Groundhog daze
TWISTY TIME-LOOP THRILLER WILL LEAVE YOU STUNNED...
TWELVE MINUTES GAME OUT NOW | PC, XBOX ONE/SERIES
The latest from Hollywood-adjacent publisher Annapurna Interactive is a gripping single-location home-invasion thriller starring James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley and Willem Dafoe. Despite all the movie stars, this distinctive top-down adventure could only work as a videogame. After Dafoe’s intruder (who claims to be a cop) brutally ruins a pleasant evening for this loved-up couple, McAvoy’s unnamed husband finds himself repeating the build-up to his arrival – but only he knows what’s about to happen next.
Naturally, your ultimate goal is to find a way to escape this loop of doom. But your first few attempts typically involve frantically trying to convince your confused wife of your predicament, while warning her not to open the door. (Locking it, it turns out, only delays the inevitable.) Finding the right proof is even trickier when you’re working against the clock, so you might instead look to prepare for the worst: a carving knife lying on the draining board suggests you should arm yourself for a direct confrontation, but is it a red herring?
For a while, the game has the flavour of a jet-black comedy, as you pocket
everything around this tiny apartment, trying unlikely combinations of items to prolong the next run and unlock another piece of the narrative puzzle. As McAvoy’s character repeatedly takes a beating – or worse – his cries of frustration as he finds himself back at the beginning often mirror your own. But discoveries and revelations arrive just often enough that it’s hard to resist another go-around, even when the way forward seems needlessly obscure. Yet that’s in keeping with the classic tradition of point-and-click adventures, and besides, the failures are often grimly funny – or sometimes just plain grim. In desperation, you might even be tempted to do the unthinkable – but will that be enough to break the cycle? Well, there’s only one way to find out…
True, certain story developments feel overly contrived, while some of its expository exchanges can sound forced, as new leads are not-so-subtly seeded into the dialogue. Yet Twelve Minutes’ unconventional structure and rich atmosphere make for a moreish interactive mystery. That’s in no small part down to its cast: no one’s going to claim that this is Dafoe’s finest hour, but Ridley and McAvoy are fully committed, the latter wringing every last drop of pathos and humour from his exasperated everyman. One or two technical shortcomings spoil the otherwise pristine presentation, but this is yet another winner for Annapurna.