Twelve Minutes

Twelve Minutes is an adventure game developed by Luís António and published by Annapurna Interactive. It was originally released on August 19, 2021, for Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, with versions for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 released on December 7, 2021. A version for iOS and Android mobile devices was published by Netflix on December 13, 2022.

The game takes place almost exclusively in a small apartment suite and requires the player to repeatedly play through events of a 12-minute cycle to attempt to solve a mystery.

Twelve Minutes is played from a top-down perspective and is set in an apartment suite shared by a husband and wife (voiced by James McAvoy and Daisy Ridley, respectively) which includes the main living and kitchen area, their bedroom, a bathroom, and a closet. The player controls the husband during these events in the style of a point-and-click adventure game, where he is free to do various actions. Without doing certain actions, over the course of 12 minutes, the husband learns his wife is pregnant. A self-identified cop (voiced by Willem Dafoe) arrives at the apartment and accuses the wife of murdering her father several years ago, and in trying to arrest her knocks out the husband and kills the wife and her unborn child.

Time resets at the point where the husband enters the apartment, with the player now free to attempt to figure out why the cop suspects the wife of murder, how to prevent her arrest, or several other possible actions in order to find a way to end the loop. If the husband dies or leaves the apartment, time is reset. However, the player is not given any exact information of what this goal is, leaving it up to them to find a way to resolve the situation. The husband is the only character that retains knowledge of the prior cycles (such as knowing about the impending arrest) and this information can be used to perform other actions in future cycles. This gameplay loop has been compared to The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. While the main loop lasts only 12 minutes in real time, the game is expected to take the player between 6 and 8 hours to complete.

Twelve Minutes is a decision-driven game involving time loops. However, the order of events will differ depending on how the game plays.

A husband returns to his apartment after work and is greeted by his wife, who surprises him with the news that she is pregnant. As they start to celebrate, a man claiming to be a cop knocks at the door and proceeds to arrest them both. He accuses the wife of murdering her father and stealing an expensive pocket watch eight years ago. The cop then strangles the husband to death, only for the husband to suddenly find himself back to the start of the evening after, trapped in a time loop. If the husband dies, leaves the apartment, or runs out of time, he returns to the start of the evening.

After finding the hidden watch in the apartment and proving he is reliving the same evening to his wife, she eventually confesses her secret past. The wife tells him that shortly after she was born, her father had an affair with the nanny, resulting in a child being born. The discovery of the affair and the existence of an illegitimate child drove her mother into a deep depression and eventually death. Years later, during a heated argument on Christmas Eve, she accidentally shot her father with a gun and ran away, afraid of the consequences.

The husband eventually questions the cop and learns he was a close friend of his wife's father. The cop's daughter has cancer, and he wants to sell the pocket watch to pay for her treatment. The cop's version of how the father died is also different. The father survived being shot on Christmas Eve, but someone else returned on New Year's Eve and killed him with the same gun. Realizing his wife did not commit murder, the husband finds a way to prove his wife's innocence to the cop. The three characters talk peacefully and deduce the killer was the wife's brother from the affair.