Twelve Minutes

Twelve Minutes is an extremely engrossing game, where each time loop you go through feels like you’re getting closer and closer to cracking the entire story wide open… for the first 10-15 loops. Right as you feel like you’re about to finish the game, you have to do the most strange and obscure things to complete the game. Otherwise you’ll just keep restarting over and over again with no progress made. As annoying as that was, the big plot twist and the endings are all very mediocre and honestly barely worth the time you spent playing. I finished the game and I felt absolutely nothing. However, the beginning of the game is just so ridiculously addictive I felt myself literally itching to play and try new loops. If you like obscure puzzle games with convoluted stories, this may be the game for you.

I was looking forward to this game; I saw a lot of opportunity for innovative gameplay and some really creative storytelling. Unfortunately, there's nothing really surprising in terms of gameplay or storytelling. The developers tried to make up for this by adding in revelations every so often out of almost nowhere. But these just felt like cheap attempts at engagement, since they were often quite ridiculous, and since the story up until each of these points had failed to captivate me, instead simply leaving me emotionally distant and disconnected. The puzzle of the time loop itself wasn't all that interesting either; more often than not it involved just replaying scenarios over and over again until I happened to hit upon the right solution for moving forward, at which point I just felt more frustrated than successful, since some of these things require players to stumble upon something quite subtle or accidental, and thus could easily be missed for a long time.

Sure, we could offer a more generous interpretation, that this was an ambitious exploration of broader themes and moral dilemmas that extends beyond the immediate scenario in which almost all of the gameplay occurs. Taking that line, one could argue that the developers knew what they were doing and that certain flaws were actually there to make some bigger point... or that these flaws were actually part of the bigger overall story. But if the way it comes across is that players can't tell whether these are intentional decisions or simply mistakes, then that's a problem. For example, why are there two seemingly different characters voiced by the same actor? Is it meant to show they are fundamentally one and the same person, or is it just a misstep by the game's producers? In a game perfectly executed in all other regards, we should assume that there's indeed a reason behind this. But in this game that contains many other bizarre gameplay and storytelling decisions, players could certainly be forgiven for thinking this was simply a confusing oversight by the developers.

In summary, this game was a huge disappointment for me. As time loop / replay games go, I think something like Paper Dino Software's "Save The Date" was enormously more entertaining and clever overall. That said, some of this is certainly a matter of personal preference... I do think many people will enjoy the game more than I did, but even then it's hard to deny that it could have been a lot better than it is.