Twelve Minutes Reviews

This is a phenomenal game with impressive story telling and excellent voice acting from Wilem Defoe and James McAvoy. The story definitely gets a little twisted and dark. If you enjoy the Coffin of Andy and Leyley then you will enjoy this game. Honestly it is a little disappointing to see the most recent reviews as mixed. I don't think the reviews are an accurate reflection of how unique this game truly is and honestly the complaints regarding it seem to be from people who only enjoy simple FPS-type games with little thought or critical thinking. If you actually play it you will come to find that the people complaining that you repeat actions ad nauseum probably only do so because honestly they most likely just aren't very intelligent or good at problem solving. Just my humble opinion. However, if mystery/detective games aren't your cup of tea then I would advise you elect to pass this one by. If you enjoy story-rich, mystery/thrillers then this is definitely a great game you should consider!

Quite a fun game, it was a unique experience to say the least. It was tedious at times but in the end its a very well made game.

This game is very unique. It has a really interesting premise that after you get the hang of the gameplay loop, you begin to get invested in figuring out how to solve moving forward. At the same time though, that same mechanic is especially grating and frustrating. I really wanted to like it, but after I got to one of the endings, I just wasn't interested anymore. Which is a shame because there's a lot I did enjoy about the game. But it's very difficult to recommend. One last thing, is this game is horribly optimized on Steam Deck. Somehow this game can burn through the battery in less than one hour. It is the only game I've played on it that did that. When connected to the charger the fan was running hard the whole time.

Liked playing the game and getting all the different ways to approach a loop, but it would be nice to have a clear ending of some kind or some indication that you have gotten every possible outcome. Overall nice game 6.5 out of 10

This would have been really good as a movie, but as a game? Not at all. Look, the story is good, but you will have to do the exact same thing over, and over, and over, and over just to maybe get a chance of advancing the plot. If I were the game developer I would have implemented a "choice tree" where you could skip to any point in the story and see the possible branchings of your choices. That way you could maintain the fun aspects of the game (eg. having to discover the story an think of ways to advance the plot) without the absolutely horrible part (having to repeat the 10 minute loop every time with 90% of the same actions as last time).

Despite the criticisms , it is an interesting game and excellent voice over. simple to understand mechanically interesting story.

If you get easily frustrated with puzzles and repetition, don't bother with this game, but if you love a challenge and a good story with a plot twist, definitely recommended.

The main attraction here is supposed to be the story. The protagonist is trapped in a 12 minute time loop in his apartment and the plot was clearly made with “how many twists can we cram into this?” in mind. The answer is: many, but it does not make a good story. It is not like the puzzle pieces fall into place and everything starts to make sense, rather you are discovering new contrived reasons why things are not what they seem. It also does not help that I predicted the biggest twist the second it was set-up, I just hoped the writer wouldn't do this because this would be too stupid. He did. Gameplay-wise it is enjoyable in the first half, when depending on your choices the events take different routes, you can explore and experiment. But the second half is essentially one route in which the characters finally discuss what is happening, you are just going back to it over and over again, so it is marginally different and you can learn one small additional fact before repeating.

Before the final loop I was going to say that it’s flaw was its gameplay, and that this plot would work well as a time loop movie. If you advance the plot on every loop, it's paced out quite well so you get just the right amount of new information with each loop. Except you don't always advance the plot. Obviously a time loop is repetitive, but you can design around that. Here, at a minimum you need to repeat 11 times to finish the game. but you won't. What you need to do to progress is often so insanely obtuse even by point and click adventure standards that you'll spend loop after loop doing the same setup for the first 5 minutes, only to discover you've done the wrong setup and can't get any new information from the last 5 minutes. I could give it the benefit of the doubt and say that if I had paced it out over several sessions I could have thought things over more, gotten less annoyed with the repeating, repeating, repeating dialogue that can only be skipped one line at a time. But I won't, because you need to remember a detail you'll basically only see on the first loop in order to solve the second to last one. And of course, it's only flaw is not its gameplay. The twist ending is such an absurd contrivance that it is impossible to suspend one's disbelief. I think its telling that most of the positive reviews seem to agree that the concept is good but the execution is somewhere between flawed and disastrous.

This game is a bit of a mess and falls into quite a few issues. In order to progress to the next cycle of time loops, actions need to be very specific. Additionally it ends the game with the #1 rule to avoid when writing stories. [spoiler] you wake up and it was all a dream[/spoiler]. The game also doesn't respect your time, with the repetition and waiting required when you want to trial and experiment. It's interesting, but it left me more frustrated then it should have.