Grumpy Dad Game Review – 12 Minutes

Please note that this review contains minor spoilers

I’ve convinced the cop not to immediately hurt my player character or his wife. Good start.

“But I’ll be needing the watch,” the cop says, or something to that effect.

No problem, I think. I put it on the kitchen table ready. I therefore choose the dialogue option to say that I have the watch.

“Where is it?” the cop demands.

“Well, I don’t have it on me,” my player character stammers.

No, of course you don’t. It’s just sitting there on the table, right next to where we’re having this lovely chat.

“I’ll just go and get it,” the player character says.

What? No need. It’s right there on the goddam table! You can’t miss the bleeding thing!

“Nice try,” the man growls, before sinking a fist into my player character’s chest and smashing him around the head.

Cut to black. The loop restarts.

I scream in frustration.

12 Minutes is a point-and-click puzzle game designed and written by Luís António and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game’s setup is intriguing: you play as a man who comes home to his wife, when their quiet evening is interrupted by someone claiming to be a cop bursting into their apartment and accusing the wife of murdering her father. Awkward.

The cop then usually beats/strangles/stabs the living daylights out of the man. Then the man appears again at the entrance to his apartment and the loop resets. It’s your job to solve the mystery of who the cop is, what really happened to your father-in-law, and how to escape the loop.

Unfortunately, the game’s execution doesn’t live up to its compelling premise. While some of the puzzle-solving seems logical, building on the previous loop’s events in a satisfying way, other times it’s oblique and confusing. Couple that with nonsense such as the scenario I opened the review with, and you’ve got a recipe for frustration.

While the writing is generally decent, there are some occasional bizarre lines thrown in that gave me a chuckle. If that was the intention, to introduce a little levity to an otherwise dour experience, then fair play! But I suspect that wasn’t the case.

Probably the biggest draw is the ridiculous Hollywood voice cast: James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe, no less. They all perform well, especially McAvoy, but I honestly wouldn’t have known it was them if their names hadn’t featured in the opening credits. Big-name actors often feature in video games for marketing purposes, when professional voice actors would do the job just as well, if not better. Sadly, this smacks of just that.

The fixed-camera perspective for exploring the apartment works well, allowing you to become familiar with the place quickly, but still discover new elements many loops in. Another plus is that the score is accomplished, sometimes mesmeric, deftly generating a palpable sense of atmosphere.

But, unfortunately, that’s just about where the positives stop.

My main issue with 12 Minutes is that what started as compelling thriller in which I happily role-played as a less cynical Phil Connors, gradually chipped away at my immersion with the frustrations and some bizarre oversights. For example, it’s quite possible to tell the man to brutally murder his wife and then tuck into the dessert she made, all the while murmuring how good it is, and how much he loves the corpse on the floor. Perhaps this says more about me than the game, but it shouldn’t have given the means to engage in this psychotic charade in the first place.

In short, the whole premise of 12 Minutes is that time cannot erase mistakes, and that the past will catch up with you eventually. As such, time is precious; arguably the most valuable commodity of all. There’s something ironic, therefore, about forcing the player to waste their time by repeating loops, only to mess them up due to some nonsensical, unintuitive design decision.

Being a parent can sometime feel like you’re stuck in a loop. And, just when you think you’ve got your head around the world rules, the goalposts shift. In that regard, I suppose 12 Minutes does an admirable job of recreating parenthood. But that doesn’t make it much fun to play. Indeed, the experience only added to this dad’s grumpiness