Within the first 5 seconds of freedom this game gave me, I immediately picked up the kitchen knife and used it in probably the worst way possible. The game didn’t stop me and it also didn't seem to care, and neither did I. But that was probably the worst way possible to start this game, because as it dragged on for hours the main thought in my head was, “We were cooking on the first route” which should have ended the game. Instead I was trapped in a torture chamber of nonsensical solutions and horrible dialogue delivery, with an ending that wasn’t even interesting enough to be worth the painful drawl. The image of Daisy Ridley’s weird polygonal feet are scarred into my brain forever.
While I find the trial and error bit of gameplay to be rather neat, it’s done in such an excruciatingly painful way here. Every do-over lacks the ability to skip the cinematics so you’ll feel your body rapidly age with every scene you’re forced to watch on repeat. The lack of options your character gets to work with are frustrating and unrealistic. The characters shamble around like zombies and there’s zero way to speed up the process to get back to a later segment in the timeline aside from some line skips. I guess had they implemented such a silly concept then the game would quite literally be 12 minutes long. Instead, you sit through hours of trying out the smallest changes, only to awkwardly miss-click something and have to redo the whole process again. With every make-out session your wife assaults you with unprompted at the beginning of every loop, the more reptilian I felt while playing this game. How icky it made me feel while I slowly became an iguana.
You’d think a game that allows you to stab the shit out of your wife in the first five seconds would have literally anything to say about violence or impatience or domestic abuse or literally anything? Maybe it’d point a finger at me and go, “You’re part of the problem!!” and question my immediate conclusion to stretch the game's choices to it’s most inhumane limits. Nope. It meant nothing, like it was just something cool you could do for the sake of it. Violence is actually the only way to siphon any useful information from any of the characters, in fact the peaceful communicative solutions don’t even open up until after you’ve murdered so it’s not like it’s not encouraged. But, it literally doesn’t acknowledge this as something awful nor does it affect your character in any real way. The game does not care, so why should you? Allowing me to start the game with the ability to do this really set itself up for failure. It never challenged my thought process, so I just simply progressed with not giving a shit. It's almost like game interactivity has a way of affecting the player if it's implemented in a meaningful way instead of just existing for "artistic" shock value.
At the end of the day, does it even matter? I went through all this effort just to land on a conclusion that I said out loud as a joke. When the twist happened and that joke ended up being the reality, oh fuck off. This is it. It’s just a game that let me murder my wife in the first 5 seconds of it and nothing else. Riveting stuff, guys.
How they got James McAvoy, Willem Dafoe, and Daisy Ridley involved in this is insanely hilarious. They sound like they’re phoning it in the whole time, like they don’t even believe in this game’s bullshit themselves. It’s artistic, I’ll give it that. But, am I buying it? No. I ate chocolate mousse while a man screamed at my wife and hogtied her to the floor right in front of me. Neat.
While I find the trial and error bit of gameplay to be rather neat, it’s done in such an excruciatingly painful way here. Every do-over lacks the ability to skip the cinematics so you’ll feel your body rapidly age with every scene you’re forced to watch on repeat. The lack of options your character gets to work with are frustrating and unrealistic. The characters shamble around like zombies and there’s zero way to speed up the process to get back to a later segment in the timeline aside from some line skips. I guess had they implemented such a silly concept then the game would quite literally be 12 minutes long. Instead, you sit through hours of trying out the smallest changes, only to awkwardly miss-click something and have to redo the whole process again. With every make-out session your wife assaults you with unprompted at the beginning of every loop, the more reptilian I felt while playing this game. How icky it made me feel while I slowly became an iguana.
You’d think a game that allows you to stab the shit out of your wife in the first five seconds would have literally anything to say about violence or impatience or domestic abuse or literally anything? Maybe it’d point a finger at me and go, “You’re part of the problem!!” and question my immediate conclusion to stretch the game's choices to it’s most inhumane limits. Nope. It meant nothing, like it was just something cool you could do for the sake of it. Violence is actually the only way to siphon any useful information from any of the characters, in fact the peaceful communicative solutions don’t even open up until after you’ve murdered so it’s not like it’s not encouraged. But, it literally doesn’t acknowledge this as something awful nor does it affect your character in any real way. The game does not care, so why should you? Allowing me to start the game with the ability to do this really set itself up for failure. It never challenged my thought process, so I just simply progressed with not giving a shit. It's almost like game interactivity has a way of affecting the player if it's implemented in a meaningful way instead of just existing for "artistic" shock value.
At the end of the day, does it even matter? I went through all this effort just to land on a conclusion that I said out loud as a joke. When the twist happened and that joke ended up being the reality, oh fuck off. This is it. It’s just a game that let me murder my wife in the first 5 seconds of it and nothing else. Riveting stuff, guys.
How they got James McAvoy, Willem Dafoe, and Daisy Ridley involved in this is insanely hilarious. They sound like they’re phoning it in the whole time, like they don’t even believe in this game’s bullshit themselves. It’s artistic, I’ll give it that. But, am I buying it? No. I ate chocolate mousse while a man screamed at my wife and hogtied her to the floor right in front of me. Neat.
Twelve Minutes, the first game directed by veteran Luis António, frustratingly and miserably uses itself in a narrative and thematic loop in order to achieve unsatisfactory and totally derisory results - even if, above all, it takes itself seriously.
In addition to a plot with several holes and unbelievable twists, the game has one of the worst gameplays Annapurna has ever offered, at least 10 years behind in game design (including critically failing on trivial matters), and never, I repeat, never exploring any of its own points thematically. The loop is a tool, not the object, which is a serious mistake.
This is, of course, not to mention the fact that it doesn't even touch on themes that are crucial to its story, never, for example, mentioning its sadism, violence and abnormality, just accepting them as elements that don't change what it's trying to tell - again, another serious (and, frankly, amateurish) mistake.
If only it made fun of itself, but not even that. Twelve Minutes wants to be taken seriously, very seriously, through art direction that uses morbid tones and cold sets, cinematic acting scenes and, wow, violence and swearing. All of this as if it had no less screen time with minimal depth than its own 12-minute loop, both in narrative and gameplay - it's empty, through and through, however much the passively charming style and dramatic performances may try to manipulate you into believing that it's not.
You, the protagonist, kill all the relevant characters in the game, in one way or another, at one time or another, and the only, only consequence or mention of these events comes in the form of an apology. An apology from the protagonist himself, made hours and hours after the start of the loop - hours that 80% of the time, and that number is no exaggeration, will be incessant repetition without any use.
In other words, it's a game that doesn't even try to care about femicide, murder, suicide or cancer; themes that, since present at alarming levels, could easily be explored to the full, but are treated only as tools to tell a story that doesn't even work in the most basic sense imaginable.
Spoiler warning: Of course, because completely ignoring any emotional sensitivity or social issue was surely the most desirable way to conduct a text about a man who is hypnotized by his father, kills him and marries his own sister, falling, years later, into a hellish time loop to discover that he has done so.
In short: playing Twelve Minutes sucks, with an outdated point-and-click and poor use of the time loop, and what's worse, it doesn't even make a point of hiding this fact behind a minimally decent script - because, in fact, it's as shallow as a saucer. Luis António completely takes away the point of a game being a game and a story being worth telling - especially as he's part of a publisher like Annapurna, capable of casting even Willem Dafoe and giving his protégés freedom of time and creativity.
In addition to a plot with several holes and unbelievable twists, the game has one of the worst gameplays Annapurna has ever offered, at least 10 years behind in game design (including critically failing on trivial matters), and never, I repeat, never exploring any of its own points thematically. The loop is a tool, not the object, which is a serious mistake.
This is, of course, not to mention the fact that it doesn't even touch on themes that are crucial to its story, never, for example, mentioning its sadism, violence and abnormality, just accepting them as elements that don't change what it's trying to tell - again, another serious (and, frankly, amateurish) mistake.
If only it made fun of itself, but not even that. Twelve Minutes wants to be taken seriously, very seriously, through art direction that uses morbid tones and cold sets, cinematic acting scenes and, wow, violence and swearing. All of this as if it had no less screen time with minimal depth than its own 12-minute loop, both in narrative and gameplay - it's empty, through and through, however much the passively charming style and dramatic performances may try to manipulate you into believing that it's not.
You, the protagonist, kill all the relevant characters in the game, in one way or another, at one time or another, and the only, only consequence or mention of these events comes in the form of an apology. An apology from the protagonist himself, made hours and hours after the start of the loop - hours that 80% of the time, and that number is no exaggeration, will be incessant repetition without any use.
In other words, it's a game that doesn't even try to care about femicide, murder, suicide or cancer; themes that, since present at alarming levels, could easily be explored to the full, but are treated only as tools to tell a story that doesn't even work in the most basic sense imaginable.
Spoiler warning: Of course, because completely ignoring any emotional sensitivity or social issue was surely the most desirable way to conduct a text about a man who is hypnotized by his father, kills him and marries his own sister, falling, years later, into a hellish time loop to discover that he has done so.
In short: playing Twelve Minutes sucks, with an outdated point-and-click and poor use of the time loop, and what's worse, it doesn't even make a point of hiding this fact behind a minimally decent script - because, in fact, it's as shallow as a saucer. Luis António completely takes away the point of a game being a game and a story being worth telling - especially as he's part of a publisher like Annapurna, capable of casting even Willem Dafoe and giving his protégés freedom of time and creativity.
I am a huge fan of time loop games, but this one really didn't deliver. The gameplay was sluggish, the mystery was broadly uninteresting, the puzzles were easy, the ending was a disappointment. Very not worth it.
Theres like, glimpses of a game that could live up to the presentation and there are moments that could only be pulled off by a designer that knew what they were doing - but then its so shocking how both the gameplay and somehow the story are pure blunt trial and error all the way through. Howd they get Wilhem Dafoe on this??
So something I occasionally like to do is look over query pitches for literary agent submissions, both to prepare myself for the day I eventually yeet myself into the slush pile, but particularly because a lot of the minutiae fascinates me. There are a lot of little does and don’ts that can make the difference between getting a rejection or a full submission: a lot of it, in particular, coming down to whether you know your target market and aren’t just some wannabe who doesn’t understand the field. Nowhere is this more evident in the space where you put your comparative titles — the books your book is most like. Generally, you want to make them something in your genre of choice released during the past five years, and also something not as well known. Conversely, doing things like comparing your work to a big book, something released far outside the last couple of years, or even comparing your title to a big-budget film are huge no-nos: all they do is show that you’re not quite well-versed in the genre you’re writing in, and potentially indicate to the agent that you think your work is more groundbreaking than it is. A good first impression can sell a work all by itself, and one of the worst first impressions you can give is that you’re just a genre tourist. You want to know your market, you want to know how your work fits in that market, and you want to show the agent just how well you know all of that while still fitting within the general bounds and structure of a query. It’s a tough balancing act, and it’s loosely fascinating to see where people tend to trip up, and just how tricky it can be to get everything right.
Anyway sorry about that preamble, I know sometimes I tend to go overboard with them, it’s something I’m trying to work on, let’s just get on with talking about the game and-
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Twelve Minutes is a game where you play as a loving and devoted husband, who one day returns from work to have dinner with his equally loving and devoted wife. The evening goes off without a hitch, before a man claiming to be a police officer knocks on the door and demands you open up. Regardless of whether you let him in or he kicks the door down, he swiftly overpowers the both of you, demands of your wife to tell him where she hid ‘the pocket watch,’ then proceeds to shoot you in the head… sending you back to the beginning of the evening. It soon becomes clear that the husband is trapped in a time loop, and that not even staying alive can break you out. With no other options, you decide your only recourse is to find out why this is happening: using your foreknowledge of events to come to try and manipulate what occurs, all to find out why this cop is after the both of you, what the significance is of the pocket watch he’s asking for, and just what can happen within the space oftwelve ten minutes.
I have to admit, it’s a fairly decent hook, and the first act of the game does a decent job of following it up. The apartment the game takes place in is small enough that everything you can interact with is well within reach, and it’s all a matter of experimentation: doing something, seeing the results, figuring out what you can glean from it, and how this information will help you resolve the overall mystery of the loop. I like the voice acting (even if the presence of Hollywood B-listers as opposed to professional voice actors makes me roll my eyes a little bit), and I’m also into how the game handles the consequences of your actions, and showing the disconnect between player and player character. Throughout the game, there’s a knife in the kitchen you are more than capable of using on your wife. Whether you do it for the funsies, or because you want to figure out what you learn by doing that, you stab your wife to death… all while the husband is freaking out, apologizing, and is absolutely horrified by doing this even beyond that loop. It immediately kind of brings in the reality of what you’re making your character do: taking something the player likely did out of curiosity and using it to make the atmosphere entirely, intentionally uncomfortable. As a whole, the game starts out well, with the premise immediately hooking you in and the initial stages providing a decent amount of options and things to do…
…only, as the game goes on, for you to find out that most of this game’s interactivity ends with what you already have. At the start of the game, the three things you can do in the apartment are to drug your wife’s drink with sleeping pills, hide in the closet so that the cop doesn’t know you’re there, and, if you do both together, you automatically indispose the cop when he tries to use a lightswitch. By the end of the game, these are still the only things you can do in the apartment. Most of what you actually do is navigate dialogue trees with your wife. And show your wife items to unlock more dialogue trees with her. And then do dialogue trees with your wife so you can then do dialogue trees with the cop. And this is all dialogue you’ve likely seen before and you are then going to see again all because maybe at the end of one diatribe there’ll be a new option you can pick, or that you didn’t pick before, which might mean something going forward. You might think ‘oh, can’t you just skip dialogue? that’s a feature that’s in basically every story-based game to sift through the tedium of seeing the same dialogue over and over again,’ but that’s not the case here. In Twelve Minutes you can skip through some dialogue… one line at a time, as if you’re going through a Dark Souls vendor’s dialogue to try and access their wares. And if you’re not actively in a cutscene with them — if you’re allowed to walk around the apartment while they have their dialogue — you can’t skip through it. You have to wait there, minute by minute, line by line, until you have the opportunity to step in and have something new happen. If you’re looking at your phone, or if you accidentally select the wrong option… whoops, loop ruined, go back to start, go through everything, manually, again.
Which, frankly, if the comp titles being intro-level Film Studies picks (which, like, no shade, I like two of those movies a lot, but also wow those are some basic bitch answers) wasn’t indication enough, the lack of polish and how… dated it feels, mechanically, really go to show how little it knows the genre it’s in. Even beyond the oodles of dialogue you oftentimes can’t skip through, the game’s so finicky and overcomplicated even when, on paper, it’s straightforward. At the beginning of the game, when I was meant to just mill around the house and have a romantic moment with my wife, I accidentally put my plate of food in my inventory when I tried to eat it, singlehandedly pissing my wife off enough to call the whole evening off. At one point, you’re directed to show the cop a picture on the fridge, but it’s not good enough to show the cop the picture on the fridge, you must engage him in dialogue trees that will tell him about the picture on the fridge, he’ll go and check it… only for the loop to be ruined because the picture on the fridge isn’t there. Because the picture of the fridge is currently in your inventory. Because you needed to show him the picture on the fridge so you then tried to show him the picture on the fridge. This then forces you to do the whole process again because, for a game partially about messing about in a time loop, and a genre/medium all about cause-and-effect and the consequences of your actions, this game is so rigid. There’s only one way you’re ever allowed to do things, and it’s usually the way where you find the item you need… then do nothing with it, instead just bringing it up in a dialogue tree down the line. For an adventure game, one that places a lot of emphasis on walking around and finding things in your apartment, it feels like the adventure gameplay runs contrary to what the game actually wants to be. Like it wants to be a visual novel but the dev is too busy looking up /r/movies ‘what’s your favourite psychological thriller?’ to realize that interactive media is more than just anime dating sims.
Because, like, if all the game wants me to do is go through the same dialogue trees over and over, then… why is this an adventure game? What’s the point of having to interface with your inventory and have to go through the whole twelve-step, two-minute process of drugging my wife over and over again at the start of near-every loop? What’s the point of being able to walk around my apartment during dialogue if I have to wait right where I am to do the next thing I need to do? It’d certainly be more streamlined if the game was only about navigating the dialogue trees it so wants me to navigate at the cost of anything else. And the game would certainly feel more playable if it had… any of the quality-of-life features that virtually every visual novel has by default. Why sit around, waiting for the game to run through dialogue it ran through before to maybe reach something new when I could just… skip to the next branching point, or the next bit of dialogue I haven’t already seen? When the last part of the game essentially boils down to “do this complicated and finicky setup to have a heart-to-heart with the cop, have an entire five minutes worth of conversation, then go back to step one, do the entire setup again, do the entire conversation again just to use something you learned during the first conversation to learn something new the next conversation just to go back and do that entire, unskippable process two more times…” why do that when you could just quicksave, or use a flowchart to go right to the point where things actually diverge? It’d certainly be much smoother to go through. And it’d definitely feel more of a match in terms of genre than the adventure game it currently is, where every convention it uses (inventory puzzles, the need for the game to be running in real-time) directly works against the experience and makes it feel much worse to play.
…I’m aware that this game’s ending is… rather disliked, and a big sticking point for most people I’ve seen talk about this game, but on my end… it was mostly just kind of whatever — its attempts to feel fucked-up and disturbing feel rather vanilla, honestly. And any chance for it to have an impact vanished when, instead of focusing on the immediate reactions of the characters, it just zooms into incomprehensible mind-palace shit and also you can fuck the whole segment up and you have to go out of your way to get back in and try again. Quite frankly, it feels like more of a smokescreen for what I felt were the game’s actual problems: how rigid, tedious, and finicky the game was on its way up to that point. There’s certainly initial promise — the setup works well as a narrative hook, and the initial stages are at least fun to experiment with until the game starts to show its warts — but when you can find ren;py VNs on itch.io and Steam with more polish and quality of life than this publisher-backed project… it becomes loosely clear this game thinks it’s more groundbreaking than it is. Comparative titles aren’t just buzzwords that your work might vaguely be like, they’re works you drew from, that were important in the process of constructing your own, and show to those with a more discerning eye that you’re not just a faker looking for prestige. And perhaps, if more time was spent researching the field rather than just throwing random psychological thrillers into your elevator pitch, this game could’ve been one of the many entries of the canon of time loop interactive narrative, rather than some brazen attempt at feeling like an innovation that it isn’t. 3/10.
Anyway sorry about that preamble, I know sometimes I tend to go overboard with them, it’s something I’m trying to work on, let’s just get on with talking about the game and-
oh
oh
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Twelve Minutes is a game where you play as a loving and devoted husband, who one day returns from work to have dinner with his equally loving and devoted wife. The evening goes off without a hitch, before a man claiming to be a police officer knocks on the door and demands you open up. Regardless of whether you let him in or he kicks the door down, he swiftly overpowers the both of you, demands of your wife to tell him where she hid ‘the pocket watch,’ then proceeds to shoot you in the head… sending you back to the beginning of the evening. It soon becomes clear that the husband is trapped in a time loop, and that not even staying alive can break you out. With no other options, you decide your only recourse is to find out why this is happening: using your foreknowledge of events to come to try and manipulate what occurs, all to find out why this cop is after the both of you, what the significance is of the pocket watch he’s asking for, and just what can happen within the space of
I have to admit, it’s a fairly decent hook, and the first act of the game does a decent job of following it up. The apartment the game takes place in is small enough that everything you can interact with is well within reach, and it’s all a matter of experimentation: doing something, seeing the results, figuring out what you can glean from it, and how this information will help you resolve the overall mystery of the loop. I like the voice acting (even if the presence of Hollywood B-listers as opposed to professional voice actors makes me roll my eyes a little bit), and I’m also into how the game handles the consequences of your actions, and showing the disconnect between player and player character. Throughout the game, there’s a knife in the kitchen you are more than capable of using on your wife. Whether you do it for the funsies, or because you want to figure out what you learn by doing that, you stab your wife to death… all while the husband is freaking out, apologizing, and is absolutely horrified by doing this even beyond that loop. It immediately kind of brings in the reality of what you’re making your character do: taking something the player likely did out of curiosity and using it to make the atmosphere entirely, intentionally uncomfortable. As a whole, the game starts out well, with the premise immediately hooking you in and the initial stages providing a decent amount of options and things to do…
…only, as the game goes on, for you to find out that most of this game’s interactivity ends with what you already have. At the start of the game, the three things you can do in the apartment are to drug your wife’s drink with sleeping pills, hide in the closet so that the cop doesn’t know you’re there, and, if you do both together, you automatically indispose the cop when he tries to use a lightswitch. By the end of the game, these are still the only things you can do in the apartment. Most of what you actually do is navigate dialogue trees with your wife. And show your wife items to unlock more dialogue trees with her. And then do dialogue trees with your wife so you can then do dialogue trees with the cop. And this is all dialogue you’ve likely seen before and you are then going to see again all because maybe at the end of one diatribe there’ll be a new option you can pick, or that you didn’t pick before, which might mean something going forward. You might think ‘oh, can’t you just skip dialogue? that’s a feature that’s in basically every story-based game to sift through the tedium of seeing the same dialogue over and over again,’ but that’s not the case here. In Twelve Minutes you can skip through some dialogue… one line at a time, as if you’re going through a Dark Souls vendor’s dialogue to try and access their wares. And if you’re not actively in a cutscene with them — if you’re allowed to walk around the apartment while they have their dialogue — you can’t skip through it. You have to wait there, minute by minute, line by line, until you have the opportunity to step in and have something new happen. If you’re looking at your phone, or if you accidentally select the wrong option… whoops, loop ruined, go back to start, go through everything, manually, again.
Which, frankly, if the comp titles being intro-level Film Studies picks (which, like, no shade, I like two of those movies a lot, but also wow those are some basic bitch answers) wasn’t indication enough, the lack of polish and how… dated it feels, mechanically, really go to show how little it knows the genre it’s in. Even beyond the oodles of dialogue you oftentimes can’t skip through, the game’s so finicky and overcomplicated even when, on paper, it’s straightforward. At the beginning of the game, when I was meant to just mill around the house and have a romantic moment with my wife, I accidentally put my plate of food in my inventory when I tried to eat it, singlehandedly pissing my wife off enough to call the whole evening off. At one point, you’re directed to show the cop a picture on the fridge, but it’s not good enough to show the cop the picture on the fridge, you must engage him in dialogue trees that will tell him about the picture on the fridge, he’ll go and check it… only for the loop to be ruined because the picture on the fridge isn’t there. Because the picture of the fridge is currently in your inventory. Because you needed to show him the picture on the fridge so you then tried to show him the picture on the fridge. This then forces you to do the whole process again because, for a game partially about messing about in a time loop, and a genre/medium all about cause-and-effect and the consequences of your actions, this game is so rigid. There’s only one way you’re ever allowed to do things, and it’s usually the way where you find the item you need… then do nothing with it, instead just bringing it up in a dialogue tree down the line. For an adventure game, one that places a lot of emphasis on walking around and finding things in your apartment, it feels like the adventure gameplay runs contrary to what the game actually wants to be. Like it wants to be a visual novel but the dev is too busy looking up /r/movies ‘what’s your favourite psychological thriller?’ to realize that interactive media is more than just anime dating sims.
Because, like, if all the game wants me to do is go through the same dialogue trees over and over, then… why is this an adventure game? What’s the point of having to interface with your inventory and have to go through the whole twelve-step, two-minute process of drugging my wife over and over again at the start of near-every loop? What’s the point of being able to walk around my apartment during dialogue if I have to wait right where I am to do the next thing I need to do? It’d certainly be more streamlined if the game was only about navigating the dialogue trees it so wants me to navigate at the cost of anything else. And the game would certainly feel more playable if it had… any of the quality-of-life features that virtually every visual novel has by default. Why sit around, waiting for the game to run through dialogue it ran through before to maybe reach something new when I could just… skip to the next branching point, or the next bit of dialogue I haven’t already seen? When the last part of the game essentially boils down to “do this complicated and finicky setup to have a heart-to-heart with the cop, have an entire five minutes worth of conversation, then go back to step one, do the entire setup again, do the entire conversation again just to use something you learned during the first conversation to learn something new the next conversation just to go back and do that entire, unskippable process two more times…” why do that when you could just quicksave, or use a flowchart to go right to the point where things actually diverge? It’d certainly be much smoother to go through. And it’d definitely feel more of a match in terms of genre than the adventure game it currently is, where every convention it uses (inventory puzzles, the need for the game to be running in real-time) directly works against the experience and makes it feel much worse to play.
…I’m aware that this game’s ending is… rather disliked, and a big sticking point for most people I’ve seen talk about this game, but on my end… it was mostly just kind of whatever — its attempts to feel fucked-up and disturbing feel rather vanilla, honestly. And any chance for it to have an impact vanished when, instead of focusing on the immediate reactions of the characters, it just zooms into incomprehensible mind-palace shit and also you can fuck the whole segment up and you have to go out of your way to get back in and try again. Quite frankly, it feels like more of a smokescreen for what I felt were the game’s actual problems: how rigid, tedious, and finicky the game was on its way up to that point. There’s certainly initial promise — the setup works well as a narrative hook, and the initial stages are at least fun to experiment with until the game starts to show its warts — but when you can find ren;py VNs on itch.io and Steam with more polish and quality of life than this publisher-backed project… it becomes loosely clear this game thinks it’s more groundbreaking than it is. Comparative titles aren’t just buzzwords that your work might vaguely be like, they’re works you drew from, that were important in the process of constructing your own, and show to those with a more discerning eye that you’re not just a faker looking for prestige. And perhaps, if more time was spent researching the field rather than just throwing random psychological thrillers into your elevator pitch, this game could’ve been one of the many entries of the canon of time loop interactive narrative, rather than some brazen attempt at feeling like an innovation that it isn’t. 3/10.
Good idea
But shit presentation
But shit presentation
This review contains spoilers
If I had a nickel for every game from 2021 featuring time travelling incest, I'd have two nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
In what was my very first loop I accidentally
1. Electrocuted myself
2. Ate dessert in front of Wife and
3. Locked myself in the closet until the cop came.
This was probably the most fun I had playing the game! But it also set the justified dread into my soul that it was gonna be one of those point and clicks.
I'm not a hater of the genre by any means. In fact, I adore clunky point and clicks, and it might be why I'm more forgiving to this one than I should be. But even with a high tolerance for trial and error bs, Twelve Minutes just crosses a few lines in it's design.
The information found in each loop isn't exactly the most intuitive and most of the progression is found by just fucking around. It's funny at first but gets old really fast when nothing is skippable and the length of the loop just flies by, especially when you have to keep convincing American Daisy Ridley of the situation every single time.
This is all made worse when the sequence of actions doesn't really change a ton. There's a lot of information that gets uncovered, but the path to new info often just involves retracing your steps and then experimenting to varying degrees of success. There's also a few late game fuck you loops that you absolutely need a guide for and essentially make you repeat everything you've already done except for one change with very precise timing.
Also may be a mobile port issue but the selection precision is realllly rough, and it griefs you often into doing the wrong thing or having the wrong timing, especially when it comes to objects that are close to each other.
Through some combination of these, the act of playing the game is just stale when it works and frustrating when it doesn't. It's discouraging to want to try things when the act of resetting takes as long as it does, so much that when something you do is successful, it gives you a feeling of relief more than satisfaction.
And yeah, the story is also a mess but like not in a quirky fun way. This game feels really impressed with itself and how it unravels information, but it's just a slow unfolding of grim partial truths, people just forgetting and remembering things and a whole lot of plot convenience.
The characters here are pretty flat and nothing, which to be fair, writing convincing relationships and round characters is really tough to do with a super limited time concept like this. But they are dull. And it makes the onslaught of oh so shocking reveals just not really stick when I just don't give a shit about anyone involved in the first place.
The main twist is one you can see coming for a while, but choose not to because you're just hoping the game doesn't go there and it wouldn't really make sense anyways. And then it does go there but still doesn't really make any fucking sense. Just shock value that's overly reliant on your suspension of disbelief.
Also just a lot of questions? Why is this so well put together in some aspects and corner-cut to shit in others? Why is this cast like a Hollywood blockbuster? Why did they cast two British leads and then make them put on American accents??
Did Annapurna just owe a lot of favors to Luis here? This feels like somehow the most expensive game they've published but also a clear step down in quality from the stuff they typically back. The high profile cast and visual direction are the biggest things pulling anyone towards this game, but both those things are just polish. The core of what's here just isn't that good.
1. Electrocuted myself
2. Ate dessert in front of Wife and
3. Locked myself in the closet until the cop came.
This was probably the most fun I had playing the game! But it also set the justified dread into my soul that it was gonna be one of those point and clicks.
I'm not a hater of the genre by any means. In fact, I adore clunky point and clicks, and it might be why I'm more forgiving to this one than I should be. But even with a high tolerance for trial and error bs, Twelve Minutes just crosses a few lines in it's design.
The information found in each loop isn't exactly the most intuitive and most of the progression is found by just fucking around. It's funny at first but gets old really fast when nothing is skippable and the length of the loop just flies by, especially when you have to keep convincing American Daisy Ridley of the situation every single time.
This is all made worse when the sequence of actions doesn't really change a ton. There's a lot of information that gets uncovered, but the path to new info often just involves retracing your steps and then experimenting to varying degrees of success. There's also a few late game fuck you loops that you absolutely need a guide for and essentially make you repeat everything you've already done except for one change with very precise timing.
Also may be a mobile port issue but the selection precision is realllly rough, and it griefs you often into doing the wrong thing or having the wrong timing, especially when it comes to objects that are close to each other.
Through some combination of these, the act of playing the game is just stale when it works and frustrating when it doesn't. It's discouraging to want to try things when the act of resetting takes as long as it does, so much that when something you do is successful, it gives you a feeling of relief more than satisfaction.
And yeah, the story is also a mess but like not in a quirky fun way. This game feels really impressed with itself and how it unravels information, but it's just a slow unfolding of grim partial truths, people just forgetting and remembering things and a whole lot of plot convenience.
The characters here are pretty flat and nothing, which to be fair, writing convincing relationships and round characters is really tough to do with a super limited time concept like this. But they are dull. And it makes the onslaught of oh so shocking reveals just not really stick when I just don't give a shit about anyone involved in the first place.
The main twist is one you can see coming for a while, but choose not to because you're just hoping the game doesn't go there and it wouldn't really make sense anyways. And then it does go there but still doesn't really make any fucking sense. Just shock value that's overly reliant on your suspension of disbelief.
Also just a lot of questions? Why is this so well put together in some aspects and corner-cut to shit in others? Why is this cast like a Hollywood blockbuster? Why did they cast two British leads and then make them put on American accents??
Did Annapurna just owe a lot of favors to Luis here? This feels like somehow the most expensive game they've published but also a clear step down in quality from the stuff they typically back. The high profile cast and visual direction are the biggest things pulling anyone towards this game, but both those things are just polish. The core of what's here just isn't that good.
Zerei e fui atrás de tds finais, é ok. No fim fica repetitivo e um pouco cansativo por causa disso. A história começa boa e cativante, mas no final só fiquei sem entender ao certo, talvez eu só seja burro.
Quite literally the worst game I have ever played. I have never seen an ending ruin something so hard in my entire life. I tried to refund it twice even though I had already played 5 hours. Fuck this game.
In general the game is pretty intresting the fact that you have to make many run to discover new possibilites is really cool but the main issue is the true ending which is disapointing. If you like that kind of game do it but you might be disgusted at the end
I was playing this game when my roommate at the time walked by and saw it on the TV. He asked how far I was into the game, I told him I just started about an hour ago and asked why.
He just snorted, said "Oh, no reason.", and walked off.
He just snorted, said "Oh, no reason.", and walked off.
An all-star cast for an 'eh' execution of an idea.
Non c’ho voglia di star lì a clickare tutto e ripartire da zero
I'm kind of shocked that this game has mostly negative reception. It's quite an inventive experience that takes a tried and true storytelling trope into the realm of the suspense thriller. Less Groundhog Day, more Vertigo.
This game is not optimized well for iOS, which made the experience a bit worse for me, but I could get over it. Every time I tried to use the item menu, I would pull down the notification center on my phone, which would pause the game and exit out of the item menu. It was frustrating but not game-breaking. I wish I played it on PC, but whatever.
The voice acting is phenomenal, though James McAvoy and Daisy Ridley are nigh unrecognizable with their American accents. I think that Ridley's starring role as Wife was the better of the two performances by far. But Willem Dafoe, as always, steals the spotlight with every single line of dialogue. I thought the narrative was very well done, though I must admit the big twist isn't very well-telegraphed and kind of came out of nowhere. Still, I gasped when I made the connection. It was a real gut punch that I don't normally get with anything anymore. That alone is worthy of praise.
Gameplay-wise, some of the puzzles are a bit obtuse. I never even thought to turn the bedroom light on, then off, then on again, and that's a crucial part of the progression. Nothing tells you that that's what you're supposed to do, and it was one of the few things I had to look up. I also had to look up the final action to get the ending, which was even more obtuse than the light switch. At least with the light switch, I can see you maybe coming across it by accident. But the ending? No way anybody came across it organically.
I had quite a few "a-ha!" moments, though. Stuff like putting the sleeping pills in the water, using the knife to pry open the vents, and proving the time loop to Wife with the thunderstorm. When it works, it works. It just doesn't always work.
This game is not optimized well for iOS, which made the experience a bit worse for me, but I could get over it. Every time I tried to use the item menu, I would pull down the notification center on my phone, which would pause the game and exit out of the item menu. It was frustrating but not game-breaking. I wish I played it on PC, but whatever.
The voice acting is phenomenal, though James McAvoy and Daisy Ridley are nigh unrecognizable with their American accents. I think that Ridley's starring role as Wife was the better of the two performances by far. But Willem Dafoe, as always, steals the spotlight with every single line of dialogue. I thought the narrative was very well done, though I must admit the big twist isn't very well-telegraphed and kind of came out of nowhere. Still, I gasped when I made the connection. It was a real gut punch that I don't normally get with anything anymore. That alone is worthy of praise.
Gameplay-wise, some of the puzzles are a bit obtuse. I never even thought to turn the bedroom light on, then off, then on again, and that's a crucial part of the progression. Nothing tells you that that's what you're supposed to do, and it was one of the few things I had to look up. I also had to look up the final action to get the ending, which was even more obtuse than the light switch. At least with the light switch, I can see you maybe coming across it by accident. But the ending? No way anybody came across it organically.
I had quite a few "a-ha!" moments, though. Stuff like putting the sleeping pills in the water, using the knife to pry open the vents, and proving the time loop to Wife with the thunderstorm. When it works, it works. It just doesn't always work.
I was always intrigued to try this game after seeing the launch trailers years ago but I completely forgot about it until I saw it on sale on steam today and thought id finally give it a shot.
Twelve minutes revolves around a man stuck in a time loop where a cop comes to his house and kills him and his wife every twelve minutes as per the title. There is a deeper story to unfold and each loop has you searching for more clues to discover the quite frankly strange twist in the end. Im a sucker for a good murder mystery plot and pairing that with a time loop works quite well in execution. I think that the twist in the end is shocking but was a very weird way for the developers to go with it when they could of removed "That part" and made it work regardless.
I expected this to be a small indie game but was really shocked to see James MacAvoy, Daisy Ridley and Willem Defoe were voicing the main characters. MacAvoy and Ridley are putting on accents and I would of never guessed it was them if the game hadn't told me but you can recognise Willem Defoe from a mile off, but as always he gives a very good performance with the limited dialogue. As do MacAvoy and Ridley and they have decent chemistry during their character interactions.
Its a simple point and click game style with no controls other than the mouse. I think its good that they never overcomplicated the controls as it would of felt needless. Im a big fan of the gameplay format of going into each loop with more knowledge and slowly piecing everything together.
Visually its quite lacking, its all from a top down perspective and the whole game bar a few scenes takes place in the same area so nothing crazy to work with. Nothing really to note score wise but I do quite like the theme as the credits play. Technically I noticed quite a lot of lag/frame drop but nothing game breaking by any means.
There are I believe 7 endings, three of which are very similar and the rest can only be achieved at certain parts during the game. I got two endings and might go back to get the more unique ones that dont require me to play the whole game again.
All in all Twelve Minutes is an enjoyable point and click mystery with an interesting plot and characters. Very much a one and done type of game so I would recommend when it is on sale as I wouldn't pay £20 for it.
Twelve minutes revolves around a man stuck in a time loop where a cop comes to his house and kills him and his wife every twelve minutes as per the title. There is a deeper story to unfold and each loop has you searching for more clues to discover the quite frankly strange twist in the end. Im a sucker for a good murder mystery plot and pairing that with a time loop works quite well in execution. I think that the twist in the end is shocking but was a very weird way for the developers to go with it when they could of removed "That part" and made it work regardless.
I expected this to be a small indie game but was really shocked to see James MacAvoy, Daisy Ridley and Willem Defoe were voicing the main characters. MacAvoy and Ridley are putting on accents and I would of never guessed it was them if the game hadn't told me but you can recognise Willem Defoe from a mile off, but as always he gives a very good performance with the limited dialogue. As do MacAvoy and Ridley and they have decent chemistry during their character interactions.
Its a simple point and click game style with no controls other than the mouse. I think its good that they never overcomplicated the controls as it would of felt needless. Im a big fan of the gameplay format of going into each loop with more knowledge and slowly piecing everything together.
Visually its quite lacking, its all from a top down perspective and the whole game bar a few scenes takes place in the same area so nothing crazy to work with. Nothing really to note score wise but I do quite like the theme as the credits play. Technically I noticed quite a lot of lag/frame drop but nothing game breaking by any means.
There are I believe 7 endings, three of which are very similar and the rest can only be achieved at certain parts during the game. I got two endings and might go back to get the more unique ones that dont require me to play the whole game again.
All in all Twelve Minutes is an enjoyable point and click mystery with an interesting plot and characters. Very much a one and done type of game so I would recommend when it is on sale as I wouldn't pay £20 for it.
This review contains spoilers
On paper, a groundhog day style narrative enclosed within a small apartment operating on 12 minute loops sounds like A Neat Idea™.
Sadly this neat idea has been stuffed to the brim with Really Fucking Terrible Ideas℠. Don't be fooled, all fancy wrapping on this puzzle box are determined to remind you of art that to the layman or standard reddit poster will associate with the pantheon of 'genius'. Damn that box art sure looks like Vertigo, you like Hitchcock right? Surely even someone as uncultured as a videogamer holds the master of suspense in high esteem. Take note of the carpet from The Shining along the hallway to your apartment. Wow, James McAvoy! Daisy Ridley!? Willem Dafoe!?!?! I know those names from real movies!
The first red flag that this game might not be all that neat is that the characters draw from much more modern [pretentious] conventions of art film. Wife. Cop. Father. Man? Wife-guy? Our protagonist isn't even given a noun. The cast is small enough that this lack of real human names is easy to not notice. What becomes more noticeable much faster is how our two main real actors are not doing a great job at real acting. Simple conversational lines from Ridley Wife are disjointed and sound like they were recorded for separate scenes before being awkwardly jammed together. McAvoy Man sounds like he just choked on his glass of water and is entirely unhappy to be here. Did something go wrong with the recording session? Regardless, the chemistry is absent.
So what do we do in the videogame? Twelve Minutes operates on basic point-click adventure systems. You have items in the apartment, they go in your magic pocket inventory. You can deploy the items from your pocket to poke them at puzzles and people puzzles. You can also speak to Wife. Either through logical deduction or fucking around enough you'll eventually poke with the right items/dialogue that extract the dialogue or reaction to advance the timeloop. But wait, how does the time loop work?
About half way through your 12 minute vignette your apartment will be invaded by Cop. He will handcuff Wife and Man to the floor while making claims of a murder committed and demanding a watch. Eventually Cop will beat the shit out of Man, hastened by your willingness to resist. So Cop acts as our primary timer for resetting the loop, although you can force it by attempting to leave out the front door or subduing Cop long enough for the 12 minutes to pass. This reveals the truth of the loop, killing Cop won't break it. You have no choice but to figure out what the deal is with the murder/watch and thus we have our thriller.
So with such a bare bones premise, surely the characters will be what carry the narrative right? lol. lmao. The couple have nothing going on except that Wife is pregnant and is about to surprise announce the news with a wrapped gift of baby clothes. There is no sense of self to these people outside of how heterosexual they are. (don't worry. it gets worse.)
By using your mysterious groundhog curse, you the player can uncover details on this supposed murder that has led the supposed Cop to break in. Turns out Wife shot her dad when she ran away from home and took a valuable watch with her. Cop (not a real cop btw) liked her dad so he's out for revenge, but also really needs that watch because his own daughter is dying from cancer.
Here we reach the 2nd red flag where the game starts to show its hand, in that the narrative is going to be relying primarily (entirely) on shock value to keep you the gamer interested in the mystery. This shock value manifests hilariously into the item poke-puzzle system with the ability to stab your wife to death with the kitchen knife. Why do this? She never threatens Man or enacts any violence in the present. We even find out she didn’t even kill her dad properly when she shot him with a gun. Even more baffling, Man apologizes profusely to her as he brutally stabs her to a slow, painful bleed out death (it’s fine, she gets better). Seemingly this only serves the purpose of clarifying that yes, in fact the knife would kill Cop if your avatar Man was simply better at stabbing. Even more hilariously, you can use this as a lazier way of subduing Wife if you can’t be bothered going through the process of poisoning her with sleeping pills. Triple hilariously, you can enjoy some tasty pudding while her blood seeps into the floorboards.
By now you’ll be far enough in to realise that even though the game allows you to skip old initiated dialogue, you can’t speed up or skip sequencing otherwise. You’re going to have to sit through the same Cop scenes over and over again to trial and error bumble your way through these puzzles, only to be punished with a fuckup loop reset if you dare try to speed things up. Oh you accidentally opened the front door too early, interrupting Cop’s phone call? Dead, do your puzzle set up again dumbass. Characters reacting to seeing things via a door being left open is believable sure, but why let the player fuck themselves over in such an annoying way when Man will refuse other actions based on the current sequence? There’s no interesting reaction from the failure state, so he should just refuse to open the door.
Anyway, we piece together the Wife didn’t actually kill her father, he lived only to die later on a day that she was provably miles away from the scene of the crime. It turns out that Wife and Father didn’t get along because he had an affair with his nanny that resulted in a child. The Monster, as her Mother called it. Monster Brother becomes suspect number one, as it becomes all too clear where this plot development is going. That’s right folks, Man knocked up his sister, because he somehow fucking forgot (????), decided to pursue and marry her. How did Man forget? Is he stupid?
I will direct you to think about how this game came out in 2021, by now the shock incest plot twist is well overplayed. What’s truly incredible about this writing is that the game is so confident in the strength of this reveal that it expects it to have any impact when the characters in question are so lacking in any texture at all. You think you have anything on Oldboy, Twelve Minutes? One of the greatest thriller narratives on unjust vindication? Even Game of Thrones, everyones now favourite punching bag of a crash and burn failure, had the decency to ground that twist in the ramifications it would have on the political tensions the central characters are entrenched in. Here we just have flavourless compulsory heterosexuality, existing purely to be undone by the nastiness of a meaningless script.
There are a handful of optional endings, but who cares honestly. The game doesn’t give you the decency of getting this over with, but I will. Maybe in a different story, the reveal of the time loop being a hypnotic manifestation of the mind would be an exciting twist. Fuck, I guess you should just rewatch Oldboy instead. Better yet, play The Forgotten City instead of Twelve Minutes if you want a time loop mystery. That game fucking rules.
One star.
Sadly this neat idea has been stuffed to the brim with Really Fucking Terrible Ideas℠. Don't be fooled, all fancy wrapping on this puzzle box are determined to remind you of art that to the layman or standard reddit poster will associate with the pantheon of 'genius'. Damn that box art sure looks like Vertigo, you like Hitchcock right? Surely even someone as uncultured as a videogamer holds the master of suspense in high esteem. Take note of the carpet from The Shining along the hallway to your apartment. Wow, James McAvoy! Daisy Ridley!? Willem Dafoe!?!?! I know those names from real movies!
The first red flag that this game might not be all that neat is that the characters draw from much more modern [pretentious] conventions of art film. Wife. Cop. Father. Man? Wife-guy? Our protagonist isn't even given a noun. The cast is small enough that this lack of real human names is easy to not notice. What becomes more noticeable much faster is how our two main real actors are not doing a great job at real acting. Simple conversational lines from Ridley Wife are disjointed and sound like they were recorded for separate scenes before being awkwardly jammed together. McAvoy Man sounds like he just choked on his glass of water and is entirely unhappy to be here. Did something go wrong with the recording session? Regardless, the chemistry is absent.
So what do we do in the videogame? Twelve Minutes operates on basic point-click adventure systems. You have items in the apartment, they go in your magic pocket inventory. You can deploy the items from your pocket to poke them at puzzles and people puzzles. You can also speak to Wife. Either through logical deduction or fucking around enough you'll eventually poke with the right items/dialogue that extract the dialogue or reaction to advance the timeloop. But wait, how does the time loop work?
About half way through your 12 minute vignette your apartment will be invaded by Cop. He will handcuff Wife and Man to the floor while making claims of a murder committed and demanding a watch. Eventually Cop will beat the shit out of Man, hastened by your willingness to resist. So Cop acts as our primary timer for resetting the loop, although you can force it by attempting to leave out the front door or subduing Cop long enough for the 12 minutes to pass. This reveals the truth of the loop, killing Cop won't break it. You have no choice but to figure out what the deal is with the murder/watch and thus we have our thriller.
So with such a bare bones premise, surely the characters will be what carry the narrative right? lol. lmao. The couple have nothing going on except that Wife is pregnant and is about to surprise announce the news with a wrapped gift of baby clothes. There is no sense of self to these people outside of how heterosexual they are. (don't worry. it gets worse.)
By using your mysterious groundhog curse, you the player can uncover details on this supposed murder that has led the supposed Cop to break in. Turns out Wife shot her dad when she ran away from home and took a valuable watch with her. Cop (not a real cop btw) liked her dad so he's out for revenge, but also really needs that watch because his own daughter is dying from cancer.
Here we reach the 2nd red flag where the game starts to show its hand, in that the narrative is going to be relying primarily (entirely) on shock value to keep you the gamer interested in the mystery. This shock value manifests hilariously into the item poke-puzzle system with the ability to stab your wife to death with the kitchen knife. Why do this? She never threatens Man or enacts any violence in the present. We even find out she didn’t even kill her dad properly when she shot him with a gun. Even more baffling, Man apologizes profusely to her as he brutally stabs her to a slow, painful bleed out death (it’s fine, she gets better). Seemingly this only serves the purpose of clarifying that yes, in fact the knife would kill Cop if your avatar Man was simply better at stabbing. Even more hilariously, you can use this as a lazier way of subduing Wife if you can’t be bothered going through the process of poisoning her with sleeping pills. Triple hilariously, you can enjoy some tasty pudding while her blood seeps into the floorboards.
By now you’ll be far enough in to realise that even though the game allows you to skip old initiated dialogue, you can’t speed up or skip sequencing otherwise. You’re going to have to sit through the same Cop scenes over and over again to trial and error bumble your way through these puzzles, only to be punished with a fuckup loop reset if you dare try to speed things up. Oh you accidentally opened the front door too early, interrupting Cop’s phone call? Dead, do your puzzle set up again dumbass. Characters reacting to seeing things via a door being left open is believable sure, but why let the player fuck themselves over in such an annoying way when Man will refuse other actions based on the current sequence? There’s no interesting reaction from the failure state, so he should just refuse to open the door.
Anyway, we piece together the Wife didn’t actually kill her father, he lived only to die later on a day that she was provably miles away from the scene of the crime. It turns out that Wife and Father didn’t get along because he had an affair with his nanny that resulted in a child. The Monster, as her Mother called it. Monster Brother becomes suspect number one, as it becomes all too clear where this plot development is going. That’s right folks, Man knocked up his sister, because he somehow fucking forgot (????), decided to pursue and marry her. How did Man forget? Is he stupid?
I will direct you to think about how this game came out in 2021, by now the shock incest plot twist is well overplayed. What’s truly incredible about this writing is that the game is so confident in the strength of this reveal that it expects it to have any impact when the characters in question are so lacking in any texture at all. You think you have anything on Oldboy, Twelve Minutes? One of the greatest thriller narratives on unjust vindication? Even Game of Thrones, everyones now favourite punching bag of a crash and burn failure, had the decency to ground that twist in the ramifications it would have on the political tensions the central characters are entrenched in. Here we just have flavourless compulsory heterosexuality, existing purely to be undone by the nastiness of a meaningless script.
There are a handful of optional endings, but who cares honestly. The game doesn’t give you the decency of getting this over with, but I will. Maybe in a different story, the reveal of the time loop being a hypnotic manifestation of the mind would be an exciting twist. Fuck, I guess you should just rewatch Oldboy instead. Better yet, play The Forgotten City instead of Twelve Minutes if you want a time loop mystery. That game fucking rules.
One star.
this is a weird game. there are some incredible "aha" moments and clever uses of the time loop mechanic, but it also is restrictive in weird ways. there are so many times where a logical solution is not presented and instead you have to do whatever abstruse thing the game deems as a good solution. furthermore, its story is just monumentally fucked up. and like, it's fine for a story to be fucked up if there is a point to it, but this is fucked up in a way that doesn't even really say anything interesting or make sense—it just seems like the goal is to shock people for the sake of shocking people. also, why cast james mcavoy and daisy ridley if you're just gonna have them do sub-par american accents?
There's a confusing Bermuda triangle region amidst the points of "annoying online film buff," "Annapurna Interactive," and "incest fetishist." It is a shame that all ships passing through this region are not swallowed by some stupid fucking monster. A video game I wish I could tell to kill itself.
Rancid.
shit only a pretentious nerd art student could enjoy. i have terrible news about the type of person i am
Its like the devs thought adding more twists meant the game would be better, Ill say I was enjoying the trial and error and mystery until the big twist.
there's some technical issues like with characters reacting in certain ways even if you already present them with information for them not to act a certain way and its kind of hard to be specific without spoiling, but it gets frustrating when you know what to do but the game just doesn't register it.
also having to do the same scenes over and over gets annoying they kind of let you fast forward but not really, like it would be nice to be able to skip when you already did something.
the amount of bad ends is fun though and its presentation is nice.
voice acting could be better which I blame the direction because the actors themselves are good unless they phoned it in because it was a video game.
I enjoyed my time with it but that last twist really knocks it down a star or half a star at least
there's some technical issues like with characters reacting in certain ways even if you already present them with information for them not to act a certain way and its kind of hard to be specific without spoiling, but it gets frustrating when you know what to do but the game just doesn't register it.
also having to do the same scenes over and over gets annoying they kind of let you fast forward but not really, like it would be nice to be able to skip when you already did something.
the amount of bad ends is fun though and its presentation is nice.
voice acting could be better which I blame the direction because the actors themselves are good unless they phoned it in because it was a video game.
I enjoyed my time with it but that last twist really knocks it down a star or half a star at least
Damn this was really bad. Got this one after seeing the hype on Twitch and Youtube, plus the cast had me really intrigued. I also usually love puzzle point and click games.
This wasn't it though. The time loop idea starts off pretty cool, because every loop you feel like you're learning something new and progressing. Later on it just gets REALLY repetitive and annoying, because you can't try new things and you gotta nail the exact sequence the developer wants. Also, sometimes you gotta repeat the same thing, which shouldn't be a thing in a point and click game, where you usually don't expect different results from the same thing.
The story starts out decent, then just gets really really dumb with a cheap plot twist and nonsense. Really don't know how they managed to get such a great cast involved in this atrocity of a story.
This wasn't it though. The time loop idea starts off pretty cool, because every loop you feel like you're learning something new and progressing. Later on it just gets REALLY repetitive and annoying, because you can't try new things and you gotta nail the exact sequence the developer wants. Also, sometimes you gotta repeat the same thing, which shouldn't be a thing in a point and click game, where you usually don't expect different results from the same thing.
The story starts out decent, then just gets really really dumb with a cheap plot twist and nonsense. Really don't know how they managed to get such a great cast involved in this atrocity of a story.
This review contains spoilers
(explaining this to someone who thinks dubious consent is hot) so the reason why it is abusive is that the main character withholds important information from his wife that would have made her not choose to spend her life with him and also this entire game is in his mind. This game additionally has the feature of constantly abusing his wife as well as giving her no ability to consent or understand what is happening in the relationship..... IT'S NOT HOT PLEASE STOP SAYING ITS HOT
The game seemed amazing in the first few hours. There was no way the ending could be as bad as people told me, right?
It was. But good game, nonetheless.
It was. But good game, nonetheless.
Good idea, pretentious as fuck. Most of the credit I give to this game is based on the concept alone
This review contains spoilers
Writers of this game didn't understand that incest is not the big twist that will hook players into a soulless story
Quando você tem a mecânica de voltar no tempo, é importante ter em mente que há uma grande chance de ficar repetitivo, o que acontece na maior parte da experiência desse jogo, jogando fora um elenco de estrelas por uma jogabilidade que, com o tempo, tenta te surpreender com descobertas, mas você fica pensando: "é só isso?". N vou mentir q realmente o plot mexeu muito com a minha cabeça
it was ok a bit cliche and it feel like its gimmick was running out of steam by the end of it
but still an enjoyable time
but still an enjoyable time
This was a great story driven title that reminds me of a stage play. A relationship is torn apart by the destructive actions of a man's past decisions. The story is played out over 12 minutes and rewinds to the beginning to unlock all aspects of the story and discover the truth. With a stellar voice cast and a story that has a twist ending, this is a good title to play and experience.