Review of the thriller Twelve Minutes - how I got stuck in a time loop

• Author : Maxim Averin

On paper , Twelve Minutes doesn't seem like a unique title. If we reduce everything to a minimum, then we get a classic point and click adventure game, the action of which takes place in one place. But everything starts to twist when we are offered to unravel the mystery of the time loop: despite the fact that all the pieces of this puzzle are available to you, in order to come to a logical conclusion, they will have to be combined with each other more than once, passing through dozens of cycles. The duration of this thriller is 6-8 hours - and this is actually enough so that the game cannot become boring and boring. And the story is so good that I really would like to discuss it with someone who has already managed to pass detective.

Think of Twelve Minutes and the time loop as a house of cards: you can build it from any cards in the deck, but if you make one mistake, everything will collapse and you will have to start all over again. Sometimes you destroy it on purpose in order to use the information received in the next cycle. In addition, the game is quite non-linear: the gameplay allows you to come to the same conclusion in several ways.

The protagonist of the story is a man voiced by James McAvoy. At the beginning of the game, the hero returns to the apartment, where he is met by his wife (Daisy Ridley). After greeting her husband, she invites him to try the dessert. But after a few minutes, a policeman bursts into the apartment, voiced by the voice of William Defoe, declaring that he has a warrant for the arrest of his wife; one wrong move, and everything will instantly go awry, as a result of which a new cycle will begin. You cannot leave the apartment as this action also resets the time loop. And this moment was a kind of outlet: I perfectly understood that the solution to all these terrible events lies right here, in the hero’s apartment. There were simply no other places where I could miss something. Of course, this same apartment can become an annoyance if you get stuck and can't find the right route for a long time (our 12 Minutes walkthrough will help you with this).

In the apartment you can find many items that you can pick up, study, apply and even combine. Coffee mugs, kitchen knife, spoons, dessert plates, cell phone are just some of them. You can pick up any item, and it will instantly appear in the classically designed inventory at the top of the screen. Understanding how and when to use these items is the key to progressing the story.

The small but stellar cast does an excellent job of bringing the story to life. Defoe looks especially dangerous as a cop. The subtle, dramatic score perfectly complements the game's key moments. The ability to rewind previously viewed dialogues is an extremely important aspect that minimizes the need to repeat the same actions.

Meanwhile, visually Twelve Minutes is very simplified, and 8 hours is still a long time to look at the same apartment, and even in isometry. The situation is exacerbated by the rudimentary animation, similar to The Sims series, but once you go headlong into the central archway, you won't be able to stop yourself until you solve this puzzle.

And, I must say, all your aspirations and efforts to unravel, ultimately lead to an unusual denouement. Writer/director Luis Antonio follows some incredible sequence of events; when I saw on Steam that during the first run I spent 7 hours in the game, I was pleasantly surprised - the time flew by unnoticed and it seemed to me that it took 4 hours to complete the story.

Verdict from ShowGamer

Without spoilers for the game's ending, it's hard to convey all the enthusiasm that I feel when I talk about the time loop in Twelve Minutes. But, as in the case of the same Inside, I will do you a disservice if I tell you about anything now. The only thing I can say is that the result is worth it, and the incredible approach, due to which the writer Luis Antonio literally turns the classic pint and click genre on its head, allowed the developers to create a compelling unconventional story that is beautifully conveyed through the game. Add to this excellent result the professional performance of three respected actors, and as a result we have a mysterious crime that must be solved.

Verdict : WE RECOMMEND