Twelve Minutes – a good night for a murder

Growing up, I’ve always had a deep fascination with murder and mysteries. This was expressed through reading and rereading The Hardy Boys books or by forcing my poor friends into playing Cluedo with me for hours on end. When I reached adulthood, I did so with a somewhat healthy addiction to true crime documentaries, a love for Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock and an absolute passion for trying to figure out and solve mysteries… much to my partner’s absolute dismay each time I spot an escape room.

Twelve Minutes starts with your character arriving home and walking into their apartment, only to be greeted enthusiastically by their wife. She has a special surprise lined up for you tonight, and so far, aside from a storm brewing outside, everything seems to be going well. After a few minutes pass, a somewhat aggressive sounding knock comes from your front door, and before either you or your wife can even think to respond, a policeman starts shouting for you to open the door.

Once the apartment the door opens, things move fast. In the blink of the eye, your quiet night in with your wife turns into a horror movie. Before you can find out what the police officer wants, you and your wife get tied up and thrown onto the floor. No matter what you do next, the result is always the same. The police officer kills you, and just like that, you find yourself back at your apartment door with your wife greeting you and telling you she has a surprise.

Essentially, Twelve Minutes is everything I’m fascinated by, wrapped up as a classic point-and-click but with a time loop thrown in. The only way to progress through Twelve Minutes is by gaining information, either through conversation or using items. Then, when you start the next loop, use that information to move forward and hopefully break the cycle before you find yourself standing at the door once more.

Twelve Minutes will take you anywhere from four to seven hours to complete, depending on how you gather information and how skilled you are at figuring out what your next move should be. If you’re looking for a game that plays like an adult version of Cluedo, leaving you to figure out the who, what, where and why, then Twelve Minutes is a must-play.