Twelve Minutes (2021)

I still think that the game "12 Minutes" shoulda had the developer come out on video at the end, like the writer at the end of that Community episode where Garrett married his cousin.

"I'm the developer of 12 Minutes, and they allowed me to make this awful incest game so long as I identified myself at the end of the game..."

if you didn't know, this is one of those timeloop games. i'm not going to spoil the game in this review but i will say that some of the decisions made for the story of this game are just extremely questionable and weird af. i have no desire to return to this game to play it again after understanding the full picture. the good part about 12 minutes was how it was pretty creative with how it handled its gameplay, and it was very neat to see how i could affect the timeloop. the performances by the three main actors were also great and i wasn't distracted by their prestige in the industry.

but the fact that the game itself soured my own taste for it and any replay value i may have once had for it is disappointing. my only slightly annoying technical gripe i had when i did play it was that sometimes i would hit a button with my controller and something completely different would happen in game (meaning i had to start the loop over again).

this game is better if you just don't finish it.

Completed this last week – my first Xbox Game Pass experience. I thought it was somewhat better than suggested by the largely negative-to-middling reviews on Grouvee, although I hadn’t heard about it before release and therefore wasn’t highly anticipating it. That said, I agree that it’s most interesting in its first few hours, before it requires more tedious repetition to progress the story.

Regarding endings: I first got the ‘Confessed’ achievement, after which the time loop continued – one of what are called ‘Looping Endings’ in a guide on Screen Rant. I then got the ‘Alone’ achievement, after which the credits rolled – one of the three ‘Conclusive Endings’ (and that “considered the best and true one” according to a guide on Game Skinny, although I’m not quite sure why). It didn’t occur to me at the time that there were more endings.

I must admit that I am something of a dunce and, perhaps because I didn’t see one of the endings involving hypnotism, didn’t realise that the (perhaps most convincing) key to the story was that the main events of the story weren’t really happening (until I read a guide on Game Rant). I had a different interpretation. I prefer stories that leave interpretation open to the reader/player/viewer rather than offering a single ‘solution’, and perhaps I’m overestimating Twelve Minutes' achievements because I mistook it for the former – but I found it an interesting game nevertheless. Not a wonderful game, but a worthwhile exercise at least.

I’m not sure that I’d ever replay it, though, so I’m happy to have played it before it leaves Game Pass imminently.

I was wholly prepared to hate this game. I've read the reviews, heard the 4 friends discuss their disgust, and seen disturbing images of the choices you can make.

With all of that, I actually kind of enjoyed my time in the world.

The opening menu is gorgeous, the score is incredible, the top-down perspective is surprisingly fun for a game that takes itself so seriously, and Willem Dafoe delivers a Willem Dafoe performance.

Having just finished The 7th Guest, I was reminded how far adventure games have come. In 12 Minutes, the touch targets are clear, the tooltips are straight-forward, the dialog gives you hints without just opening a new tab to gamefaqs.com, and you're able to skip some of the interactions.

But, dear lord, the story. Having finished and sat with the full scope of the story in my mind, I'm not really sure why it needed to be told. The opening is intriguing but it lulls in the middle thanks to repetitive game play mechanics other time loop games have demonstrated how to avoid. And then the ending(s). Props to the cast and crew for committing to the whole thing but I started "nope nope nope"-ing out a good hour before the game was done with me.

I'd been excited to play this so I could know why there was such a negative reaction to it, which lowered my expectations enough to see the handful of nice design details. I'm glad to have this one marked off.

I'm going to start out with, I don't like to be negative about games. I like that games are typically made for someone, and even if it's not for me, someone out there probably enjoyed the game.

I think I can safely say that this game is the exception. There is little redeeming quality about this game. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't click the blocks moving forward, and I'm still very worked up about this game, so some of the spoilers might be curses....forewarned.

First of all, the voice talent. Nice gets! But why the hell did you not use them. The only way I knew there was star powered voice talent was because they told me. The actors were so genericized, that they could have been any random person and it wouldn't have mattered.

Second, the playable space was so limited, and the interactable objects were so few, that this game was beyond boring. Couple that with the slowness of the movement and lack of ability to speed things up (I know you can fast-forward some dialouge, but that's only a start) and I really felt robbed of time.

Third, the plot twists (seriously, don't read this if you don't want to be spoiled) I somehow fucking forgot that i killed my dad and i'm now secretly married to and expecting a child with my half sister? What the actual fuck?! And if that's not enough, there's a pocket watch that's worth a lot of money that lets me kinda rewind time, enough so that I can go back 8 years in the past before my father died and have a conversation about something eight years in the future?

Next, as i'm sure is not a surprise is the number of endings. I looked it up after the fact, and there's more than I got, BUT....one of the endings I got made me forget everything and I had to restart the game? No way in HELL am I doing that drudgery a second time.

Bottom line is, I did not enjoy my time with this game, except complaining about it on my discord with other gamers that got a chuckle at my anger.

I don't recommend playing it to ANYONE. It's not a game for you, trust me.

~David.

This was a bit of a let down, and by the end of my playthrough I was more sour than happy.

The game mechanics are alright for the most part, what stands out is the static character animations and delayed movement, Characters talk over each other sometimes, and you have to wait for animations to finish before your character even moves to where you want him to be. It just makes the game feel clunky.

Voice acting is fine, they did hire pretty famous actors so no trouble their, didn't really notice the music or sounds so no comment.

My main issue is the story and puzzle solving, for the most part the story is stale and just when I thought it was picking back up it hit credits.

Theirs multiple endings and apparently i hit a few, I didn't even notice becuase only 3 out of the 7 endings hit credits. The puzzle solvings fine, but it is frustrating that when you think you have everything set up the npcs just dont mention crucial info or ignore evidence because you didn't do it in the correct order. Also you can't just rush it because even if you know what to do you need to aquire the info before the correct dialogue or option pops up for the next loop. I know thats part of games like this where you need to figure out the correct order but the fact you can't reset immediately can be frustrating.

What made me become sour was the first credit ending I hit, like I mentioned the story started to pick up and I became invested, but I guess I chose an option that ended it right away, the game than locks you into this ending and you have to reset the whole game and replay it over if you wanna continue any other endings. There's no roll back and the game was already pretty disappointing so I had no interest in solving the other endings.

The game almost got me but overall it's a let down.

Not going to write a review for 12 Minutes because there are plenty already. The TLDR is that 12 Minutes is not very fun to play. There are plenty of time-loop games that nail this conceit (best I can recall is the Nonary Games, especially Virtue's Last Reward) and 12 Minutes fails to smooth out the frustrating bits.

There is too much trial and error and too many repeating the same dialogue choices and actions. The superstar cast of James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley and William Dafoe is completely wasted especially when their voice lines are stitched together in an uncanny manner. One moment it sounds like the husband and wife are having an argument and then another moment it's like they are having a regular conversation.

The story is without spoiling it... best be described as icky and unsettling. It's memorable, but not in a wholesome satisfying way rather in a wish you could forget about it way.

The issue with waiting for a game for years and finally playing is that it somehow always turns out a disappointment. I am not saying that is the reason this game wasn't good, it has enough flaws as it it, but for some reason all the big games we wait for for years all turn out kinda garbage. No Man's Sky, Star Citizen (I guess that is somewhat different), Duke Nukem Forever. I am sure there are lots of exceptions but I can't think of any. Twelve Minutes has been one of those games for me. I was instantly hooked when I saw the trailer for it years ago, and has been following it ever since. I was really excited when I saw that Willem Dafoe would have one of the voice roles, and the voice acting really is stellar, but that is most of what it has going for it.

For the first 2 hours or so I was quite enjoying myself. Walking around in my time loop, trying out the different options and seeing what happened. It felt like it was well put together - most of what I did got a response that seemed natural - but as I was trying to solve the mystery it got more and more frustrating. I quite like short games, so the amount of content doesn't bother me. If it had been a good 3 hour experience I would have been perfectly happy with that. However, what annoys me the most is how you solve the mystery which I will put in spoiler tags.

As you play through the loops you gradually get more information about what is happening and you of course use this information to progress in the next loop. Naturally when I got a piece of information in one outcome I'd try to use this in a different execution of the scenario. This is generally how I progressed at the first half of the game, but at some point it felt like I just needed to repeat the same "good loop" over and over again with gradually more information. You start the loop, redo the 5 things to set up the scenario where people actually talk together, wait for it to happen, sit through a slightly different conversation, and then repeat this 4 or 5 times. It was unsatisfying and frankly quite disappointing. Maybe there are different ways of solving the ending, but I did not find it. I don't know how many times I tortured that poor cop trying to get a different resolution with more information.

All in all I liked the beginning, and the like the idea, it just fell flat at the end so I'll give it a generous three stars. The resolution to the mystery is... eh... it's okay, but by the time I got there I wasn't expecting anything more. Maybe I need to learn this lesson, that these long expected games never turn out as well as you hope. Who am I kidding? When is Silksong coming out?

Firstly - let me just say I'm not a big adventure game fan, that being said the repetitious nature of Twelve Minutes ruins what ultimately could've been a really compelling game. So many times I felt like I was getting somewhere, but it ended up getting me in a loop of frustration. The plot twist certainly caught me off guard, but it didn't really warrant the experience leading up to it. After several long hours, I gave up and consulted a guide. It's too bad the flow of the game couldn't come more naturally, but like I said prior I'm not an adventurer game fan and I'm absolutely horrid at them. I could see Twelve Minutes being a mighty fine game for someone who was able to follow the path the game laid out for you.

5.5/10

I was pretty excited for 12 minutes. I enjoy story based, point and click types of games. I love the look and cast. But after that it kind of just becomes a let down as a whole.

The idea is cool, I love groundhogs day kind of stuff. However playing this kind of made me realize all games are that way, this just did it in a more story focused way.

The story is about a man who comes home and his wife has something special to tell him. After their nice dinner a man comes to their door and in the end people die. But why? I like the set up. The voice cast is also solid.

But the gameplay just lacks, I played it on Xbox one and a controller and even tho I knew it was point and click kind of game it still felt very out dated and sluggish. I was not a fan of the controls at all. They didn’t grow on me as it went either it just kept making me think it could have been done better.

The controls on top of the fact that you have to keep doing a lot of the same story bits over and over until you find a bread crumble just didn’t mess well. I really wanted to like the puzzle aspect but it just felt like a drag.

It really didn’t feel to challenging but I do wonder what all I missed? I know I only unlocked two achievements so I definitely didn’t do much. But I also didn’t feel the need or want to keep playing.

The twist ending is a wtf moment that you start to put together but wonder if they’ll really pull the trigger on it…. But that isn’t enough for me to recommend it.

Thankful for Gamepass.

The idea of a real-time adventure game with multiple paths and endings set in basically a single location has been done so much better by a game from 2009 called, "Don't Shit Your Pants"

https://cellardoorgames.com/our-games/dont-shit-your-pants/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Shit_Your_Pants

Unlike "Don't Shit Your Pants", this game has a very narrow and limited concept of what you can you and how you do it.

There are so many quality-of-life things that Visual Novel games have figured out decades ago that this game lacks!

It is a chore to play this game. Full stop. BUT... I have not even begun to talk about how bad the actual narrative is! For a game with little else besides "the story", NO SPOILERS but, motivations are shit, the "twist" is shit!

WHY DID ANNAPURNA PUT THIS OUT AND STUFF IT WITH SUCH A GOOD VO CAST?!

I've been excited for this game for years. It was, by far, my most anticipated game of this year. Sure I clearly had my expectations but I don't think I was being unreasonable hyped and I think there are some clear problems with the game.

• There's one solution to almost every "puzzle". This means that completely logical paths end up in ridiculous defeat because you're just not supposed to solve it that way. Sometimes this solutions involve saying something X only after doing something else, so you may believe saying X doesn't do anything, but you just didn't say Y before. It particularly annoyed me that when I figured out how to make the wife believe I was in a time loop she still refused to tell me where the watch was, acting completely unreasonable even though she believed me and she seemed totally on board

• There's a particular state of the game that you can only reach by doing about 3 minutes of particular actions. Once you're in that state though, there are many possibilities and, as I said before, the solution may be quite obfuscated, so you'll have to keep doing that 3 minute preparation over and over and over again just to say something slightly different and see if something happens. Luckily most other scenes have shortcuts to get you to the result faster.

• It's super short. I beat in 5 hours and saw almost everything worthwhile the game had to offer.

• The ending is terrible. I don't think there's anything else I can add because it just makes me mad. I mean seriously "it was all a dream all along!!" has to be on the top for absolutely worst twist you can make

Now, it still has some redeeming qualities. Some puzzles are actually quite clever and I like that it doesn't hold your hand, but it provides ample clues to solve some of the puzzles. The voice acting, as expected, was great. It's actually really fun to experiment with all the things you can do, so many "hmmm... what if...?" that you can actually fulfill. Well, at least is fun when you can do it in the beginning in the loop and not when you're 7 minutes in a careful series of events, at that point in the run I didn't like to experiment at all because it would mean I had to do it all over again. The plot on the first half was pretty good.

Overall, it was okay. I feel like there's a great game hidden somewhere amidst the frustration and the awful ending.

There are some great time-looping games out there - Out Wilds is brilliant, The Forgotten City is a cool take on the concept, The Sexy Brutale is tons of fun. But 12 minutes doesn't quite nail it. Part of the problem is that there are so few places to go or things to interact with. The whole thing takes place is a tiny 1 bedroom apartment, with maybe 20 interactable objects? This makes the loops very similar and very tedious. There are a few very specific things you need to do to push the story forward and if you do the wrong thing at the wrong time, or pick the wrong conversation option, you need to just try all over again. Though you can fast-forward line-by-line through some of the conversations, it's not really enough.

The story just isn't all interesting or satisfying and the way the characters talk seems poorly stitched together.