Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Developer Luis Antonio: ‘This game is about how you as a player use that knowledge.’
Developer Luis Antonio: ‘This game is about how you as a player use that knowledge.’ Photograph: Luis Antonio
Developer Luis Antonio: ‘This game is about how you as a player use that knowledge.’ Photograph: Luis Antonio

12 Minutes: time loop thriller rewrites the rules of adventure games

This article is more than 4 years old

One of E3’s surprise standouts puts you at the centre of a Groundhog Day mystery

One of the surprise standouts at E3 this year was the indie time-looping point-and-click adventure 12 Minutes. In this stylish thriller, players are cast as a nameless everyman. Sitting down with his wife at the beginning of the game he gets some big news: they’re having a baby. But minutes later, a cop bursts through the door with an arrest warrant for her, and the startling accusation that she murdered her own father years earlier.

Before you can find out more, you end up handcuffed on the floor, being slowly choked into unconsciousness by the officer as he tries to convince your wife to talk.

And then you walk back in through your front door.

The rules of the time loop will be recognisable to anyone who has seen Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow or Russian Doll. You die, the loop restarts. Pass out or fall asleep, and the loop restarts. Fail to solve the core mystery in the eponymous 12 (real-time) minutes, and the loop restarts.

It’s the work, largely, of one person: developer Luis Antonio, previously best known for 2014’s The Witness, for which he was on art duties. Antonio actually credits Witness director and indie games star Jonathan Blow for one of the key insights that led to the creation of 12 Minutes.

“I grew up with adventure games. But Jonathan Blow hates them, because he feels like the design of those games are trial and error. For him, good game design means you’re able to make a plan and execute it, and be completely aware of why it failed, so you have a way to deal with it,” he says.

A classic point-and-click puzzle might see you wandering an area, attempting to use every item with every object until some unexpected pairing progresses the scenario: just when you learn the logic of the puzzle, you move on to the next. But in 12 Minutes, as you work through the time loop over and over again, you come to understand the logic of the game world better and better, anticipating what’s coming next in the story and making the most of your precious seconds. Seeing a cop burst through the front door in one loop might inspire you to lock it in the next; laying the table for dinner before you are asked might save precious seconds if you want to have a conversation with your wife about what’s about to happen.

“When I started, I wanted it to be a full day of 24 hours,” Antonio says. “But then I realised that there was no way I could show the full consequences of all your actions over such a long period of time.” Twelve minutes, by contrast, is long enough for a player to genuinely know, beat by beat, what will happen in the next play through – and hopefully be able to alter it.

“Whats interesting about the time loop is the knowledge that you accumulate,” Antonio says. “This game is about how you as a player use that knowledge.” It doesn’t hold your hand: there are no written-down objectives, and no helpful disembodied voice will remind you of what you need to do next. It’s just you, a mystery, one cramped apartment and three people.

12 Minutes is aiming for release in early 2020, on PC and Xbox One.

Explore more on these topics

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed