12 Minutes Reviews
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.
Twelve Minutes is a thrill ride through and through, constantly presenting players with new and interesting revelations in the time looping narrative that never fails to keep one guessing. It veers away from stereotypical point-and-click adventure tropes, and challenges players to bend its densely-detailed environments to achieve their goals.
Twelve Minutes is a game of dualities. It is very economic in how it presents itself. The focus is tight on three characters, in a small apartment that houses the few instruments of change at your disposal. This allows each little detail to have a nauseating amount of depth to it, including the fantastic performances of the characters and their backstories. The downside to this is that it can lead players astray, due to the limitless possibilities and comparatively limited guidance. Regardless, Twelve Minutes is a tidy and reasonably well-told pressure-cooker drama with few divots, provided you can follow the path.
Some devilishly clever puzzles shine in a unique take on the point-and click genre, but the game waits to the end to make its story truly interesting, which might be a little late if you're looking for an emotional investment to get you through some of the more tedious moments.
Twelve Minutes ends up going for shock value and loses the small character moments and choices that made it so engaging. But pulling my hair out to solve the apartments puzzles was reward enough for me to want to see the loop closed.
While it manages to side-step its shortcomings through clever design, Twelve Minutes ultimately feels like it'll be one of those water cooler games that some will love, others will hate, but everyone will just want to talk about. It tells a cerebral story while demanding your full attention, along with an unorthodox wit, to best its cat and mouse puzzles.
When Twelve Minutes was first announced along with incredible star power, several gamers took interest. Besides, we often gravitate toward new ideas in a world full of rehashes. It is too bad that creativity doesn’t ooze into the gameplay. This results in a head-banging experience that hardly ever feels satisfying.
Not the stuff of legend but still an original story that will stay with you after the credits roll.
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When Twelve Minutes is firing on all cylinders it will pull you along with its dark and twisted story. The performances from the cast are memorable, varied, and hold weight. It’s an easy recommendation for fans of strong narrative, point-and-click adventure games, or people who just love indies.
While Twelve Minutes can be frustrating at times, the story and characters more than make up for it. Especially when backed up by the tight design and elegant visual/audio elements.
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 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.
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.
So with every repeated loop, and every new piece of info that leads to more narrative threads to pull on, Twelve Minutes is certainly fascinating to unravel. Some of it might start to feel a bit clunky, when dialogue starts mashing up against itself and characters move in awkward ways, but on the whole, it’s a puzzle I kept wanting to piece together, both fascinated and afraid of the answers I might find. It keeps the story driving forward, and if some deep, dark character drama set in a time loop sounds appealing, you’ll find what you’re looking for here.
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.
All in all, Twelve Minutes is definitely worth a download with Xbox Game Pass if you're even the least bit interested in the premise, as both its story and gameplay combine to create a memorable thriller. There are a couple of downsides if you look for them, and the replayability factor will be pretty low after you've discovered everything, but we think you'll really enjoy your main playthrough regardless, even if you're not the biggest fan of point-and-click games.
Twelve Minutes is bold in its artistic choices in every aspect of the game. From the top-down camera perspective to the deliberate lack of instruction from the very beginning, Twelve Minutes wants you to figure everything out for yourself and see just how deep the rabbit hole goes. There are drawbacks to this, as exemplified by my own shortcomings when it comes to puzzle games, but it’s also elegant in its simplicity and minimalism. Twelve Minutes is a deliberately introspective game that doesn’t waste its breath on unnecessary exposition or dialogue. Wanting to see all it has to offer may take some effort on the player’s part, but it’s well worth the hard work and investment.
It's an incredible achievement for a solo developer, and thanks to its inclusion in Xbox Game Pass, something that plenty of players should at least try – you may find the performances, mystery and intrigue of this small urban apartment are some you just have to experience. Perhaps you can break the loop and discover what's happening to you – and why.
This game demands your patience and undivided attention. In return, it will reward you with an intriguing story showered in mystery, suspense, heart, and passion. To bring up a passage from Roger Ebert’s essay once again, “No video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.” That essay was published 11 years ago. I’ve played a lot of video games since then I can argue are pieces of art. I experienced art form when I played Journey, Abzu, Red Dead Redemption 2, Shadow of the Colossus, among so many others. This year, I experienced art form when I played Twelve Minutes.