Twelve Minutes
Review

Twelve Minutes (2021) is an adventure thriller game about a single apartment building. You view things from above and can interact with a simple click-and-drag interface. What starts as a romantic evening with your wife turns into a nightmare when a police detective breaks into your home, accuses your wife of murder and beats you to death. Things continue to become even more extreme as you work to solve find the truth that is both shocking and disturbing.

You wake at the start of the same night when you opened the front door. This Groundhog Day time loop offers you a chance to escape the terror you remember. You need to use the knowledge of what happened in previous loops to change the outcome.

Games often want to draw on films to substantiate their importance and weight. Here though, there is storytelling and acting talent to match with James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe taking on voice actor roles.

Along with the unusual time-loop mechanic, Twelve Minutes has a dream-like reality that draws on films like The Shining and Claustrophobia of Rear Window and the fragmented structure of Momento. Things ramp up in unexpected and potentially upsetting ways with scenes of emotional abuse and manipulation that are described by the developer as including violence, gore, blood, and sexual themes.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Twelve Minutes 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 5 months ago.