Twelve Minute Review: Annapurna’s Game Is An Awkward Thriller

Time only flows in one direction, as far as we know: forward. This immutable law of nature imposes all kinds of restrictions on our existence. Perhaps the most obvious practical limitation imposed by the arrow of time is the principle of cause and effect or, to put it another way, our understanding that actions have consequences.

This truth of the universe is closely linked to the human faculty of memory. Once we become aware of something, we learn of its existence, we experience it with our senses, it is difficult to forget it (or, at least, to forget it). actively forget this). If you have spent a significant amount of time on the Internet, you know that what you have seen, one I can not stop watching.

These are the kinds of thought-provoking concepts Twelve minutes, the long-awaited game from indie developer Luis Antonio, seeks to investigate. And in that sense, it succeeds: I spent a lot of time pondering these ideas as I prepared to write this review. I wish the game didn’t have to put me through its particular wringer to get there, but maybe that’s part of the point.

Twelve minutes is based on the format of point-and-click adventure games to tell a twisted story about a man who keeps reliving the worst night of his life – he comes home to his wife, who has planned a special evening for the two of them, which is interrupted when an intruder attacks them. Things end badly, but the man wakes up right where he started, just walked into his apartment. He quickly realizes that time repeats itself and his goal becomes clear: to find a way to stop the cycle.

Knowledge is power in this search. The only way to acquire it is to try to make different choices in each loop, experimenting with actions and dialog options so that you can see how your decisions affect the way things play out. In some cases, that means refraining from talking. In others, it means withdrawing from the situation to observe how other people act in your absence.

This is where Twelve minutes excels: it gives you a litter box and the tools to play in it, and it doesn’t hold your hand. I never got tired of the joy of discovering in this game, of proposing a hypothesis and then testing it. In most cases, a failed result, and there will be dozens of them before reaching one of the endings of the game, will teach you something. That nugget of information will push you down another path.

Despite the limited instructions, you will understand the basics quickly. Whenever you hover over something you can interact with, the name of that person or object will appear; if it is a pickup item, you will also see a small up arrow. Where appropriate, you can also combine items from your inventory with objects or people in your environment. For example, if you take a cup and then drag it from inventory to a sink, the man will fill the cup with water; if you drag the glass of water from the inventory to the man’s wife, he will give it to her. Lastly, you have the ability to examine inventory items to reveal more information about them.

These are the only real mechanics in play in Twelve minutes, in addition to the dialog options. However, the game gets an impressive amount of mileage from them. For one thing, I rarely ran into a situation where I wanted to test something that the developers hadn’t considered. Most importantly, and appropriately, for this game, time is always of the essence. Dialog trees change in real time to reflect the events that have occurred and the information that man has learned, so doing or saying something just seconds before or after can open new paths or block them.

That’s something I learned the hard way. One of the first hurdles in the game is convincing the man’s wife that he is trapped in a time loop. He had been able to present two different pieces of evidence, but she needed more. I was banging my head against the wall, trying everything I could think of, to no avail. I had to ask another Polygon staff member who had been playing for help. The possibility of space in Twelve minutes it is huge and it is natural for it to shrink as it gets closer to the later stages. But at tipping points that unlock major developments, the game can be incredibly restrictive in the sequences of events that you must carry out.

While certain lines of dialogue serve as clues, if the wife “didn’t hear you come in,” what if she doesn’t see you either? – I hadn’t been able to add two and two in this specific case, and it became immensely frustrating. I don `t believe Twelve minutes it would be better with a built-in hint system, in the style of old school adventure games. But I wish the game could have dropped a harder track after noticing my lack of significant progress.

The further I progressed, the more sinister the procedures began to seem to me. The story in Twelve minutes it is oppressively dark. And it only gets darker as you progress through the game. Even describing it as “not for the faint of heart” seems inappropriate.

There is the violence that the intruder exerts on the man and his wife, some of whom you must keep an eye on over and over again, due to the nature of the game. The top-down perspective darkens the characters’ faces, but doesn’t make the violence feel any less real. At the same time, that’s a credit to the animation and voice acting, which effectively convey the brutality of the events.

The first time the man woke up after being strangled by the intruder, and his blissfully unconscious wife told him about the dessert she had made, he replied, “Yeah, that sounds great … in a second.” James McAvoy, the actor who voices the lead, sounded appropriately nervous and shocked at that unnerving moment. The other main cast members, Daisy Ridley as the wife and Willem Dafoe as the intruder, also put on tremendous and expressive performances. The American accents of McAvoy (who is Scottish) and Ridley (who is British) occasionally fail, but not enough to detract from the experience.

Still, all of this is in the service of a story that worked for me only in individual moments, not overall. A late game twist certainly landed with a punch to the stomach, I think I literally said, “Oh no,” out loud when I realized what it meant, but that’s partly because I was so grossed out by the development. I’m not sure I want to relive the experience just to unlock a few more Steam achievements. (In that sense, other members of the Polygon team and I thought it was surprising that there were no in-game content warnings. Suffice it to say, many players will find the story themes distasteful.)

This also made me realize the inherent conflict between Twelve minutes‘video game mission and the mature story he’s trying to tell. The writing, animation, and voice acting are excellent. But the looping nature of the game led me to objectify the characters independently. As I was encouraged to experiment, I started throwing everything at the wall to see what would help me solve the biggest puzzle. Rather than viewing these characters as human beings, I came to think of them (and what I put them through) only as methods of gaining information, as if I was looking for enough experience points to reach the next level.

From what I can tell I came to the true end of Twelve minutes. However, in conversations with co-workers who have also reached that point, we haven’t been able to figure out what it all means or what the game is trying to say. Aspire to deal with Big Life Questions, and I imagine many players will find it to be a mature text for that kind of discussion. For me, Twelve minutes it’s more about the journey than the destination, but maybe I’d feel different if I could erase my memory and experience it fresh, exploring undiscovered paths to new conclusions.

Twelve minutes It will be released on August 19 on Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-launch Steam download code provided by Annapurna Interactive. Vox Media has affiliate associations. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.