CHENNAI: Eerily similar to how the weeks pass these days, Twelve Minutes is your run-of-the mill Groundhog Day story. Only here, the repetition in the game features a story that is a bit more traumatic than daily life. In this game, a man returns home in the evening, and finds his wife waiting to share a romantic dinner with him. But, after 12 minutes, or every time he exits the front door, he finds the last couple of minutes have reset. The same scene restarts. Man is confused. For a game that seals itself to just 12 minutes of recurring events, 12 minutes packs a surprising amount of story.
The player is a fly on the ceiling. We see everything in the room, but hardly see the faces of the characters involved. While that makes the experience a little impersonal, the game compensates for it with the intrigue and frustration of the time loop. Gameplay works via dragging and dropping, and interactions with objects and people. It’s on us to make each time loop a little different from the last, and use the new information to uncover a bit more of the plot. The overall story involves man and his wife having a serious conversation, that disintegrates to a cop entering the house, and potential hurt to the previously happy family.
The game uses a combination of dialogue options, and environment choices to generate a fresh ending towards each loop. The game features James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe. Elaborate plot twists are therefore expected. There are multiple final endings to the game, each dependent on the our choices through the game.
The different, customised looping sequences are appreciable, but the excitement of it being a time-loop based story exhausts within a few minutes. The gameplay is tedious, and its drag and drops feel like too much effort for a small pay-off.As the action options require precision as the loops progress, I realised that I would rather just watch someone else play the game to completion than try out the infinite combinations of actions myself.
The game is available to play on the PC and Xbox, and free on the game pass. I rate the game 10 minutes out of the liberal twelve that it offers. It’s a good Sunday mystery for those who are inclined to explore the game and the potential mysteries that can be uncovered.
Anusha Ganapathi
@quofles
(This economics graduate spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)