12 Minutes Game Review
Twelve Minutes is an interactive thriller about a man trapped in a time loop. The game features 6 endings and has many plot surprises.
Storyline
We play as an ordinary man returning home after a tiring day of work to our loving wife who prepared a surprise for us. But 5 minutes in, everything seems to fall apart. A cop enters the apartment convinced our wife murdered her father 8 years ago. When there seems to be no escape, we enter the apartment once again just to relive the past 12 minutes again. Can we figure out what’s happening and find the perfect solution to prevent any blood from being spilled?
Gameplay
Using only the mouse, we can move around a small apartment interacting with different objects. We can watch the time by pausing the game. That’s about it for the gameplay. It’s a pretty simple game in terms of mechanics but it will make you think hard to get to the ending. It would take you about an hour to get to the end and about 6 hours to get all the achievements after that.
Advantages:
- The narrative is exceptional. There are 6 endings to discover and some interesting plot twists along the way. You can get bits and pieces of the story in any order you want so it leaves you a lot of creative space to think and figure things out in your own way.
- The voice acting is very nice. It’s very pleasing to listen to each line being voice acted even though after some play-throughs you’ll have to start skipping some of them as it gets repetitive.
- The simplicity of the game is very appealing. The time loop idea is interesting and exciting. 12 minutes is just long enough to have a lot of things happen and short enough to make sure it’s not boring or annoying to play through over and over again.
Disadvantages:
- The game is rather expensive for what it is. I would strongly recommend buying it on a discount.
- Even though you can get clues in any order, there are specific actions to be done in order to get the ending. So, in the end of the day, you are left restricted to a certain way of doing things that the game forces on you.
The game still has little bugs here and there that are fortunately not game-breaking, but still noticeable.
Rating
I’d rate this experience 7.6 time loops / 10. It has an interesting plot and concept but it’s quite expensive. You’ll either spend a few times playing through it to get to the end, so it’s not really worth the price. Or you can spend too much time to get all the achievements which I find rather annoying. I would strongly recommend getting the game on sale.