12 minutes, preview: pain and time cycles

Discussions about the duration of video games are often not trivial, and restrict themselves to the appreciation of the content, without actually assessing the quality of the latter. Of course, different genres can easily get married in one big hour, but as an infinite variety of interactive experiences, video games can often exploit game time in unpredictable ways, and offer more entertainment in minutes than some topics. Manage to give in tens of hours.

12 minutes Seems to be one of these “rebels” of modern gaming. A ‘Graphic adventure with great view, Frankly Set on a one minute map (Now we see only a small apartment as the main location), which is its entire structure a The time ring lasts twelve minutes. Explained in this way, this may not seem like the most attractive concept in the world to the average user, but we can assure you that what we saw during the digital event organized by ID @ Xbox a few days ago was able to catch us better than us at our initial expectations.

Day of Mormort

It starts in a small apartment. A couple have a quiet evening like many others, where the center of attention seems to be the dessert carefully prepared by the little girl. However, things change when the police knock on the door or a thug claims to be part of it; Everything disintegrates very quickly: both are handcuffed and thrown to the ground, and the protagonist will soon suffocate excessively. After a moment you are there again, as if nothing had happened … no memory of previous events remains, but it is your worst now to figure out how to deal with the next 12 minutes to prevent things from changing. In ways.

This is the comment, As you can well guess from the summary made now, this is nothing interesting, ed A variation of what was seen on the well-known film Groundhawk Day (From us Il Giorno della Marmotta), although used for a very short ring. Also, the cinematographic implications since the project was born do not end there From the mind of Luis Antonio, An eco-friendly and experienced character artist, is also proud of Rockstar in the curriculum (as well as the witness, along with Jonathan Blow), and was inspired by cinematography and independent work and decided to learn programming to shape his own vision. Head for more than six years.

We honestly found the basic idea to be very clever. Awareness of upcoming events does not guarantee that you will be able to act, And the length of the narrow loop with many negative results is scattered here, and allows you to experiment with a variety of strategies. For example, the first variant shown in the demo saw the protagonist hiding with a knife in the dark in the bathroom, found in a much more violent way than seen in the first cycle and will soon be removed.

Choices and effects

The possibilities presented are concise and truly remarkable. The controls are very simple Interactive objects are immediately noticeable And the remarkable reactivity of the characters and the environment (pour a cup for your girlfriend to decide if she wants to drink, and it appears that possible actions on different objects or conversations will change according to your awareness after the loops). Over there Perspective from above And the limited map – although Louis Antonio mentions the presence of a tutorial outside, although this system does not seem to be limited to the apartment at all – makes the experience horrible and intuitive, and practically anyone can begin to attach objects or try to devise strategies to counter the attacker’s arrival, sometimes using futile dexterity Trying to explain to the girlfriend initially causes nothing but incredible reactions).

That’s not enough, There does not appear to be any sign or sign of any improvement. The evaluation of what has been done and the direction taken is only in the mind of the player; According to the creator, the immersion is total and the player is constantly reviewing what has been done without guidance.

The fact that the game is indie should not be underestimated Production values. Annapurna, the publisher, seems to have made significant progress in its contacts and is involved with the help of Microsoft. Three heavy names in dubbing. The voices of the characters are real James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley e Willem Tufo, Certainly not underestimated actors. Also, for the curious perspective, the title is graphically very pleasant because its sensible and clear look allows for immediate attention to what is missing and what is not, and how to easily move on. However, we are not surprised that a creative color management and visual impact created by an artist blends such naturalness with structural design.