Twelve Minutes review

Our Verdict

Twelve Minutes is a celebrity-led risk championship, simply its time looping mechanic and riveting narrative are the existent stars.

For

Intriguing narrative
Fourth dimension-sensitive looping mechanic
Unending sense of tension
Focus on premeditation

Confronting

Janky animation
Uneven dialogue delivery

Tom's Guide Verdict

Twelve Minutes is a celebrity-led adventure title, simply its time looping mechanic and riveting narrative are the real stars.

Pros

+
Intriguing narrative
+
Time-sensitive looping mechanic
+
Unending sense of tension
+
Focus on premeditation

Cons

-
Janky animation
-
Uneven dialogue commitment

Twelve Minutes: SPECS

Platforms:PC, Xbox
Toll:$24.99
Release date:Baronial 19, 2021
Genre:Adventure
Developer:Luis Antonio
Publisher:Annapurna Interactive

Twelve Minutes is an incredibly intimate tale, taking identify on a romantic evening entirely within the confines of a single apartment. Taking on the role of a husband, you come home to your wife having made dessert and teasing that she has some special news to share with you.

The two of you exchange kisses, take a seat on the couch, and have some coincidental conversation. All seems well, and your anticipation of her big reveal conspicuously takes center phase. You're blissfully unaware that tragedy waits outside the forepart door.

Suddenly, a human being claiming to be a police officer enters your habitation, ties you both upwardly, and accuses your wife of murdering her own father. Struggle every bit yous might to get free, you soon observe that your death is swift and inevitable. Luckily for you, it's also non the end, as yous awaken at the exact moment you entered the home, gratis to relive the very same harrowing intrusion fourth dimension and time again with the hopes of understanding why.

Equally you'll see in our Twelve Minutes review, this short but securely affecting game has a star-studded cast and an addictive gameplay mechanic that lends itself well to the mystery and intrigue that you're left to uncover.

Twelve Minutes review: Gameplay

Twelve Minutes is a point-and-click risk, and Xbox and PC versions share the same navigation method of using a mouse cursor to click where yous'd like to go. As yous endeavor to escape a time loop, yous can appoint with your wife and the intruder with a multifariousness of conversation topics, or you tin motion around your flat to pick upward and combine items for afterwards use.

Memorizing the layout of the apartment and the location of notable items within it becomes your get-go goal, and it remains an of import one throughout the entire feel. This claustrophobic collection of three rooms is all yous'll be granted admission to for the majority of your vi to eight hours of playtime, but the modest explorable infinite is filled with a bevy of interactive components that ultimately function equally an expansive toolkit for your sleuthing.

Each loop gives you a scattering of minutes to interact with your wife, check out the home, and practise your best to move the plot forrard by deducing exactly what to say or do upon the burglary. The trepidation of hearing the audio of the intruder endmost in on your apartment lends the game nigh of its tension, besides, specially early on as you attempt to become your bearings and a business firm grasp on your options. Once y'all hear the knock on the door, you know you take mere seconds to finalize whatever decisions you lot've made during that loop and cantankerous your fingers that they pay off somehow.

No matter how many adjustments you lot make, though, they're yet likely to upshot in failure more often than non. That'south the signal of the game after all, so if yous're not able to withstand the onslaught of trial and error gameplay – solutions are sometimes astonishingly cryptic – Twelve Minutes' may non be your cup of tea. Fortunately, the curt nature of each loop and an ability to utilise some handy fourth dimension skipping here and there permit things to continue moving at a brisk enough step that the inherent repetition simply rarely feels exhausting.

Twelve Minutes review: Story and setting

Regardless of your take on Twelve Minutes' looping mechanics, it's hard not to be gripped past the thrilling narrative that creator Luis Antonio has and then delicately crafted. Every vocalisation line, every item, and every move you brand has a purpose in your quest to understanding why yous're living the same dark again and over again.

Every bit you begin to peel back the many layers of the mystery, you lot're met with unsettling twists that test both your empathy and morals in ways yous never see coming. And just when y'all call back the previous heart-wrenching surprise was its final, at that place always seems to be another one lined up to punch you lot squarely in the gut.

Reaching those points requires a lot of difficult piece of work on your part, though, and volition never exist as simple as you're thinking. When you happen to finally discover fresh bits and pieces of vital data during a loop, you might assume that your next grade of activity is to achieve that exact same point and make some new choices, just that'due south not commonly the case.

Instead, progressing through to the next large revelation requires premeditation, so yous'll need to listen carefully to every line of dialogue and assess your surround with the intention of using information technology to your advantage next go-around. You'll generally be aiming to get ahead of events earlier they even happen so that you tin can change the very timeline of the burglary altogether.

A skillful example of this takes place about the commencement of the game during the very first loop where you first learn of a specific item the intruder is demanding from your married woman. As he continues to aggressively request the item, she denies she owns it at all, and y'all both end upwards expressionless. On the next loop, y'all can ask your wife nigh her father'southward decease and berate her about where she's hidden the detail, merely she'll never open up up to you nigh it.

This loop will play out endlessly until you lot consider your wife's first line of dialogue when you get home – "I didn't hear you come in" – every bit a hint to immediately hide from her side by side loop. Past doing this, you tin can let the incoming encounter play out without her having ever known you got abode. As she discloses entirely new data to the intruder, you'll now exist privy to her exposed lies, providing you lot with ammunition you tin pocket for the side by side loop.

Twelve Minutes review: Visuals and sound

There's no unconventional art style on display here, and the sound of rain beating your windows makes upward the majority of ambience noise. Simply I got the feeling that the game'southward mundane aesthetic of dimly lit rooms and dull colors was an intentional artistic choice meant to place a focus on the characters and their individual yet connected plights.

Award-winning actors fill the iii roles – James McAvoy equally the married man, Daisy Ridley as the married woman, and Willem Dafoe as the intruder. As expected, these talented stars bring the characters to life wonderfully when dialogue is allowed to advance naturally, but the fundamental pattern of the game can periodically inhibit this. Since you lot're constantly making choices in real-time, phonation lines can end up cutting and clipped together to facilitate an ever-evolving flow of events, making them come across as strong and awkward at times.

Stiff, too, are the actions of the characters, which are awfully animated with hasty, unnatural movements that would expect more at home in The Sims. This somewhat undermines the believability of emotional scenes, especially when they uncomfortably clip through 1 another or wave their arms around erratically, but it's thankfully non distracting enough to ruin the otherwise stellar storytelling.

Twelve Minutes review: Verdict

Twelve Minutes produces a substantial sense of satisfaction with each new epiphany that inches you lot closer to escaping the atrocious circumstances in which you detect yourself. And though its phonation work and animations aren't always graceful, it'southward not hard to run across that this thriller's main objective is to spin a chilling yarn.

It succeeds admirably in doing exactly that by using its limited infinite, small cast, and compelling fourth dimension loop mechanic to peachy upshot, awarding patient players with a quietly unnerving and masterfully crafted mystery worth unraveling.

Billy Givens is a journalist with nearly two decades of experience in editing and writing across a broad variety of topics. He focuses particularly on games coverage for Tom's Guide and other sites including From Gamers Magazine, Retroware, Game Rant and TechRaptor. He's also written for self-comeback sites such equally Lifehack and produced in-depth analyses on subjects such as health, psychology and amusement.