Twelve Minutes

Twelve Minutes is an adventure game created by Luís António and released by Annapurna Interactive. It first launched on August 19, 2021, for Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, followed by versions for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5 on December 7, 2021. Netflix published a mobile version for iOS and Android on December 13, 2022. The game is set almost entirely within a small apartment, and players must repeatedly relive a 12-minute time loop to solve a mystery.

The game uses a top-down perspective and a point-and-click interface. Players control a husband (voiced by James McAvoy) in an apartment shared with his wife (voiced by Daisy Ridley), which includes a living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and closet. Without specific actions, the husband learns his wife is pregnant during the 12-minute cycle. A man claiming to be a cop (voiced by Willem Dafoe) then arrives, accuses the wife of murdering her father years earlier, and in the process of arresting her, knocks out the husband and kills the wife and her unborn child. Time resets to the moment the husband enters the apartment, allowing the player to try different actions to understand the cop’s suspicion, prevent the arrest, or find a way to break the loop. The husband is the only character who remembers previous cycles, and this knowledge can be used to alter events. The loop resets if the husband dies, leaves the apartment, or time runs out. The player is not told the exact goal, and the game is expected to take six to eight hours to complete, with its structure compared to *The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask*.

The plot is driven by player decisions within the time loop, so the sequence of events varies. After discovering a hidden pocket watch in the apartment and convincing his wife he is reliving the evening, she reveals a secret past: her father had an affair with the nanny, producing a child. The affair and the illegitimate child caused her mother’s depression and death. Years later, during a Christmas Eve argument, she accidentally shot her father and fled. The husband later learns from the cop that he was a close friend of the wife’s father, and that the cop needs the watch to pay for his daughter’s cancer treatment. The cop’s version differs: the father survived the Christmas Eve shooting but was killed on New Year’s Eve by someone else with the same gun. Realizing his wi