From fun to ordinary, it only takes "twelve minutes"

"Twelve Minutes" first appeared on E3 in 2019. Although it was themed around the concept of "time cycle", which is now not uncommon, this game still attracted a lot of player interest at the beginning of its release due to its unique temperament and performance.

Considering that the publisher of this work, Annapurna Interactive, has previously released unique and highly acclaimed works such as "World in Picture" and "Edith Finch's Memories," coupled with several well-known movie stars James McAvoy (X-Men Professor X), Daisy Ridley (Star Wars Ray), and William Dafoe (Spider Man Green Devil) announcing their voices in "Twelve Minutes," my expectations for this work have been further elevated.

Twelve Minutes was finally released in August this year. I couldn't wait to enter the game when the game was officially unlocked. However, after going through the first four cycles with excitement, my mood continued to decline until I cleared the level. During the gameplay, I felt more confused and disappointed.

Interesting stories and details

On a romantic night when the protagonist was preparing to have a candlelit dinner with his wife, a bald man in a black suit who claimed to be a police officer broke into the protagonist's home. Bald not only accused the protagonist's wife of patricide, but also killed the protagonist by changing hands. Players need to constantly return to the moment before the door opens, grasp clues through dialogue and exploration, and try to change the trajectory of the upcoming story to break this 12 minute cycle.

The opening of "Twelve Minutes" is quite attractive. In addition to the suspenseful plot and the countless secrets hidden in the dialogue between the wife and the police, the interactive details in the game scenes also stimulate the player's desire to explore: there are four rooms for activity in the game, and in a small environment, almost every item can interact and seem to be able to play a role in unexpected places.

For example, in the game, players can carry all the small items at home with them and then hide them in the ventilation of the room, or simply throw them into the toilet to flush away; If the player is tied up and carries a kitchen knife, they can untie themselves or their wife while the police are not paying attention and try to counterattack; And my favorite detail is that when players investigate ventilation vents that are so dim that they can hardly see anything, in addition to using conventional props like candles, they can also use the fluorescence of their phone screens for lighting - this interaction is very natural in reality, but it can be surprising in the game.

Unfortunately, such detailed interactions are only limited to this.

Single solution, ordinary performance

Although there are relatively rich and interesting interactive elements, these contents did not play a significant role in Twelve Minutes: hiding or throwing away props that may be clues is of no help in advancing the game; Whether attempting to sneak attack from behind with a knife or threatening the police head-on, they will enter the battle and be counterkilled within a few rounds; No matter how you use a key, spoon, or knife to pry open the air vent, there is no difference in performance. It doesn't matter whether you use a candle or a phone for lighting - you can still touch something directly by reaching in, without even needing to see it.

The game's puzzle solving approach to advancing the main storyline is largely the same. In order to obtain useful information, one must choose "meaningful" content when it is "meaningful". Most interactive objects can only be used for meaningless trial and error, while the remaining things are only "interactive" and hardly play any role in the plot. After realizing this, the seemingly free and rich interactive elements suddenly appear quite hollow.

This issue makes the puzzle solving content of the game less interesting, as the protagonist's behavior is more like blindly trying everything possible, constantly trying and making mistakes until a turning point happens, rather than coming up with a solution through thinking.

During the gameplay, players can only follow the predetermined route arranged by the developer to advance the story, otherwise it will waste a cycle of time. For example, during a cycle, I brought a certain storyline item with me according to my understanding of the game prompts, and prepared to show it to the police when they arrived. However, after the police arrived at home, the protagonist was unable to communicate with him or hand over the item. The protagonist's wife, knowing that the item was on the protagonist's body, also had the police investigate its original location. As a result, if I forcefully talked to the police, the protagonist would be killed. If I didn't talk, I would be killed because the item was missing. This malicious design even has the suspicion of intentionally opposing players, which is quite annoying.

In addition, several movie stars participated in the dubbing of this game, and the game's publisher started with a film company. I originally thought these elements would bring quite excellent performances. Firstly, it should be noted that some of the performances in the game are indeed smooth, such as the protagonist's different expressions of regret, pain, anger, etc. each time the protagonist runs out of time or opens a new cycle of death; As reincarnation progresses time and time again, the protagonist becomes more decisive in making decisions such as killing or committing suicide, and can become familiar with the opponent's moves in multiple encounters with the police, persevering longer under their attack (although the result is still being killed).

But in my opinion, these performances are taken for granted, and apart from a small climax towards the end of the game, which is indeed very exciting, the performance of this game basically did not exceed my expectations. Like the rich but useless details in the game, it can only be considered as icing on the cake content and cannot elevate the overall level of the game.

In addition, characters in the game sometimes use the same tone to recite the same lines in completely different situations - for example, when a police officer is interrogated and injured on the brink of death, when the winning ticket threatens the protagonist, and when there is calm, equal, and friendly communication, some of the lines are completely consistent in tone. For example, the protagonist's emotions are indistinguishable in the third, tenth, or any reincarnation, and for example, the wife who was chatting and laughing with the protagonist the previous second will flip her face on the spot without any preparation after the player chooses a specific line - the performance in these places in this game is truly unsatisfactory.

The rhythm is restrained and the operation is uncomfortable

In Twelve Minutes, the first five minutes of each cycle are known as the "tranquility before the storm". Players can use this time to coax their wives to obtain information, or rummage through boxes and cabinets at home to find clues and arrange "traps". Starting from the sixth minute, the bald man claiming to be a police officer will arrive, and the player needs to confront him based on previous preparations and known information. The entire story takes place in four small rooms and a twelve minute cycle, striving to explore various possibilities in a small setting and limited time to find a way out, making the game's rhythm more compact.

Everything should be like this.

But based on the situation truly demonstrated in this game, as long as the first three or four cycles of confusion are passed, there is no sense of urgency until the game is completed, and it can even be said that there is some procrastination. According to the design of the game, players often can only obtain one important piece of information in one cycle, and information from wives and police officers always needs to be exchanged with them to learn. As a result, there will be several times in the middle of the game that players need to spend several minutes waiting for a key word that the player already knows but the protagonist does not know, and then they need to immediately move on to the next cycle to rearrange their preparations before starting a conversation with that information.

The more proficient the players are and the more the plot reaches its climax, the system of this game actually requires repetition and waiting, which is particularly tormenting in a game that should have focused on time constraints.

Before the release of this game, I had hoped that players could use the experience accumulated through multiple reincarnations to perform backboard acceleration like Tom in "Tomorrow's Edge". However, the actual situation in the game is that no matter how much players want to go straight to the theme, they always need to symbolically go through the process. In the game, it can be considered as a save point for each important information obtained by the player. For example, after knowing the location of the task item, the player can skip the inquiry and directly go to retrieve it in the next round. When hearing about a certain character, the player can skip the previous conversation and directly discuss the relevant information in the next round.

However, some scenes are unavoidable: for example, the protagonist inevitably has some verbal and physical communication with his wife every time he starts a new cycle, or there is a specific performance every time the police enter the door, and these processes cannot be skipped or fast-forward. And when the characters in the game engage in dialogue, even if the protagonist has experienced it countless times, they can only fast forward one sentence at a time and cannot skip large segments of the conversation at once. If the player is too anxious and gets angry during the conversation, they may accidentally choose the wrong option and have to go straight to the next round.

If the developers of this game wanted to create a sense of frustration and helplessness unique to Time Walkers, with the protagonist feeling restless and the people around them taking their time calmly, then I can only say that they were quite successful, to the extent that I wanted to uninstall the game on the spot.

In addition, "Twelve Minutes" is an interactive puzzle game with a top-down click, and the optimization of the controller operation in this game is incredibly foolish. The platform I am playing on is Xbox Series X, and its operation on the console completely replicates the mouse operation of a PC - moving the cursor with the joystick, holding down the confirm button, and dragging the item to a specific position for interaction... I can only say that it is hard to imagine games in 2021 adopting such a design. At the same time, there are some minor errors in the Chinese translation and character actions of this game, which can also affect the player's experience.

Small pattern

Apart from a single solution, the most criticized aspect of Twelve Minutes is its plot. The actions of players in the game can be divided into two stages: first, proving the innocence of their wife, and second, finding the real culprit to break the cycle.

The previous stage was relatively clear in goals, with a relatively tight pace and attractive appeal. The latter stage will make players feel at a loss at the beginning, not knowing what to do, and can only try the operations that have been done many times before and try to find new breakthroughs. During this period, if there is a slight mistake, they need to restart, which is equivalent to wasting ten minutes in reality.

However, as the player goes through countless repetitive efforts to push the plot forward, the development of the story is completely sorry for the player's decades of tinkering. There is no stunning reversal, nor any supernatural unfolding. The story background of this work is just a hard and bloodthirsty family ethics drama, which you can see in plays and novels from thirty or forty years ago or even ancient Greece, but now it appears very rustic.

I can understand that the small background of this game, which is one night, means that the game will not bring any grand setting. I can also reluctantly accept that after watching the entire ending of the game for 2 to 5 hours, I found that no matter what choice, it can only lead to BE. However, with such a hasty and uninteresting ending, all the questions are perfunctory and the player's actions are "meaningless", which may not be a good design.

Overall, the basic settings and creativity of Twelve Minutes are very good, providing players with a relatively excellent experience at least in the first hour of the game. However, as the plot progresses, players may feel more or less confused and disappointed. I personally believe that if the story of this work is presented in the form of a movie, it can provide a better visual experience. If you have purchased the Xbox Game Pass service, it is definitely worth spending one or two hours trying out this game in August, which is somewhat lackluster due to the lack of a masterpiece. However, if you are looking forward to exquisite puzzle games, it is still better to think again.