How would you feel if you were trapped in an endless cycle that requires you to do the same things over and over to get over a thorny situation? Caged in his own life, the protagonist of Twelve minutes (or 12 Minutes) has only one way to save his wife from the murder charge, relive the same endless minutes of terror that shattered her existence.
Twelve Minutes, the narrative thriller written by the developer Luis Antonio, tries to decline the theme of the loop in a very peculiar way, without sci-fi or supernatural elements, but keeping the player / spectator's tension high while watching a daily routine.
Will the end result live up to the fascinating premise? Find out by reading our review.
A romantic candlelit dinner turns into a nightmare, 12 minutes are enough to change a person's life, they are the ones that pass between entering the house and the arrival of a shady individual who claims to be a policeman. The protagonist of Twelve Minutes is an ordinary man who will find himself lying on the floor of his living room, while his wife is handcuffed, accused of murdering her father.
Then back on his feet, in his cozy home, with his wife intent on the final preparations for that wonderful couple's evening. Was it all a dream? Can it be that sharp and real? The scene repeats itself, again and again, no, it's not a dream, we are trapped in an endless cycle from which we cannot escape unless something changes and leads us to the solution of the riddle.
What can we as players do to understand the events and stop the loop? Twelve Minutes is, in its bases, a point and click in which with the A key we can make the character walk, interact with objects and people, drag the inventory items where we believe they can be used. The player, therefore, has the task, through these simple moves, of influence the evolution of the loops, discovering new things, obtaining useful information with the aim of discovering the truth about the murder.
The thriller packaged by Luis Antonio can be considered a sort of narrative rogue-lite, in fact at the beginning of each cycle the objects collected in the previous one are not kept, the interactions made must be repeated to obtain the same effect or a different one, while the information obtained is saved and are used to have new dialogue options or to reveal the location of particular objects. For example, the name of a person important to the investigation will remain in the protagonist's memory, the same thing is true in the case of a mobile number.
With these dynamics, Twelve Minutes engages the player in a treasure hunt where every little step is a great achievement. From the point of view of immersion, the title published by Annapurna does its job very well thanks to an atmosphere of the highest level supported by small but detailed environments, a view from above that gives us a perspective of the whole, well-kept animations and the outstanding English dub of Willem Dafoe, Daisy Ridley e James McAvoy (subtitles in español are available).
Although there are few environments that can be explored (living room, bedroom and bathroom), the number of possible actions is very high, almost any object can be collected, combined with others and used in various ways to give life to scenes of various kinds. This structure, supported by a very fascinating narrative, always keeps the player in tension in just 12 minutes try to try them all to unravel the problem.
Therefore, is all that glitters gold? No, because Twelve Minutes also has critical issues in the form of narrative and script choices that invalidate some proposals of the initial premise.
Let's start from the last point analyzed, that is, the great possibilities offered by the interaction. It is a fact that you can experiment a lot, even performing bizarre, macabre and creative actions; the problem arises when one realizes that often and willingly our insights are not rewarded with an advancement of history. Twelve Minutes is not in fact a crossroads narrative game in which taking one road rather than another still leads to something. If in other games that have these characteristics AB and C lead to three different results, in Twelve Minutes it is necessary to choose one, with the other two options still viable, but without outlets.
This happens because there are script requirements that cannot be bypassed. Mind you, to get to information there is not only one way, but, between one method and another, at most, the order of the actions performed can change. This choice can be frustrating in the long run because it demoralizes those with a lot of inventiveness.
Furthermore, there are obvious forcing that put the player back on the rails imposed by the script if he tries shortcuts that, at first glance, would also make sense. For example, we tried giving a object of vital importance to the policeman, but he laughed at us and knocked us out. We retried a few loops later and this time he accepted it as the story progressed. It is obvious that the developer wanted us to do that thing exactly at the time decided by him in advance, but we reiterate that it is a stretch that has discouraged us a bit because it shattered our plan.
Other examples can be given, without making spoilers, by a certain omniscience of the policeman, by his senseless unreasonableness in narrative moments in which he should no longer be angry and suspicious because the situation is changing in favor of the protagonists. In short, this limited freedom, albeit understandable, could be made better with less demeaning choices for the player's nose.
La longevity of the title is very subjective, we could tell you two hours, four hours, eight hours, even ten, it depends on how long it takes each individual user to understand what to do and also on his intentions, that is, if he is satisfied with seeing one or two endings or wants unlock them all.
In all cases, Twelve Minutes remains a magnetic work with an interesting story and excellent ideas, some ingenuity does not lead him to Olympus, but neither do they bury him so terribly, as unfortunately is happening on Metacritic due to an illogical review bombing. .
