Twelve Minutes has been on a lot of people’s radars for a while now. It first got a reveal trailer back in 2019, but it had been making the rounds long before that. It’s being developed by Luis Antonio (who worked on The Witness), and Annapurna Interactive is the publisher.
If you aren’t familiar with Twelve Minutes, it’s a top-down game that depicts twelve horrible minutes in a married couple’s life. You play as the husband, who is stuck in a time loop of those horrific twelve minutes — during which your wife announces she’s pregnant, then the police burst in and arrest her for the murder of her father. You, the husband, are subsequently beaten to death.
The hook is that with each new twelve-minute loop, you have the knowledge you gained from previous loops to aid you. This is a staple of the time-loop gameplay structure, of course, but here it seems particularly poignant and intense.
A new trailer was revealed during E3 2021, along with some interviews from the truly star-studded cast (this features the voice talent of James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe). Although I’ve been looking forward to playing Twelve Minutes for a while, I initially thought this new trailer was just more of the same.
That is until I noticed a visual reference to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining that I had initially missed. And once I saw that, I wondered what other references might be tucked away in Twelve Minutes. This is also a bold statement that this game might actually be a legitimate mindbender.
You can check it out for yourself, starting at about the 0:16 mark of the E3 2021 trailer, when the apartment door swings open and we can see the hallway outside their apartment.
Once we get an unobstructed view, it’s clear the carpet pattern is the same pattern from the hotel in the film The Shining.
In hindsight, it’s almost impossible not to see it, but it’s also a reference that’s handled with subtlety. Instead of just having a character bluntly go, “This is crazy, like The Shining,” you’ve got a visual cue that makes the connection for players who look closely enough.
The development team even make mention of The Shining, as well as Momento, another classic mindbender, in the description for Twelve Minutes on the official website.
You take the role of the husband, on what should be a romantic evening with your wife. The night 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…Unless you can find a way to use the knowledge of what’s coming to change the outcome and break the loop.
An interactive narrative that blends the dream-like suspense of THE SHINING with the claustrophobia of REAR WINDOW and the fragmented structure of MEMENTO.
I’m genuinely excited to play Twelve Minutes, which is slated for release on August 19, 2021. If you’ve spotted any other cool references or homages in the trailer, please leave a comment. I would love to see what else I missed.
