12 minutes [Review by Sulcus Crush]

Imagine, you are returning home, your wife is greeting you, having prepared dinner, your favorite song is playing on the radio - an idyll that will end in five minutes. A policeman will burst into your apartment, tie up your wife and kill you. How could such a tragic and absurd ending be avoided? This is what the player has to find out, whose character is stuck in a time loop that begins from the moment he crosses the threshold of the apartment.

Twelve Minutes is a top-down point-and-click game where you collect items and use them within the same apartment. Moreover, each of the items is not tied to any specific task, as is usually the case in quests. This opens up real room for imagination, and you begin to look for the best use for a spoon and a glass (and yes, both items can come in handy). You can have the most fun with a knife: for example, you can use it to break a flower pot, open a ventilation hatch, attempt an extreme repair of a light switch, or even test your wife’s strength.

It's quite difficult to talk about the plot of Twelve Minutes without spoiling the experience of the game. Although the writers themselves did an excellent job with the latter. The general storyline for most of the title seems quite clear and simple; it does not force you to constantly change your opinion about the characters or doubt some events. It seems that we have an easy detective story about where a lie can lead. “Unpretentious, but well-made and logically designed,” you say a couple of minutes before the finale. But, apparently, the screenwriters did not think this was enough. Therefore, the studio decided to amaze gamers with an incredible twist, which at the end turns the whole story upside down.

Both gamers and movie viewers really love such techniques, and it’s not for nothing that the search query “films with unexpected endings” is always trending. However, such screenwriting tricks work when they are cleverly woven into the story told earlier. If there are breadcrumbs scattered throughout the work in the form of hints and half-hints, according to which, by returning to the beginning, you can really put together a complete picture - the one to which the plot ultimately comes. Or let’s put it another way - if after the film you are ready to say: “Oh, that’s how it was, how could I not understand right away,” then that’s great. Such things really leave a strong impression and are remembered for a long time.

Or you can take a simpler path, which is what the creators of Twelve Minutes chose: add a very big event to the ending, which, however, does not reveal the story differently, but simply gives a “wow” effect. For the first few minutes it even works, but after a while you insert new input into the existing story and realize that the puzzle is not going to be put together. And most importantly, the explanation that the game gives when presenting the new rules is so vulgar and hackneyed that it immediately causes rejection and disappointment.

Видео 12 minutes [Review by Sulcus Crush] канала Sulcus Crush