because I can be extraordinarily forgetful at times and this feature kept my forgetfulness from being my worst enemy. In a game all about finding new information and changing the loop, these tricks were ideal additions to keep the game interesting and enjoyable.
Though I’ve been mostly positive until now, the developer made a few decisions that I think really hurt Twelve Minutes. One thing that Annapurna Interactive brings to its games is the connections to cast big name stars as voice actors. Twelve Minutes is no exception, casting James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe as the protagonist, protagonist’s wife, and intruding cop, respectively. Do me a favor: right now, try and think what McAvoy or Ridley sounds like in your head, no Googling. You probably can’t, I definitely can’t, because they don’t have particularly recognizable voices, especially when they’re not speaking in their native accents. If I hadn’t been told McAvoy and Ridley lent their voices to this project, I never would have known, making the casting an almost total waste of budget. I think their fees could have been much better spent improving the game’s modeling and animations, which are poor by today’s standards. On top of that, Dafoe voices a second character in the final hours of the game who is extremely different from the cop, which I’m positive will confuse many players, if only briefly. The last strange decision is where the plot goes in the final act. Twelve Minutes is full of secrets upon secrets, but the plot’s final twist is going to make many recoil in disgust, as players are implicated in acts almost universally reviled. If you have suffered or are living with sexual trauma, you could check out a list of content warnings for Twelve Minutes, but I think you’re better off giving this one a pass. For those who decide to play it anyway, I would wager the ending will leave a bad taste in your mouth because the final twist feels shocking only to be shocking.
Twelve Minutes bothers me. That’s because its core is an interesting challenge of working within very limited options and means to solve a puzzle unlike anything we can experience in our mortal lives. It also features some of the handiest technological aides one can wish for in a time-looping puzzle. But it’s unfortunately marred by a plot that terminates in a gross and unwelcome revelation, less than impressive visual design, and poorly thought out casting. If you’re a fan of mysteries, escape rooms, and/or time loops and are willing to experience some heinous secrets, you’ll probably enjoy Twelve Minutes but shouldn’t spend the full $25. If one or more of those qualifiers puts you off, there’s not enough here to justify the potential harm you could experience.
Buy this game on sale
It’s worth playing, just not at the price they’re asking
