Review: Twelve Minutes

2021 is definitely the year of the time loop. Lots of games, a few films and TV shows all showcase the mechanic this year and one of the ones that I was personally looking forward to was Twelve Minutes, the new game from developer Luis Antonio and publisher AnnaPurna Interactive. I then, unfortunately, played the game. 

Twelve Minutes is a game with a striking look, with a top down perspective set in the smallest apartment known to man and features just three characters, the Protagonist, his wife and a mysterious cop. What starts out as the, quote “best night ever” quickly deteriorates as the cop bursts in, accuses the wife of murder and eventually kills you. 

The loop resets, and its time to figure out why he shows up, why he accuses your wife of murder and exactly what he is wanting. In terms of mechanics, it is a fairly standard point and click style game with objects that can be interacted with and combined with various others and the three characters to create differing results and hopefully get to the truth of the matter. The problem is that there are enough things to interact with and logic to follow that the possibility space becomes way, way larger than what the game actually wants you to do. 

Que many hours of frustration as you constantly bump up against what you think you can do, and what you can actually do. Your brain will say that, logically, doing this with that will result in this, but what actually happens is you just receive the same bit of dialog again over and over until you finally fumble into the right interaction and move the story forward. This game is supposed to be about six hours long, but because of this problem with possibility, it took me ten. 

Some of this is down the UI, that can make it difficult to realise you need to do something else with an object or click a dialog option more times to get different results. I finally beat the game once I realised I had to click on an object I just picked up to trigger some dialog that will grant me a different path of conversation when talking to the wife and it says a lot that at that point I was looking up guides that said just pick up the object, not pick it up and click on it, almost like even they didn’t realise you had to do that. 

Twelve Minutes suffers from something that just about all time loop games suffer from: repeat dialog. Now, it might seem harsh to criticize a game with such a system for having to get the same dialog to the player over and over but with the other issues it out stays its welcome long before you can complete the game. 

It’s not all bad however. The all star cast does a stellar job with a script that isn’t exactly stunning and I honestly, without being told it was, couldn’t tell that the protagonist is played by James McAvoy and his wife by Daisy Ridley. I can tell the cop is Willam Dafoe, cause it's Willam Defoe, hiding that iconic voice is almost impossible! 

The script just doesn’t make sense at times, with reactions and dialog which can instantly throw you out of the game because frankly, people just don’t interact like that. It’s partially the nature of getting dialog recorded in different sessions, sometimes thousands of miles apart, to work together properly, but also the script just does a bad job of those interactions. It does go some places in terms of the plot though, and some are pretty wild, eliciting an out loud “WTF?” from me personally, but it definitely has its problems. 

Twelve Minutes unfortunately isn’t as good a game as its premise might suggest. The issues with the possibility space and a script that could have been so much better bring down what was an arresting idea, one that could have stuck with people for more than just the bad areas. As it stands, if you do remember this game, it will be mainly because of the extreme levels of frustration it provided. Fans of the genre will get the most of it, the rest of us beware. 

Review: Backbone

It’s very easy for games to fall foul of ‘style over substance’. The medium inherently sets developers up for this trap, as so many components make up any given game that leaning too much on one or two aspects sacrifices the substance to enhance the style, and it is a balancing act that all too often fails and leaves the game worse than it could be. 

Backbone, the new game from developers Eggnutt is, unfortunately, a Style over Substance game. It looks great with a cool jazz tinged noir theme that runs throughout, but gives way to a hard pivot into a twist that comes out of the blue with little setup and makes no sense given the world that has been created up to that point. 

You play as Howard Lotor, a private detective in a Dystopian version of Vancouver. He is also a raccoon, as this version of Vancouver is populated by anthropomorphic animals, ruled over by the apes, who are the higher class. The story sets up an interesting world of class and social issues, gangsters, drugs and all the same rubbish stuff that we humans have to deal with - just with talking animals. 

It starts off with Howard getting a fairly normal P.I case, as such post-noir stories do, with a wife wanting to know if her husband is cheating. From there, it becomes a fairly standard point and click adventure, with a heavy emphasis on talking. The dialog is the game's main thrust, and at first it seems that paying attention to what is happening really does help. Unfortunately, that feeling doesn’t last long, and you soon begin to question if you are actually affecting any conversations as while you might be able to be an arse or be nice and understanding, if at first it does seem like you have messed up it will always loop around and get the result you need. 

This is disappointing, because it makes the conversations you have feel kinda pointless, and you can just button mash through without paying attention as the game will always feed you the right thing. Once you find out there are no multiple endings, it makes it all the worse, as that would allow multiple playthroughs and make the conversations feel meaningful. As it stands, when you complete you game you feel like your time was wasted a little. 

That feeling is compounded by the fact that there is very minimal sound in the game. I appreciate that Eggnutt is a small developer, and that voice acting is expensive and beyond many studios, but Backbone is a game that could have really done with it. The minimalist sound design makes the game more than a little boring, and voice acting could have really helped with it. This is a nit pick that isn’t really the developers fault, but the other issues with the dialog just adds to the idea the game wasn’t respecting your time. 

I will say that the graphics look fantastic, with great animation for the characters when moving around and background art that really invokes the dystopian city feel. It is enough to propel you through the story, though again, those other issues do make the game's completion feel wasted.

The story itself, without getting to spoiler heavy, is weird. As I say it starts off with a standard ‘cheating husband’ case, and spirals out into a deep, conspiracy heavy and potentially world changing mission from there. The problem is that the game invoked in my head one story which would have been really cool to see play out, but that twists into a story that makes absolutely no sense, has no real resolution and the motives in the final act for some of the characters seem completely at odds with the overarching narrative on display. The game would have been so much better had it leaned into it’s early politically motivated ideas and had real, grounded characters that made sense in the world, but that twist just sends it off on an completely unneeded tangent that spoils the rest of the game. 

Had this happened, some of the genre splicing the story does would still work, it would just make a hell of a lot more sense and give a much more satisfying conclusion. It's a shame that it doesn’t because it would have made for a very cool detective story, an in-over-his-head tale in the best traditions of the thriller genre, just with a talking racoon as a protagonist. 

If you plan to pick up Backbone, do so on Xbox Game pass. It makes the sting of how it all ends and lack of multiple endings less painful. It will provide a game that looks great, but is ultimately disappointing and makes little sense. Be warned.

Review: The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit

Do you remember when you were a kid and playing by yourself? The stories you made up, the characters you created to fill the void? I do, my Transformers had many a made up adventure, as did my G.I. Joe’s. I remember playing old flight sim games on my dad’s PC and wearing an old bike helmet with some cardboard taped over the front so I could pretend to be putting the breathing mask in from Top Gun.

That feeling of your own made up world is captured by the new Game The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit. Set in the Life is Strange universe and featuring a character in the 10 year old Chris, it tells the tale of a snowy Saturday morning in Chris’ life. It is a point and click adventure just like the other Life is Strange games, with a slightly cartoonish art style that served the others so well.

This a very story based game, so reviewing it without spoilers is going to be tough. It centers around Chris and his relationship with his Dad. The Captain Spirit bit is a made up superhero of Chris’ own design, and the game seeps you into this aspect of the proceedings, giving tasks such as finding the toys that make up the villains team or choosing how his costume will look.

On the fringes of this is the strained relationship between Chris and his Dad. The father is a once up and coming basketball star, turned coach turned...it's never quite defined. He is shown drinking a lot, and this is where the writing starts to shine through. Can you be fully sure that he is just a guy desperately trying to do right by his kid and failing, or is the relationship abusive?

The father is definitely the best character here for just that reason. As father myself I can see that he is trying to do the right thing in spots, encouraging Chris, giving him hope of fun things for them both to do together, stuff like that. This is overshadowed by that ever present bottle of alcohol, and Chris knows it. The boy knows that he will invariably be disappointed, but goes along with it anyway.

What’s good is that it never seems to devolve into the ‘kid takes care of parent’ type of story that it could so easily have veered in to. Chris has chores to do, but he does it to genuinely help his Dad, not because he is the only one to do so. It is a sickly sweet tale due to the question mark over the relationship, but is done well enough.

This is a Life is Strange game in all but name, and playing it confirms it. The same annoyingly slow movement speed is present, the art style, the just odd enough facial expressions and the jerky character models. If all of that annoyed you about the first series or Before the Storm, nothing will change here.

Captain Spirit is also about the same length as one episode of the previous two seasons, so around two and half hours. Don’t feel bad about wasting money on it though, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is completely free, and serves as a prelude to Life is Strange 2. It is worth that time investment, because while it isn’t the greatest point and click game ever made, it is certainly one of the better written.

It will take you back to those days of making up stories for your toys, playing out little scenarios in your head and is one of the best nostalgia trips you can go on. Chris is a loveable character in not the best situation, but it certainly isn’t so bad that it is going to make you cry and the fine line the story walks gives you enough reason to see it through. At just a two and half hour time investment, you really have nothing to lose.