Twelve Minutes

I don't think I've ever played a game like this before. The story and gameplay loop sucks you in from its opening few minutes. The events that unfold throughout your 8 or so hour adventure takes place in a single apartment over a course of 12 minutes. The setting; you play as a man having dinner with his wife and all seems serene until the night slowly spirals into chaos as a policeman abruptly interrupts and wreaks havoc. Then, boom! The day repeats. Timeloop.

The game is played from a single top down perspective and is essentially a point and click adventure. You click on things and direct the husband throughout his 12 minute evening choosing different dialogue options and choosing certain actions that cause the events to drastically change on each repeated time loop. The games goal is that your wife is being accused of murder and you must prove her innocence. The art style is pleasing enough and the sound design does the job. The voice talent hear is excellent with James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley and Willem Defoe voicing the husband, wife and policeman respectively. Defoe here is a particular joy to listen to and stands out as the menacing mysterious policeman.

Unfortuantley what starts out with intrigue and mystery and a desire to press on quickly gets bogged down in tedium and frustration. You have to repeat dialogue loops over and over to progress. The story often hits a brick wall with regards progression and randomly trying different options to progress can become tiring. The game over stays its welcome by about 3 or so hours and doesn't serve to guide the player or have any system other than trial an error in some cases to advance things along. In the end after sinking 5 or so hours I had had enough and just used a guide to suss out the endings. There are multiple resolutions to this tale and the twist ending feels somewhat unearned and not as intelligent as it thinks it is.

All in all the premise here is exciting but its execution could have done with some refinement. An interesting game with some excellent performances that unfortunately out stays its welcome. Try it on game pass or pick it up in a sale.

If you like games where to repeat things until you figure out the "tricks" to succeed, then you'll like this game. I personally love the games I've played like this, and 12 Minutes was perfect to me.

It was an amazing game, but it wasn't for me. If you like horror games (ik this game isn't a horror game but y'know) then i think you would like this game. But I didn't like it.

I seriously fell in love with this game. Even when I finished the game, I couldn't get over it for a long time. The voice cast is excellent, the story is gripping and wonderfully done. In short, the game is very professional. The game never lags. The more you play, the more you play, it would be perfect if we finally told the woman everything and got together again. The game only gives us one ending, so I don't think the game has a happy ending. I wish we could be together again with our wife, tell the truth, be happy and the game would be over. I don't remember playing a game that affected me this much in my life. The drawings, the house we live in, etc., all obviously took a lot of effort. It's obvious that a lot of effort has been put into the game. But I wish there was a movie of this game. If it were, it would be one of my favorite movies. I hope they make a movie of it too. The game is a game that distorts perceptions, and I liked this feature the most. It's so professional that we go back to the past and change everything. But as I said, it had an unhappy ending; frankly, it was as if we had never been together with our wife. Upset :(

The story is... unique (in a Game of Thrones/Memento sort of way... play the game and you'll know exactly what that means), but very intriguing. The voice cast is phenomenal. Anything with Willem Dafoe is great by default, but I was pleasantly surprised with James McAvoy's performance. Definitely a fun game that's frustratingly addictive until you solve it all.