12 Minutes Reviews
12 Minutes is an excellent narrative experience thanks to its chilling story, top-notch voice actors, and unique and intriguing gameplay loop.
There's quality within this intriguing time loop, though by the end you're left wondering whether the core idea is a good one after all.
A clever time loop setup devolves into frustrating repetition.
Twelve Minutes injects a compelling time-loop mystery into a traditional point-and-click adventure game to create original gameplay that complements its story's curiosity factor.
Twelve Minutes is a good adventure game, but its puzzle design makes it feel— mature, cinematic presentation aside—like something of a relic. If it was released in 1995, you'd be ringing up the LucasArts hint line for help and getting scolded by your parents for running up a massive phone bill. But it has its charms, and the way the story is gradually peeled back, growing more disturbing with each loop, is effectively done. There's a huge amount of emotion, drama, and conflict squeezed into this tiny, dingy three-room apartment. But also a lot of frustration as you struggle to determine precisely the correct sequence of events to let you move the story forward and finally get some closure.
A miniature time loop thriller that will burrow into your frontal lobe and stay there long after you've solved the mystery.
Twelve Minutes sinks its claws in from the get-go and doesn't let go until the final, brutal revelation
12 Minutes is a point-and-click adventure in a clockwork world that's as expertly crafted as a Swiss watch.
Twelve Minutes is an uncomfortable journey — maybe too uncomfortable
Twelve Minutes ultimately presents a compelling, thrilling experience that feels more than worth the price of entry. It has interesting things to say through its looping core conceit, and it’ll tease your brain more than a few times - sometimes genuinely, sometimes through slightly cheap requirements to progress. I also admit I was less of a fan of where the story went in its later stages - but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t hooked. The journey matters more than the destination, after all - and a gripping journey this is.
Twelve Minutes features a compelling time loop story with strong performances that will keep players hooked, even when the lack of guidance brings that momentum to a halt.
Twelve Minutes is a celebrity-led adventure title, but its time looping mechanic and riveting narrative are the real stars.
Twelve Minutes' time loop puzzle is layered and weird, but its short time limit doesn't find the sweet spot between tense and frustrating.
Ultimately, we found 12 Minutes to be a trite adventure that squanders its initial intrigue almost instantly. We can see how someone else might get a kick out of its star-studded silliness, but in a gaming landscape littered with time loop games, we found this one extremely tedious at best.
There are, of course, multiple endings, and the minutes leading up to each resolution can be flavoured with violence and revelation, or laced with deceit. The question is: Do we care?
Twelve Minutes isn’t perfect, but it’s one of the very few games I’d recommend everyone should play. While it’ll offer an experience many won’t enjoy, understand, or figure out, it’ll stays with you for a long, long time–even if its repetition results in Pavlovian conditioning. I now can’t hear my doorbell without thinking I’ll be choked to death within 60 seconds.
12 Minutes is a statement of intent on the part of Luis Antonio, a video game that elevates him as a designer, and places him on the map after having gone through Rockstar Games and having participated in projects as disparate as The Witness or What Remains of Edith Finch. Now, he puts on the table his particular vision of graphic adventure, with a video game that exudes a love for textual enigma, cinema and mystery. A title that, at most, can take you a couple of afternoons, but that will leave a great taste in your mouth and, quite possibly, the brains smoky.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
All in all, I really enjoyed the tension Twelve Minutes implemented even with its sometimes wonky animation and frustrating elements. I found myself constantly thinking about it when not playing and trying to come up with new ways and ideas that would allow me to finally get to the crux of what was happening and why. It’s also well worth getting another mind in on the action to help guide the storyline along in angles you haven’t thought about which essentially turns it into a brilliant two-player game and a real talking point.
A unique graphic adventure, sometimes thrilling and sometimes frustrating, that makes the most out of three characters and a time loop. Not a game for every kind of player, but definitely worth a try.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
I doubt that Twelve Minutes will go down as a crowd pleaser. If the revelation fails to move you then all that came before it was for naught. But if it catches you unexpectedly, as it did me, then Twelve Minutes may linger in your mind as an unusually effective high concept piece.