Indie thriller 12 Minutes has caught the intrigue of gamers since its captivating showing at E3 in 2019, and the buzz has only grown since. Developed by Luis Antonio, 12 Minutes has only grown in scope since its reveal to the public, the excitement around it facilitating an extended development process. The game grabbed headlines with the announcement of its Hollywood-calibre cast that included James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley and Willem Dafoe.
After all the excitement, 12 Minutes is finally in the hands of reviews and their reactions are mixed. Whilst praise is universal for the performances of its A-List voice actors, the time-looping mystery isn't sitting right with everyone. While some critics have been enthralled by the tense time-limited thriller, others have only found tedium in their repeated runs.
Wes Fenlon, PC Gamer: "The repetition ends up making solving its mystery more punishing than combining random inventory items in an adventure game. When I stopped playing one night and thought about how I'd just spent the last three hours, I remembered the scene in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray has used his infinite loops to plan out the perfect bank heist and saunter away with a bag of cash. 12 Minutes is a game about all the loops Groundhog Day didn't show before that big payoff moment, where he's presumably trying and failing over and over again. The movie wisely skipped over that tedium. If you did that in a game, well, I guess you wouldn't have much to play. But I never really felt like 12 Minutes even gave me the joy of the payoff, either—more often just annoyance that a breakthrough hinged on some item I was aware of but hadn't used at quite the right time, or relief that the nth trip through repeating the same actions finally worked."
Andrew King, Gamespot: "Though the intruder and the wife are characters, they are also objects to be played against other objects, items to be used to potentially break the time loop. Because of this, some of the turns that the story takes can feel a little contrived, as though developer Luis Antonio is making do with limited toys in a tiny toy box. There are only so many configurations this trio of characters can take and, as a result, I found myself mixed on the shocking twists the game moves through on its route to the conclusion. That said, while the landing may be a little shaky, the journey there is well worth taking...This game may limit its loop to 12 minutes, but I found myself wishing I could stay for much, much longer."
Malindy Hetfeld, Eurogamer: "The only reason 12 Minutes gives me to care about what happens is that my faceless character will repeatedly die if I don't. I mean, that's too bad, but again, I can get up and walk away. The stakes, oddly enough, felt pretty low to me as a player. I can't even say 12 Minutes doesn't achieve what it sets out to do, only that for me the tedium set in way before then.This is a game that stylised itself as cinematic adventure, and the acting of the three A-list celebs is second to none, without a doubt. But more than a fan of narrative, you need to have the mindset of a puzzler, someone motivated by an at times very obstinate riddle. You have to be happy with moving the story ahead inch by inch, and take pride in that progress, because the narrative payoff isn't quite there. After all, what do I care? I'm just a faceless man with a faceless wife."
Ryan McCaffrey, IGN: "It's difficult to convey my enthusiasm for Twelve Minutes’ time-loop mystery without discussing what happens at the end, but like Inside, I'd be doing you a grave disservice by giving anything away. What I can say is that the payoff is worth it, and the clever way in which writer-director Luis Antonio flips the traditional point-and-click adventure on its head makes for a compelling bit of unconventional storytelling that could only have worked as a game. Throw in great performances from three respected actors and the result is a memorable crime worth solving."
Alice Bell, RockPaperShotgun: "The problem - and it's an unfortunately large one - is that Twelve Minutes doesn't give you enough leeway to get things only a slightly wrong. If you screw up your run at a "correct" playthrough, even in what you think is a tiny way, that's it. Start again, bozo. Make sure you collect both mugs. Make sure you do action X out of sight of your wife. Don't bother mentioning event Y too early, or you can't do anything else until it happens. I went through my entire scripted process, and was chatting to Dafoe cop, when I realised I hadn't collected something I needed from another room. Problem was, I couldn't just go and get it; insta-fail. I'm sure some people will enjoy deliberately getting things wrong just to see what happens, but when you have a specific goal in mind and don't quite hit it, watching the outcome of that run is less fun than you might expect."
Alex Donaldson, VG247: "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."
12 Minutes is available now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X and PC.
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