Twelve Minutes

This is a game full of charm and promise that I wish I'd never finished. This is the worst ending of a game I've ever seen and retroactively makes the whole thing significantly worse. I promise whatever bad ending just jumped into your mind, this one is worse and will make you regret spending time on it.

[h3] Перемудрено [/h3] То ли у меня ума не хватило, то ли что… слишком запутано, слишком неочевидно, очень сложно. Если вы не какой то гений, то готовьтесь познать безумие: повторять одно и тоже действие снова и снова в надежде на изменение. И чем дальше будешь заходить - тем больше духоты, потому что с каждой ошибкой петля перезапускается с начала. Так что либо ты невероятный детектив и достаточно быстро поймешь что за чем идет и когда и что нужно сделать, либо тебя трясет от того, что не понятно что игра от тебя хочет, ибо никаких подсказок не будет, все сам. А догадаться будет все таки тяжело, потому что я игру без гайда не осилила. А когда делала все по нему, то сидела с выпученными глазами типо [i]"я бы никогда не догадалась, что все вот так, почему так сложно?!".[/i] Тяжко…

tldr? Game is very frustrating and not the good kind and there is little content. While the concept for story is interesting. The execution... It suffers from being rigid with item usage, being illogical and misleading at some points. Small spoilers, if you can call it that. [spoiler] The most egregious example. There is animation for stabbing the light switch with a knife, thought that it meant you have sabotaged it, but that is not it. You don't have to do it at all, but there is stabbing animation for it despite some other wrong combinations ended with "don't use it here" animation instead? That is very confusing. I think it would be more bearable if the story had fun with reacting to your choices properly, but it feels absent, You can start stabbing yourself to death in 2nd phase while cop is arresting the wife and no one cares because first animation is playing. You can for example call the 911, but it will not be leveraged in any way shape or form in the story. Probably because there are not that many voice lines when you think about it.[/spoiler] The twist at end while has some logic behind it, is not satisfying. At least for me. I feel like I wasted time on this one.

I just wanted to have dessert with my "wife" instead i got willem dafoe breaking into my house every five minutes and strangling me to death still a 10/10 game, would recommend

2 out of 3 voice actors do not really sound like they are a real thing, game design is irritating, plot that 'you saw before', it's not terrible, but just misses the chance to be a great experience

this game is the epitome of when writers have something so good going for them and then ruin it with the worst ending imaginable

Surprised the rating on this isn't higher. Yes it can get a little repetitive but, it is also really rewarding when you figure something out.

Game was good until it came time for the ending. What a way to blow up all the buildup for nothing.

So I am making this review after doing all the "endings" and achevo's. Kinda spoiler warning? I think some people are missing the point of the game, there isn't suppose to be an end, it's a loop of the guilt the MC has to live with and the cycle of grief, anger and regret it can cause. I can see how people are upset at the ending of the game, or the lack thereof. But to me, that's the point. You learn about all this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up ♥♥♥♥ that happened between the characters, and hints at who everyone is, it's messy and no one gets a happy ending no matter what you do. It's a game of learning that any and all actions can or do have consequences, and I feel it's something that shouldn't be overlooked because the game is amazing. The interactions between the characters are realistic, a father that wants to save his daughter, a husband that wants to prove his wifes innocence, a brother that made mistakes. There is no end, and thats how grief, anger, regret and guilt all work, even if not together. Things can get easier, but they are always there, no matter what you do.

A mystery that succeeds insofar as it sets out to bludgeon the player into the same emotional state as its central character, viz. frustrated confusion susceptible to ready answers. Twelve Minutes doubles down on guess-and-check discovery (Her Story, The Roottrees Are Dead) where the player cannot know the available options until he thoroughly explores whatever Cartesian product falls out of the game's mechanics. In this case, each iteration takes minutes of identical setup that often reveals nothing and produces identical results (since António regularly strings together marginally-compatible catch-all voice lines to cover the combinatoric explosion). But occasionally you stumble into the correct™ next step, and this manufactured epiphany (with concomitant narrative drip) comprises the core emotional payoff. [spoiler]The protagonist's final act means something to him for precisely the reason your progress means something to you: he exhausted the decision space, and this was left.[/spoiler] Whether you enjoy this game depends largely on whether you consider this concordance a worthwhile use of your time. I do. Celebrity voice work fails to impress here as elsewhere, further handicapped by poor script timing. McAvoy's performance is sometimes decent, Ridley's sometimes adequate, and Dafoe's sometimes bearable. Fortunately, McAvoy talks the most, and Dafoe the least. The animation is adorably clunky; the art, anodyne; the lighting, unexpectedly nice.