12 Minutes: Everything We Know

If you’ve ever watched the 1993 fantasy comedy film ‘Groundhog Day’, starring Bill Murray, or the more recent ‘Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow’ starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, you will find the premise of ‘12 Minutes’ to be somewhat familiar. It comes from the one-man development studio, Luis Antonio, and Annapurna Interactive.

While the concept of time loops is quite prevalent in popular films and TV series, the theme hasn’t been explored all that much in video games. 2013’s ‘BioShock Infinite’ featured a fantastically mind-bending storyline involving a character stuck in a time loop, but this is only revealed towards the end of the game’s main storyline, and the premise doesn’t really feature in the gameplay at all.

The original ‘Life is Strange’ featured a compelling time rewind mechanic but it was rather limited in its scope as well. From what we’ve seen thus far, it looks like ‘12 Minutes’ is going to fully commit to the time loop mechanic, both in terms of gameplay and narrative. Read on to find out everything we know about the upcoming game called ‘12 Minutes’.

12 Minutes Gameplay: What to Expect?

‘12 Minutes’ is an adventure game inspired by the works of legendary American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, as well as other time-twisting movies such as Christopher Nolan’sMemento’. According to the man behind the project, Luis Antonio, the objective is to bring this cinematic flair to video games as well. In his own words, “It really helps to feel the weight of the emotions involved with each action. The richer this experience is, the more you care about it, and hopefully, that’s something that resonates with people”.

The entirety of the game takes place inside an apartment inhabited by a young couple. You play as the husband and are free to move around the house at first, and interact with various elements, or with the wife. Over the next 12 minutes, you learn that your wife is pregnant as a police officer arrives at the apartment and accuses your wife of murder.

A scuffle ensues, during which you are fatally knocked out and the police officer ends up killing your wife and your unborn child. At this exact point, the game restarts from its initial stage- you in the apartment with your wife with exactly 12 minutes to explore and converse, and somehow find a way to dodge the horrendous fate in store for both in the very near future.

The webpage for the game describes it as follows:
“What should be a romantic evening with your wife turns into a nightmare when a police detective breaks into your home, accuses your wife of murder and beats you to death…
Only for you to find yourself immediately returned to the exact moment you opened the front door, stuck in a TWELVE-MINUTE time loop, doomed to relive the same terror again and again…”

Now armed with the knowledge of what is about to happen, you must explore the apartment for clues, perform various actions and converse with your wife in order to uncover the truth and cheat impending death. Every time the time loop resets you will have exactly 12 minutes to learn something new, at which point you and your wife will be brutally murdered. This cycle repeats until you can somehow find a suitable resolution to the game’s mysterious narrative.

While in the apartment, the game plays like a typically simplistic point and click adventure game. Within your 12 minute time window, you can either try and coerce helpful information from your wife or interact with various objects littered around the house. You also have the option of stashing certain items in your inventory for later use. Each successful loop unlocks new dialogue options and items that can be interacted with, thus progressing the narrative.

All the characters in the game feature fully motion captured animations to lend even more urgency and realism to the mystery.

12 Minutes Developers: Who Are the People Behind the Game?

‘12 Minutes’ is developed by Portuguese video game developer Luis Antonio. Antonio has previously worked on games such as the first-person puzzle game ‘The Witness’, the third-person action game ‘Max Payne 3’ and the stealth action game ‘Manhunt 2’. Antonio has previously worked for Rockstar Games and Ubisoft.

‘12 Minutes’ is being published by Annapurna Interactive.

12 Minutes Release Date: When and Where Can I Play It?

‘12 Minutes’ is set to release on an as-yet-unspecified date sometime in 2020. The game will be available to play on PC (Microsoft Windows) and Xbox One at launch.

12 Minutes Trailer:

You can watch the trailer for ‘12 Minutes’ right here.

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