12 Minute Review – Wasted Potential

I’m certainly not the only one with the very interesting looking indie game 12 Minutes among the most anticipated games of this year. This is the project of one developer, Luis Antonia, who took care of all the concept and story. Of course, he had several assistants, including the Annapurna Interactive publishing house, well known for various art games, among which 12 Minutes could be included. So I started the game with great enthusiasm, but I must say at the beginning that it fell off relatively soon.

• Platform: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series (Verified)
• Publication date: 19. 8. 2021
• Developer: Luis Antonio
• Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
• Genre: adventure
• Czech location: Not
• Multiplayer: Not
• Data to download: 2 GB
• Game time: about 6 hours
• Sales version: Digital
• Price: €20.99 (Steam, Microsoft Store), available on Xbox Game Pass

Strong start

The start is the best in the whole game. We remind you that in 12 Minutes you play as an unnamed protagonist who lives peacefully with his wife. But one day, when he returns home and his wife is preparing a surprise for him, a policeman suddenly bursts into the apartment and accuses his wife of killing his father. As soon as you die or time runs out, the loop repeats and you are thrown back to the beginning.

The first few loops gave me the right sense of mystery and desire to find out more. And you have to say that it’s a lot of fun to try out all the different possibilities of dialogue or using objects, but soon you’ll find that the environment is very limited and you can’t do much. You will spend the whole cycle in your very small apartment, where there are only 3 rooms. As soon as you try to leave the apartment, the loop is reset.

What do you want from me?

The environment is one of the things that doesn’t really add much to the whole concept. After a few cycles, you will feel that everything continues to repeat itself. You may be slapping your forehead right now and thinking this is how the time loop works. And of course you’re right, but each cycle in games has to be unique, you just have to learn something important for the whole story in order for the game to keep you. I can mention, for example, the recent PS5 exclusive Returnal, which did a great job getting the time loop theme.

At 12 Minutes, virtually every loop is filled with repeating dialogue you’ve heard multiple times and clicking on different topics in the hope that something will happen this time. Yes, trial and error is often a must when playing as the game won’t give you any goal or clue to follow. The whole gameplay is based on experiments that are unlikely to lead you to the goal, and in the end you will have to look for some instructions on the Internet. I hate to do it myself, but when I played 12 Minutes, I got stuck so many times that I was obviously forced to do it. I would like to say that this is purely my stupidity, but in this case it is really the fault of bad game design. I’m not the only one who had the same problem.

Inaccurate steering does not help either, I felt it the most when I tried to lock the door. Although my cursor was clearly pointing to the “Lock” icon, the main character opened the door. These inconveniences can sometimes completely ruin the whole cycle, so you have to start over.

An ordinary story with a strange ending

But okay, the gameplay can be excused, after all, “12 minutes” is history, and the gameplay is clearly relegated to the background. And the story is also interesting from the very beginning, gradually you learn new information about the past and the whole mystery of the death of your wife’s father. You will experience a few twists and turns that were definitely unexpected and a bit odd in my opinion. It’s hard to describe without spoilers, but the story behind this game is just weird and undeniably controversial. However, after a strong start, I gradually lost interest in myself and hoped that everything would turn out somehow. So I waited for the grand finale, which never came. The game offers several endings (I made sure I beat them all), but none of them gave me a satisfactory explanation or even any message that the game would try to convey. Although he solves adult topics, in general he doesn’t know in a very strange way, and after everything is over, what should be taken out of all this.

You can also find advantages…

Despite these disadvantages, there are also positive aspects. At first glance, the non-standard camera with a top view and a simple but impressive visual range attract attention. I also have to commend the animation, which sometimes clashes with texture blending, but that’s something I can forgive such a small development team. Surprisingly, the best thing about the whole game is the voice acting, on which the developers built all the marketing a bit. James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe, who voiced the main characters, certainly didn’t disappoint, and every sentence of theirs is really well packed. But that brings me to the dialogues.

Neni, but there are not many of them

Although they are not obviously badly written and, thanks to the already mentioned stellar dubbing, are very attractive, their continuity is worse. It often happens that you start a dialogue in which the character somehow reacts, while the same question immediately follows in a completely different tone and this does not make sense. In addition, sometimes it happens that the dialogues overlap each other, which creates completely unnecessary chaos.

I searched in vain for something that would make Twelve Minutes a truly exceptional game. The stellar cast and quirky time loop theme might catch your eye at first glance, but the game itself is just badly crafted. The repetitive gameplay doesn’t save the story, which is interesting at first, but gradually becomes more and more average, and its ending is also very unsatisfactory. Almost all problems could have been avoided very simply: make a movie based on this game. Repetitive passages, illogical dialogue, and even the ending could have been better. But the author chose the game and we got a slightly above average title, from which miracles cannot be expected. However, I would recommend that you try it with an Xbox Game Pass subscription, because there is a certain chance that you will like the game.

Second Opinion: Martin Zavrzel

To some extent I agree with Honza that the game can be incredibly frustrating if you get into a series of loops where you can’t find your way forward and you have to repeat the same sequence of steps over and over, just to have a limited time window during which you can try something new before those “twelve” minutes are up. On the other hand, I don’t think the story or its ending is bad.

The plot is absolutely great, and when I told it at a social event over the weekend, people who don’t play games at all were clearly caught up in the situation/plot for 12 minutes. Equally impressive are the twists and turns in the game, as they all gradually come together, reminding me, for example, of one of the best films of its kind, Magnolia. The final reversal may be redundant in the reaction of many players, but it also makes sense, and personally I thought that this is quite possibly the best and most rude point in relation to the situation (but I do not take into account the alternative) “premature” ends that can still be much more violent.

At the same time, I also think that the content of its content is much better suited for older players, given its topics (I can’t write more without revealing too much). In my opinion, the game mostly lacks a “memory map” system to warn players of missing areas (like Detroit: Become Human, for example). In addition, he wanted repeated conversations to end in one sentence with an appropriate time delay. Console controls are terrible, I had to switch to PC myself too (thankfully Xbox and Game Pass fully synced my saved position between the Xbox and PC versions of the game without having to do anything). However, despite a decent dose of disappointment, I am grateful for such a creative, mature and interesting game. Personally, I really look forward to what its author will cook for us next time.