Story

Since the beginning, we realize that this gameplay will depend on the player’s will and decisions in seeing how many stories and ends are possible, this happens because our character is stuck in a time looping that varies its events according to our actions. In this sense, the game proposes something innovative and curious, which will see as many different conclusions as possible.

In a more general line, we arrive at our house after work and find our wife on a romantic night, after this, we can follow several logical lines. With this, after some time a policeman appears accusing the woman of murder, this is one of the only parts that repeat themselves in every looping and our role is to change and explore the short time between and after this incident.

A little morbid

Following this line of reasoning of Twelve Minutes we can be easily led on a dark path about what is “right”, because it’s possible to commit some crimes, sometimes these crimes are even necessary if you want to reach some specifics endings, so, let me give you a warning: don’t try to be a nice person.



The headache

For those used to games in the third or first person, prepare yourselves for a hard and complicated experience, this game has a “bird view” (see in the image below) that encompasses the entire environment where our character is. Besides that, the difficulty continues with the present mechanics, you need to have the patience to solve some enigmas without any help, and here the gameplay is slow due to the main character’s speed that doesn’t follow the player’s reasoning wanting to solve everything before the policeman arrives.

Since I already knew about the endings and different developments lines, I tried to reach the maximum as I could and I did a lot after some time, but because of these issues I was stressed, because of the character’s speed I couldn’t do what I wish to do a lot of times during one loop, but, intended or not, this agony in not being pleased contributes to thriller set.



Emotional and unimportant

The voices had a lot of emotion and delivered an adequate tension to the scenes, this is because the voices were made by big stars like James McAvoy (main character), Daisy Ridley (wife), and Willem Dafoe (policeman), and the voices reveal the emotional states of our extras. Still talking about the sound, the original soundtrack counts 12 different songs by Neil Bones.

However, the audio offered by Twelve Minutes doesn’t interfere with almost anything because of the ambient sounds, sounds of water running in the sink, or a door creaking, to name a few, but this is not bad because delivers certain feelings. In this context, except for the character’s lines, when we turn on the radio and the thunder announces a tempest, we don’t even notice something different like a piece of music giving more tension to the scenes or announcing some change. In fact, since the game gives us so few tips is not a surprise that the audio doesn’t give us any clue.

You have a mission

Survive and don’t break the cycle, trying and falling are essential for this game, especially because you have nothing to lose and can try again in the next looping.



Unanswered curiosity

Even with the several endings, the game didn’t offer a good explanation for the reason that the time looping is happening, I searched and tried to find the reason in several places, but I couldn’t find any information about this matter, making my final experience less interesting.

A simplistic visual

The game’s graphics bring a new view without compromising the level of this gameplay, that is, although they are not pretty and well done, they don’t influence the main experience, which for me was the direct thriller and dozens of puzzles scattered in small action space, counting with living room/kitchen, bathroom and a little closet.

Luiz Antônio choose not to worry so much about this part exactly because he knew the game’s main focus is to be able to capture our attention in a short game, only to satisfy our curiosity, and this is more important and was successfully done, at least with me because took me a while to explore and try to solve everything in 12 loopings.



For this review, Twelve minutes was played on PC through the Steam platform.

Twelve Minutes is available for Xbox One, PC, and Xbox Series X.