Video Gamers Podcast - Deep Dive: 12 Minutes - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

Gaming time-loopers Paul and Josh are back with another incredible gaming deep dive episode. In this can’t miss episode, we chat about the new release 12 Minutes. A time-loop based game with an old school point and click adventure feel with some insane voice acting talent. We’ve got the full gaming deep dive followed by a very special spoilers section you don’t want to miss! Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey you! Yeah, you! Love the show and want more content? Well, now you have the opportunity to help support the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. You'll get a shout out on the show, and you'll also have exclusive access to not one, but two extra Quick Take episodes every week. Just subscribe through Apple Podcasts or head over to MultiplayerSquad.com to see our Patreon page. We appreciate the love and support that you have all shown us. Now on to what is sure to be our greatest episode ever. Hello, Squadmates. Thank you for listening to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast,

where we are recommended by 9 out of 10 Dennis. We want to give a shout out to all of you who help support the show financially by subscribing on Apple Podcasts or through Patreon. And if you too want to be like one of the cool kids, then you can subscribe through your iPhone or by visiting MultiplayerSquad.com. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he's enjoying a nice mug of room temperature water with his cake. It's Josh. Mixed with some pills, Paul. That'll make more sense in a little bit. Not in real life. That's game related, people. Don't do don't do mugs with warm water, okay? It's gross. Exactly. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he's enjoying a nice mug of room temperature water with his cake. It's Josh.

Best night ever. I made dessert, Paul. Are we just going to keep repeating the intro for all 60 minutes and just to poke fun at 12 minutes here? It's A. People are wondering what the heck is going on. Do not adjust your sets, people. No, no. We're talking a time loop game. Yep. We most certainly are.

All right. Well, today is a deep dive episode, which is especially exciting. I think for most people, these are their favorite episodes. This is where we just spend the full hour talking about one game that we have... Diven? Dove? We still don't know the past tense term of Dive. We dove into this game in the last couple of weeks, and we're going to be talking about it here today. But before we get to that, we do have a little bit of housekeeping. We do want to give a shout out to a new Patreon supporter. So we do have another rare supporter that we would like to thank, and that would be Coffee Crazy. Number one, love the name. I'm a huge fan of coffee myself. We

actually had a little conversation about that. I got to show off my fancy coffee pot. But yeah, dude, I'm getting to where I'm really starting to dig the housekeeping paul all these new patrons yeah you know all these new supporters of the show all these new reviews that are coming in i mean i'm telling you man this is this is getting crazy real quick it's a ton of fun and coffee crazy had reached out to me on discord and was asking about where I lived growing up. And it turns out that he and I actually lived... Wait, is he crazy? No, he's literally crazy.

Coffee stalker. No, no. But he grew up just a 10-minute drive from my house, and we're almost the same age. So I actually have some people in common that we both knew, which was kind of neat. I knew one of his English teachers in high school. But yeah, what a small world here to end up finding someone who grew up in Glendale, Arizona, and we actually know some of the same people. That is actually pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. So thank you so much, Coffee Crazy. We're very glad to have you here with the squad.

And then Josh, you've got a couple of reviews. We do have a couple of reviews. They're coming in. They're coming in fast. So if you have not, please leave a review. It's funny because I mentioned the other day, hey, not everybody listens on Apple Podcasts. So some people have emailed us their review and said, hey, I love you guys. Here's a review for you.

My suggestion was just steal your friend's phone for a second and then leave a review on their phone because that helps the show too. Now, you should give it back. Or a stranger's phone. It doesn't have to be a friend. You can steal anyone's phone and leave a review as long as it's an Apple. It's very true because if you go up to a stranger and you say, excuse me, can I borrow your phone?

This is very important. Nine out of 10 strangers will actually hand you their phone. And then you just leave a review for the podcast and and then you say, thank you, that was really critical that I did that. And then they just look at you funny. I'm not so sure that you're going to almost universally get your hands on someone's phone. Nine out of ten, Paul. Just like the number of dentists who recommend our show. By the way, in case it needs to be said, if it's not clear by our tone, please don't steal anyone's

phone. At least get their permission first. And Josh just spit root beer I think all over his keyboard. Oh, boy. Oh, my goodness. Well, Josh might die live here on the show. I was taking a sip of root beer right when you

said that, and now my lungs are filled with root beer, Paul. Very nice. Oh, right in time for you to read these long reviews. So are your lungs clear? You need a minute? I'm a professional. I can do this.

Okay. All right. Here we go. All right. So a couple new reviews. First one coming in from way down under from the great land of Australia. This one is titled, One of My Favorite Podcasts, 1,000 out of 10. Good day, mate.

I love listening to you ever since I found you two months ago. You've introduced me to so many different games. Keep up the good work. P.S., maybe do Minecraft. It's my favorite game. Okay, number one, I want to apologize right now to everybody in Australia for that terrible, terrible accent. I have this weird thing where I cannot do straight Australian.

I sort of accidentally start mixing in some British in the way, and it's terrible. I know. I apologize right now. But that one came in from Oscar K. So thank you, Oscar K. We have always said 500 episodes in, we will think about doing Minecraft unless somebody signs up as a legendary supporter and forces us to play it, in which case then we're doing Minecraft.

So it's really up to the people. Yep, because we're not above bribery, as we have made clear. It's very, very true. All right, the second one is titled Great Listen, and it says, The guy played EverQuest. What more needs to be said? In all seriousness, they have great banter about games,

and that's what we're all here for. Keep up the great work. And that comes in from Who's at two three four five i'd like to think that they're a new listener and they don't know our names so they're like oh yeah that one guy i do that would be pretty funny where they just heard everquest mentioned and was just like okay well this is my favorite podcast but yeah josh was quite the EverQuest player back in the day. I did not play it, but I was big into WoW. Funny story, Paul. Yeah, go for it.

Funny story. So a guy came into our server. This might be his review. I don't know. But we were chatting EverQuest, and he was like, hey, you can still play. They have these free servers where it's old classic EverQuest. I went through the whole process. And this was not easy to set up and emulate and do all this stuff and log into these servers.

And you had to have multiple accounts so that they could communicate so that you could log into the server. I booted it up. I saw how terrible the game looked in today's day and age. It would not go beyond like 480 by 620 or whatever. Even on my monitor, it was still stuck in this tiny little window yeah and i i like you can't move like the standard locomotion that you're used to in games right now and i just went well those are the good old days but not anymore and i just instantly uninstalled that way i'm just gonna just gonna keep my fond memories instead

rip classic everquest too bad maybe one of these days they'll like you know remaster it kind of like how we had like wow classic where these things have been updated over time well that's very exciting you know we're always excited to read reviews so keep them coming and you know we're happy to read them here on the show and then also i had mentioned a little bit about discord if you guys want to come join us there's a link in the episode description. We'd love to have you there and to come communicate there with us. And I think that's it for the first part here.

So let's go into our time loop and talk all things 12 minutes. All right. If you guys are new here to the show for these deep dive episodes, I just thought I'd tell you a little bit about how this works. Josh and I always break the game down where we talk a little bit about the storyline. We talk about the mechanics and the gameplay. What did we like? What did we not like? And then we always wrap up the show by reading some community reviews. We play Make Love, Marry, or Murder, and we decide where to rank the game on our leaderboard.

And we're going to kick things off here by reading a description. I actually kind of blended two together from both Steam and Wikipedia because they were both so short. So here's the description. An interactive thriller about a man trapped in a time loop. Features John McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe. The game takes place almost exclusively in a small apartment suite and requires the player to repeatedly play through events of a 10-minute cycle to try and solve a mystery. And so you might be wondering, why is it called 12 minutes? Well, there is a two-minute gap that comes into play in the end

game. And before we jump in, I did want to make things pretty clear here that Josh and I are going to keep things virtually spoiler free for the first part of the show. We will let you guys know. But at the very end, we are going to go all things spoilers with 12 minutes. But at least here in the beginning, we're only going to talk about the first few minutes of gameplay, especially because it's so story focused. We don't want to spoil anything for those of you who haven't played it. Yeah, we definitely, this is one of those games where we have to talk spoilers to be able to dig into the story a little bit. But we are going to do that at the end so that we can feel comfortable and you can feel comfortable the whole way through. And we'll make it very well known that we're about to jump into spoiler territory because there are some in this game for sure uh but this way we can talk about it we'll do all the normal stuff but then at the end it'll

be fun for those people that either don't care or have played it that want to chat spoilers that's that's where we'll get into that stuff but yeah we won't spoil anything um before then which is which is nice. Yeah, we'll give you that heads up. The butler did it, Paul. Oh, I'm sorry. In the library with a metal pipe. All right. So for those out there who are listening, maybe they haven't even heard of 12 Minutes. We kind of let them know it's a little bit of a story-forward game. It's got time loops. But why don't you tell them a little bit more in detail? What is the storyline and how does this game work?

So this game, the first thing that jumps out at you on this game and what caught our attention is the perspective. We talked about, we learned about this game, I think a year or so ago during one of the Steam festivals or whatever. It is a top-down view of your very small apartment. I'm assuming it's in New York or some big city. And you see the characters from a top-down view of your very small apartment. I'm assuming it's in New York or some big city. And you see the characters from a top-down perspective. And so that was very interesting. It really set it apart when you look at it. You knew 12 minutes anytime you saw a screenshot.

It didn't matter what part of the game it was in. It was like, oh yeah, that's that game, 12 minutes. So their perspective is very, very cool on it. This game, we knew that it was going to be story-based. We knew that it was going to have some very good voice actors involved, but we didn't really know anything else other than it involved a time loop. Now, famously, there's not a ton of time loop games. Now, Outer Wilds is one of those, which to much to my chagrin, you hated and I loved. And then 12 Minutes is another one. And I guess there's another one out there that I've never heard of called Sexy Brutale or something like that, which a lot of people were saying,

hey, if you like this game, you should check that one out. But I've never played it. I've never seen it. I don't know what that one is. But I love time loop stuff. I think it's super cool. I love time loop movies, Groundhog's Day, Live, Die, Repeat, Edge of Tomorrow. There's a few of them, Looper and stuff like that. So I love the premise. In this game, you are a husband that comes home to your wife. And this is not spoilery because this is all shown in the trailer,

but a police officer breaks into your apartment and all you know is that he either a kills your wife or interrogates her and kills you and then the loop starts all over again and so the point of this game is to figure out number one who's this police officer number two why does he want your wife like that's kind of an odd thing to try to figure out like what did she do wrong um wrong? And as you play, you are slowly figuring these things out as you play the game. And through each loop, you learn a little bit more. And you use the loops and the prior knowledge to kind of build on the next loop and so on and so forth until there's some reveals and some knowledge that you never got before that kind of explain what's actually happening in this game. Yeah. So basically what ends up happening is that you are stuck in a real time loop. So the time loop itself actually lasts for a real 10 minutes and it's going to

reset either when your timer runs out or you die or you try to leave the apartment. And then basically you're just kind of bouncing back and forth between dialogue options and actual things that you can interact with to try to piece together this mystery and whether or not you're going to be able to solve and figure out what's going on. And then the game also does have a couple of different endings. And we'll talk a little bit about that, but we'll keep it spoiler free in a few minutes here. The game is also very self-conscious about other movies. So right off the bat, as you're walking into the apartment, it is very clearly the carpet from the movie The Shining in the hotel. It's very distinctive.

They have also compared this game to not just The Shining, but also Rear Window and Memento. And so the game definitely has a very strong story cinematic focus. But at the same time, I would not really call it an interactive movie per se. I don't know about you, but like what kind of genre would you say this game is? It's not interactive movie because you're doing a lot more than just watching and walking around. It almost reminds me of the old school point and click adventures, almost. It's very limited in the scope because you're just in this very small apartment, but that's what it reminds me of. You click here, your guy walks over. If you click a mug, he picks it up and he stashes it in his inventory. Click the refrigerator, he opens it up and he stashes it in his inventory.

You know, click the refrigerator, he opens it up, and now you have a view of what's inside the refrigerator. So that's, to me, like the best analogy that I could say is like point-and-click adventure is the genre. Yeah. It's so funny to me that that's what you said because that's exactly what I was going to say. I was going to say this game actually plays somewhat similarly to Monkey Island, where it's like a lot of just testing different things with your inventory. Like, can I combine this and that? Well, what happens if I put this there and then someone interacts with it? And so it has very simplistic mechanics. This game, you literally just click where to go. And if you mouse over the top of the screen, it shows your inventory, and you can just click and drag inventory to try to interact with stuff. So this game does not require any time to learn the buttons.

There's no tutorial or anything completely unnecessary. And you just start trying to do crazy shenanigans, you can have a lot of fun goofing off in this game also because you're stuck in a time loop. So your actions have zero consequences. If you want to harm yourself or others, you have the ability to do that. You can troll your wife if you choose to do that. There's a lot of things that are interactive in this game and everything serves a purpose so you are in this very small apartment it's literally just like a living room a bedroom a bathroom and a closet and there's maybe 30 40 things you can interact with in this game. Yeah, like total. Total, yeah. Right. But everything kind of serves its own little purpose.

And as you play the game more and more, you kind of realize, oh, I can actually use these items in a really clever way to get new information or discover something that's kind of new. So let's talk a little bit about that, like in the first couple of time loops. So, you know, in the very first time loop, you just come home to your wife. This cop shows up. More than likely, you're going to end up dying one way or another. You probably get choked out by the cop. Oh, yeah. And that's, I think, how most people's first loop goes.

And then your guy immediately wakes up. He's still kind of like choking and grabbing his neck. So it's like the pain is real. He remembers the pain. He will comment on it. But now we're starting another loop. And what are a couple of things that you remember in the very beginning? Like, what did you try doing different in maybe your second or your third loop to try to figure out some of this mystery? Yeah. The first one, your wife's talking to you, she's made dessert for you. It kind of guides you a little bit to just say,

hey, she says, hey, I've got a big surprise for you. I've made your favorite dessert. When you're ready for it, let me know. And you can just jump right in and say, hey, I'm ready for dessert. That would be me, right? Instantly, hey, I'm ready for dessert. I don't need to explore any of that stuff. So you can do that. And it kind of sets the pacing a little bit. And then of course, you're not stopping this time loop, right? That's the point of the game. So every 10 minutes, this cop is going to show up and he's going to get into your apartment. And then that will progress the loop and reset it. So the second time around, that's when I started exploring saying, hey, what's in the

bedroom? What's in here that I can interact with? What's in the bathroom? What can I do to interact in the bathroom and stuff like that? And of course, I'm turning the sink on, I'm flushing the toilet, I'm opening the medicine cabinet. And so I think the second or third or fourth loop, you're really just seeing what's out there and what can you interact with. Because anybody that's played a point and click adventure game knows that if you find inventory, at some point, you're probably going to need to use that for something. And so that's one of those things where, for me, I just started really kind of feeling out the environment and saying, okay, like I can open the refrigerator. I can

pick up a mug. Oh, look, there's a knife on the counter. Next time that stupid cop comes in, I'm going to shank that guy. Right. And so, I mean, these are all natural things. Like that's kind of the cool part about this game is it's all very naturally just thought of in how you might react to something. And so when you try that, because it's not a spoiler, right? You can try to knife the cop. I won't say what happens, but the loop's going to reset. And then so next time you're going to go, okay, well, maybe if I use the knife this way. And so it's that kind of trial and error that you figure out. And I joked around at the very beginning of the episode about the mug with the pills in it, right? So that's a good example of

if you have a mug in your inventory and you have pills in your inventory and you click and drag them, now you've got a mug with pills in it. And so you can try any number of things to do with that mug. And this is where this game really shines. Your ability to just meddle with everything and try everything is where it really, really shines to me. Because not only does your wife notice, but sometimes your character will kind of comment on what you're doing as well. Or the cop will comment. When he shows up, it's kind of interesting to see that he might have a different reaction when he breaks into your apartment. And so for me, that was where, when you think about like the development of this game they thought of everything and that's really neat like at one point you know there's a flower vase that's

on the dresser in your bedroom and i took the knife and i smashed the flower vase with it i don't know why paul i just felt like smashing the flower vase but it worked because because you could exactly and i could you're wrong but then my wife goes in the bedroom a minute later, and she comes back out. And she's like, hey, what'd you do to my flower vase? That's when I was like, whoa. OK, this is good. And she got mad at me. Because I just smashed her vase for no reason.

So she's like, are you OK? Did you have a bad day? What's going on with you? And to me, that was very cool. And that is like that throughout almost this entire game like there's just an infinite number of things that you can do where you will get a reaction or a response or something like that yeah and i think that's half the fun is just tinkering and messing around in this sandbox where you get to see all these interactions because the

programming must be like 8,000 if-thens that are all programmed in. Because I'll give you like another example that's really neat. So in the first couple of loops, I think the very first thing that you discover is on your first time loop, the cop is demanding to know where this watch is. And at first, the wife denies having it. And then right before you die, she goes, okay, fine, I'll tell you. The watch is... And then you die. So now you know, going into the next loop, okay, well, she actually does have this watch. I'm going to start looking around for it. Well, what can I do to try to figure out where this watch is? And you can actually hide in the closet when the cop comes,

and he'll bust in through the door and then start interrogating your wife. And I'm like, oh, great, this is how I'm going to get this info. Well, then she starts calling out for help, which gives it away that you're home. So the cop opens the closet door, puts me in handcuffs, ends up killing me, and we go to the next loop. Well, then I discover, well, actually, if I go straight to the closet while my wife is still in the bathroom when I come home, she has no clue that I'm even there. So, you know, this is the last thing I'm going to spoil. It's just this fact that you can hide in the closet. Now I'm sitting there watching the cop come in. Now he's interrogating my wife. She starts talking about

the watch and where it's located. Well, now I have all this information. And so now I can start talking to my wife in the next loop and be like, hey, I know about this watch. And now it's going to start leading down into more branching dialogue options. And as you discover more and talk more, and it's kind of neat in how it's such a small setting, but there's like 10,000 different things that can all interact as you piece together the actual story. Yeah. And there is story. I mean, the main thing is the discovery of the history between the cop and your wife. What does this watch have to do with anything? Why does the cop want the watch? There's a lot to unravel in this. That's the overarching mystery, right? What is this watch? Why does the cop want it? What does your wife have to do with any of this? She's just mild-mannered

wife in this game. Why is she wanted by this cop? That kind of stuff. And so you do start to unravel that mystery. And that's where the story and some of the twists that we'll talk about later come into play. But that is the point of each loop. So it's like you said, through trial and error, you figured out, hey, if I just hide in the closet, don't do anything, I can learn a little bit of information. Now the next loop, you can take that information and you can approach your wife with it. And maybe she reacts one way, maybe she reacts a different way. But then through that, maybe that unlocks a new dialogue option when the cop breaks in. And it's not always dialogue.

Sometimes you start to figure out the interaction of some of the items that are in the apartment and how you need to do those. What I do really like is that the game is always aware. So there's a point where if you're in the bathroom and you're doing something and you leave the door open, your wife will see what you're doing and actually get mad at you. And if you tick her off, now she's mad and well, that loop's ruined because now she's mad. But if you go into the bathroom, you close the door, and then you do what you're doing, she can't see it. And that's honestly where, again, this attention to detail in the game is what really does set it apart and makes everything believable in the interactions and the stuff that's taking place. You know, something as little as the closet. Like, hiding in the closet, if your wife knows you're

home, she hollers for you. If she doesn't know you're home, she can't holler for you. So that's where this game does such a phenomenal job, because it's very, very aware of everything that has happened in that loop. Now, you're the only person that has the knowledge of previous loops. The cop doesn't, your wife doesn't, the game doesn't really. You know, I mean, it does save some stuff. Like you said, if you get that information from your wife, now you can confront her with it. But in that sense, your knowledge is the only thing that sticks.

Nothing else in the game does. Yeah, and the game's even programmed to where if you're standing and hiding in the closet and she knows you're there, she's going to start to comment. And she'll say like, wow, you really like that closet. Or if you turn off the lights when she's reading a book, she'll say, hey, I'm reading. Can you turn that back on? So everything in this world is highly interacting like this. And because the game is so dialogue forward, I do think that we have to talk a little bit about the voice acting. So, you know, we already talked to, we already mentioned the actors who are in this.

But Willem Dafoe, who, by the way, has been nominated for four Academy Awards, plays the cop. You have James McAvoy, who was robbed of an Oscar nomination for Split, where he did such a great job. He plays the main character. And then you have Daisy Ridley, who is Rey from the Star Wars sequels. She is the one who plays the wife. And this game has very emotional interactions. There are violent interactions, sweet interactions, moments of reveal, everything in between. How'd you feel that they did with the voice acting? When you see characters like that, you just instantly think, okay, this is going to be a very high production. I mean, all three of those actors, great. I was very curious to see how that

translated to this game. I mean, William Dafoe's voice is phenomenal. James McAvoy's phenomenal. Daisy Ridley, the Star Wars series, all that stuff. It's just incredible. So to get that kind of talent on board with this game seems very cool. I'm going to sound a little curmudgeon-y here because while I think the voice acting was fine, I think that there was not enough banter or interaction to make it stand out to me. William Dafoe's voice is very unique. And so anytime he talks, I'm just like, oh, that's William Dafoe. But I almost feel like everything's a little reserved. Does that make sense to you? In the talking and stuff, Daisy's got this soft-spoken wife voice. The James McAvoy's soft-spoken as the husband,

and even William Dafoe, even though he's the cop and he's bossy, it's just... I don't know, man. It didn't grab me like I thought it would. And there's nothing wrong with it. It's not bad by any means. But I just feel like when you have that caliber of talent, that everything felt very subdued. And maybe that's just the atmosphere in this game. But I was a little disappointed in the voice acting, to be honest. Not from the actors, but just that it didn't highlight their talents at all. Yeah, I thought that James McAvoy, for the most part, has a lot of reserved statements and emotions now if he does die in a time loop if he gets like electrocuted i mean it's really hard i'm sure to sit in a voice studio and just go

and then like all of a sudden try to make it like serious and sound good um you know i i thought that daisy ridley did really good i thought willem da Dafoe did great. Of course. He has such a commanding voice that he is truly intimidating and scary when he comes in. When you're hiding in the closet, you feel like you're in a horror movie. The way he just busts in and starts, you know, come on out because you have all these lines memorized because you've watched him do it 7,000 times. And, you know, I thought that he did really, really good. I don't know if it's something that you would write home about if you didn't know all the voice actors. I think you'd probably say, wow, the guy who did the cop really nails it. And I thought they all did a good job.

It was fine. I'm not trying to say that it wasn't. But I guess my point is, when you have that kind of talent, I feel like they didn't... Either the lines that they had to say weren't... There wasn't enough to interpret there. It was just fine. But I guess I expected more from that kind of acting ability. And I feel like William Dafoe was the only one that really... It came through. Threw to the level. Right. Exactly. And that's not to say that like James McAvoy, of course, I mean,

that guy's great. And so was Daisy Ridley, but it's just, I think their lines were so subdued that the acting level couldn't come through in that case. You know, like I feel like those could have been any people in the world and they could have done almost as fine for,

for the point of the voiceover, you know? So it's like, why did you get these premier actors and actresses, but then you had these dialogue lines that are so subdued and, like, ho-hum, that you didn't, like, play up to their strengths, I guess. Ah, I hear you. I see what you're saying. Well, we're at that halfway mark, Josh,

so let's take a short break and hear from one of our sponsors. All right, Paul, you know, we love our listeners. So it's time to help them out. You see that guy listening? Yeah, that guy plays games using his ear pods from his phone. I know it's a travesty. Well, we're here to help out. Head over to multiplayerpodcast.com slash Logitech and see what you've been missing out on.

From mice to keyboards to headsets and everything in between they've got something that's sure to improve your gaming experience the best part is they won't break the bank and since they're extremely high quality you know they're gonna last do yourself a favor and improve your game over atpodcast.com slash Logitech. All right, we're back from our break here. Josh, I think what we have to talk about is just by nature, this game being a time loop game. There is a lot of repetition. I have not read community reviews or anything because you're the one who pulls them.

I would imagine this is probably the biggest complaint for people who did not like the game. This is very much like Groundhog Day or The Edge of Tomorrow, where you are literally waking up in the same moment. You're going to repeat a lot of the same actions to get back to where you were in the previous loop. So how did you feel about the repetition inside the time loops? This game comes in pieces for me, and this is going to be a little bit spoilery towards some of my thoughts on the game. So get ready. But in the beginning, I was super excited for this game. I thought, man, I can't wait to dive into these mysteries and figure out this time loop stuff and what's going on. And I think for the first hour or so, it was great. And there was, like I said, a lot of exploration and trying to figure out things in the apartment and how to interact

with the wife and figure out the things that would carry over to the next loop and that sort of stuff. Dude, by the 10th or 12th time of me setting the table, because you have to set the table for dessert, right? That's a big part of it. Well, you don't have to. You don't have to, but you do have to in the beginning. And I remember commenting to you, and I was like, dude, if I have to put these stupid plates on the table one more time, I'm going to jump out the window. And it was just so... The amount of repetition becomes excessive to me. And it's a shame because the way that this game works and the way that you get the knowledge is you figure out how to progress something down this time loop. You make one tiny little mistake when the cop shows up,

and then he kills you, and then you start over. Well, now you have to go through those 15 steps in sequential order to get back to the part where the cop breaks in. And instead of picking dialogue option A, you pick dialogue option B to see what happens. And then the cop kills you. And then the loop resets and you go, okay, well, I had a third option. So you redo all 15 steps, wait for the cop to show up. Let me pick dialogue option C. Oh, okay, great. Now that progressed something. Oh, hey, here's new dialogue options. Let me pick A. Oh, I died. And then it's just over and over and over again. That part felt like an extreme slog to me. I really got frustrated with that. I am one of those people where I was like, look, there's a very, very good premise here, but the amount of repetition in this game is destroying

my soul. See, I think that the repetition is definitely by design. And I've heard the developers talk a little bit about this, where they said, look, we know people are going to complain about the repetition. We know that. But this is a time loop game. This is how it would work in real life. And here's how we're going to do it. We're going to stay true to that vision. And I think that the exhilaration that you get when you finally break the pattern is really exhilarating. But those moments are spaced out. So you're not continually getting lucky and getting eight reveals in a row. You're going to get your one big reveal. And there were times when

I would reach a new point and I would have this huge smile on my face because it's like, oh, well now there's so many new options and things to test out. And I think if you try to just strictly get into this game like a puzzle where you're just gonna try okay option one one one one one one one two one one one three okay it worked then it's gonna feel very tedious i i whenever it started feeling that way i would just go haywire i'm gonna drag the knife over my wife let's see what happens let me drag the knife over myself. Let me hide and wait till my wife dies and then sit at the table and eat the dessert by myself going, mmm, delicious. You know, so it's like, I had a lot of fun just screwing around in this game.

You know, even the dessert, you can go pick up the dessert and wash the dishes and put empty plates back in the fridge and tell your wife you're ready for dessert and she's gonna go check and she's gonna have some comments for you by the way it's very easy to anger your wife in this game there are a million ways that you can get her so mad that she'll stomp out of the apartment yeah yeah so you know i think it's also i think the one complaint i would have about the repetition is sometimes I would have laser focus trying to do something that you can't do. So I'd be like, okay, well, maybe if I wait until this person's back is turned, now I can try this. Okay, well, that didn't work.

And so now on this next try, when they go into the next room, I'll try to run in behind them. I did all the exact same things. Yeah. So sometimes if you get stuck on the wrong thing, you do waste a lot of time. But like when Todd started playing with this, you know, our friend, and if you're a long-term listener, you know, he's the original host of the show. I had him streaming on Discord and I was watching him. And anytime he would get hyper-focused, I'd say, just stop. Don't worry. You can't even do that. So don't waste your time. And I think if you had an experience like that, it would be a lot better because you wouldn't waste 40 minutes trying to do something that the game can't even let you do. Yeah. I found it to be very frustrating. And I'm with you. There were many

times where I was like, oh, well, what if I jump out of this closet while his back's turned to me? Okay, I'm dead. Okay, well, what if I wait till he goes to check out the bathroom and then I jump out? Nope, I'm dead. And the thing is, to get to that point,

you have to do 20 steps. And you know what I mean? That's 10 minutes into the loop before the cop shows up. So it's like, you've got 10 minutes wasted. It was just, to me, i don't need constant action like you know what i mean i love story-based games but the having to fill the mugs up with water over and over and over again started to drive me absolutely bananas dude i felt like i was going

crazy and and who drinks uh room temperature tap water with your birthday cake? Of course you're dying. Yeah, like that was such a weird option. I thought anyway, and there's milk in the fridge. You can see it. But I always thought it was funny that she goes for the water. She's picky too. One time I set the table and I didn't have the mugs down and I was just trying to advance

the loop. I didn't need to do the whole mugs with water stuff in them. So I just put the mugs down on the table and she was like, um, sweetie, the table's not set. And then I'm like, yes it is.

And then she's like, um, the mugs are missing. And then I'm like, Oh, you gotta be kidding me, man. Like,

come on. So I plop one of the mugs down and then I click on her and she's like, it looks like we're missing a mug. And then I was just like, ah, like I'm'm gonna let the cop kill you this time or or maybe you try and that's that's part of the fun you know you can also have your wife set the table and bring everything out and i started wolfing down my

dessert and she's like you didn't even wait for me so like she'll get mad at that kind of stuff too which i thought was pretty funny. What about the story and the ending without getting into spoilers? Did you find it interesting? Did you feel driven to find the next twist and turn in the story? Was it effective? There are some cool twists and turns. We'll chat about those here in a little bit. They were not mind-blowing for me. I kind of got them more of like the, oh, that's kind of cool that they did that. But nothing that really stood out to me in that regard. I felt like some of it was almost a little cliche. It wasn't anything new.

It wasn't anything that was truly mind- blowing in that regard. Like it does help you think about like what is happening in these loops and why you're where you're at and stuff like that, which I like that part, right? Like any, any movie or any game that makes you think about it, or maybe even have your own like fan theories, like that is pretty cool.

And there's some pretty interesting fan theories that we'll talk about when we get into the spoiler section, but it was, it was neat, but it wasn't like earth shattering for me. Hmm. Yeah. I don't know if I'd go as extreme to say earth shattering,

but I would say I really enjoyed it. I think some of the twists you can definitely guess ahead of time because by nature, well, I don't even want to say that because that might be too spoilery a couple of twists i did see along the way i even wrote them down in my notes where i wrote you know is this dot dot dot dot dot and i turned out to be right but i still thought that it was very fun anytime you found that new piece of information because you know this cop is busting

in and talking about a murder from eight years ago. And who was it? How did they die? Who else knew them? Why would someone want them dead? Why do they think it's your wife? Did your wife do it? Was it somebody else?

And I did find myself constantly wanting to know the next piece of information. And with the initial ending that I got, I wasn't too sure what to think of it. I wasn't crazy about the ending, but I kept thinking about it, and I kept watching other videos and breakdowns that people did. And I kind of have my own theory that I agree with that I think really explains the game well. And I think that makes me look at it in a slightly more positive light because I think some things do get explained that didn't really make sense to me before I watched some of those videos. Yeah, it definitely does. It's fine. It is fine. I'm not trying to slander it. It's

just I feel like it could have been better. It's almost like they just barely missed the mark for me. And the mark is still fine, right? Like, it's okay. But it just could have been so much better. And I don't know if maybe my expectations were just really high, or it was the tedium of having to slog through the repetition that just kind of jaded me towards that. It is a neat story. There are some neat reveals,

but it's just like getting to that point felt like so much work. And then when you get to the reveal, it's not as like earth shattering as like, or it's a twist, but it's kind of like, ah, okay, like I get it. This game's got a twist to it. But it didn't just really grab me for whatever reason.

I hear you. All right. Well, let's go ahead and jump into community reviews, which I believe are also spoiler free, but Josh pulled a couple of reviews from Steam. What did the community think about 12 Minutes? Okay. Well, I'll read these reviews and then we'll take a guess because I don't want to spoil anything here.

So, first one is Recommended. This is a short game. This guy is 2.8 hours on record. It is longer than that. But he said, waited in the closet, watched my wife get shot in the head, go to the fridge, and eat the dessert. 10 out of 10 would recommend. That's exactly what I mentioned. I actually took a screenshot and I put that in our discord where I said, yeah, I'm just a psychopath apparently on this time loop and I'm just eating

this cake next to my wife's corpse. It's so funny because that's exactly what you posted, but it was really neat to me that somebody else had the exact same experience there, which I thought was pretty funny. So I had to throw that one in there because it rang true to your experience in it anyway. How funny. This one is not recommended. This guy has eight hours on record. So that's about what it takes to actually beat this game. So I have a feeling they've made it all the way through.

Really enjoyed the first section of the game. After the new and shiny wears off, it feels tedious and repetitive. You're constantly ahead of the story. So in the middle section, you're just trying to get the characters to say what you need them to to progress, which can be frustrating. Once you realize the twist, not only does it leave an uncomfortable and disturbing taste in your mouth, but it ruins the rest of the game by giving it context that makes it worse the more you think about it. I also don't understand why multiple endings was necessary, as they're all terrible and leave you feeling the same way because of the choice in narrative. Even the true ending. Love the overall concept,

so I hope more developers take a crack at this type of game and really do it justice. So when we get into the spoiler part, we'll explain what some of that means. But this game has some dark themes to it. Those don't come across until you... I mean, obviously, your wife getting murdered by a cop is a dark theme, but you kind of get used to that. Yeah, you see a lot of death in this game, whether it's you or your wife or your cop or some combination thereof. I will say that with that review, there are a couple of times when you have put the information together and you immediately know, well, this will prove a certain thing. But until you actually pull it up in your inventory and click on it,

it won't give you the dialogue option. So where I would go straight to the person and want to confront them with this information, it was like my character didn't know it until I actually clicked the item in my inventory. Then he would think in his head, oh, well, this proves dot, dot, dot. Well, now I'd have the dialogue. So every once in a while, you might run into some frustration like that. Yeah. All right. This next one is recommended 8.8 hours on record. When you realize how much stuff you can flush down the toilet, then the real game starts. Now, this is funny because you and I talked about this, I think, yesterday. You did not know that you could flush things down the toilet. I had no... See, this is where, again, this game does shine. I had no inkling to flush things down

the toilet. I would not flush things down the toilet in my own house because then I'm just going to have to fix the plumbing. And so the thought never crossed my mind. And then you were asking, I think it was yesterday or my mind. And then you were asking, I think it was yesterday or the day before, and you were like, Josh, how much stuff did you flush down the toilet? And I went, what? And you were like, oh yeah, man, like you can flush all this stuff down the toilet and it changes the outcome. And that's when my mind was just blown. I was like, never crossed your mind. I'm kidding me, really? Oh yeah, dude. And it gives you new dialogue options that are unique also.

But your character actually laughs when you flush something down the toilet. He's like, we'll flush whatever it is down the toilet. And yeah, you get some unique dialogue. That's for sure. So that one was pretty funny. All right. Final one. Not recommended.

5.3 hours on record. Phase one, this is exciting. Phase two, this is somewhat boring and tedious, but I'm still curious. Phase three, this is garbage. Oh, I get what they're saying. I liked this, I think, a lot more than you did. I don't mind the tediousness because I was so excited when I got a new reveal that to me it was enough to keep going. It's kind of like slots, right?

It's just repetitive over and over and over, but the intermittent reward will sometimes keep you going. And at least for my personality, this game did that. But I get that it's not for everyone. I'll say this. It's not... Outer Wilds took the time loop and perfected it for me. Because when you get that, like, okay, I'm sick of trying to find this thing on this planet.

I can just turn around and go to this planet over here. And it's a completely different experience, right? So I think having that universe to explore in Outer Wilds really appealed to me. It might just be the small apartment setting or the fact that I had to fill those mugs up with water 40 different times and I had to set the table 40 different times or I had to hide in the closet 20 different times that it really just started to irritate me at that point. I don't know if it's just the confined setting. I don't know if it was the tedium of having to repeat the exact

same steps over and over and over again. Outer Wilds, you don't have to do that because once you have the knowledge, there's ways that you can skip that. This time loop did not work for me at all. This is so funny because I didn't know if we were going to get to it or not, but I was going to say, whereas I thought Outer Wilds time loop did absolutely nothing to the experience, it could very well have just been time, right? Like, I get that a planet is sucking the sand off the surface of another, and over the course of your time loop, you know, the one planet becomes more enshrouded in sand, and the other one becomes available to explore. But that could very well be like a day-to-day cycle. It didn't need time loops for anything in the Outer Wilds. Whereas this game actually uses a time loop the way you actually would in real life. So you're going to wake up, you're going to have to say hello to your wife, you're going to have to prove that you're in a time loop by saying the right things.

And you're going to do all this, that, and the other. I found that the time loops in 12 minutes to be completely effective and totally ineffective in Outer Wilds. Those time loops are the boring kind, Paul. I do not want to have to set the table over and over and over again every day. Now, I will say this. So don't set the table. 12 minutes does follow like Groundhog Day. It's the same people telling you hello every day.

It's the same, you ate eggs and orange juice for breakfast. And it's that very, very repetitious time loop. Outer Wilds, I feel like is that more, you're gaining more and more knowledge every time, but the day is not exactly the same every time. And I think I prefer personally, I prefer that and the ability to explore and learn on my own pacing versus this being smashed over the head with the repetition pacing over and over again. So,

all right, Paul, I have a feeling you and I may differ just a little bit on our thoughts on this game. That is what the community thought. Let's see if we can guess what the overall community thinks as far as what this game is rated on Steam out of a scale of 0 to 100. I do believe I won last time.

You sure did. So I'll let you guess first since you were the winner. I did write this down. My guess was 82%. I will spoiler a little bit and say I'm not a huge fan of this game. I think it does a lot right. I think it does some stuff very wrong. Maybe that slandered my guess a little bit. I didn't go very, very high, but I also think that there's some really cool aspects to this game. So 82 was my guess. All right. I only know two people other

than me who played it and both of them did not like this game with you as one of the two okay i liked it a lot i feel so confused i think you could tell me this was 90 or 50 and i'd be like, sure, I guess. Like, I literally have no idea. I think if people bought it on Steam, I think a lot of people who played it for free on the Game Pass on Xbox, I bet most of them did not like it. But since we're only looking at Steam, you had to pay 25 bucks to play it, which means you probably knew what you were signing up for.

So I'm gonna take the over. I'll go with 83% and just hope that it's above. Paul, you and your little one below me, one over me game is failing miserably, Paul. It's below 82, huh? It's below. It's 74%. I initially wrote down 74%. I'm looking at my notes.

I honestly did. That's what you get, Paul. You should have gone with your gut instead of trying to swindle me by guessing one more than me. It's a good game. Look, if you don't want to play a time loop, this game's not for you, right? I want to play time loops. I kind of feel like you should know that. I want to play time loops. I absolutely love Outer Wilds, man. And that's a time loop game this game yeah how funny all right well i guess uh i'm introducing this next segment huh yeah i guess you are let's go ahead and hit that music hey baby you want to buy a watch hey baby you want to buy a watch oh boy hey baby You want to buy a watch? Oh boy. Hey baby. You want to buy a watch? You got to bump that

jukebox, right? It's stuck. Oh, all right. This is make love, marry or murder. This is how Paul and I are going to rate this game according to our own personal opinion. Um, you know, murder is, I really didn't like it. I don't recommend it. I don't think you should play this. Mary is this game was plenty fun. I think it's well worth the money. It was a good time. I don't know that I'll play this game a year from now. Maybe it's a one and done kind of thing. Mary is, this game is just phenomenal. It has a place in my heart. I think it's got long-term playability or it's just such a phenomenal value for what you get that I would recommend this to everybody. This one's easy for me, Paul. It's a murder.

I did not like this game. I like some of the aspects. I like what the developers did in some of the regards. I like thinking outside the box. I think the art style is neat. This game really, really grabbed my attention right away when we first learned about it. The repetition in this game completely ruined it for me. It really did. I had to force myself to open this game, to slog through another loop, to try to get some little teeny snippet of information that maybe I could use. And there were times where I got nothing. I did all this work, and I got nothing out of it because I didn't do the right things in the right order. So I had to do the loop again.

And all of the chores and the tedium that goes with it. And then maybe I didn't get anything out of that loop. And so I just found it to be very frustrating, very aggravating at times. And I think for me, that overshadowed the artistic part of this game. Interesting. Yeah, I would have to rate it Make love just simply because this game is about six hours long i did laugh when you told me that you thought you were almost done with the game and i checked my steam friends and you had played 2.8 hours or something like that yeah i was like i don't think so josh i think you got a few hours left. That made me so depressed, Paul, because I was like, no, I gotta play more.

See, I played all of it on the day it released. I had a light work schedule. I played it for about six hours on day one, and I beat it. I was very into discovering the story. I found the repetition to be exactly what it's supposed to do. If there was no repetition, this game would be 12 minutes long. And by nature, you have to have the repetition in order to enjoy when you discover the next clue or the next piece of evidence. And that works for me.

I get it didn't work for you. It's not going to work for everybody. I found it to be very delightful i would almost be tempted to give it mary simply because i think it's a must play if you like this kind of game but it is 25 and i think the 25 price tag is probably because they had to pay a whole bunch of money to willem defoe james mackboy and daisyley, because otherwise this game would feel like a five to $10 game, honestly, especially given the length.

But I do highly recommend it, but maybe wait for it to be on sale or watch streamers. Just go bring up YouTube, find someone who played it, just watch that. And I think you would get just as much enjoyment out of it. This is one of those games that I think would rank up there with the ability. I won't,

I want to rank it like heavy rain cause it's not in my mind at all, but the watching somebody play it and watching them try to figure out what to do and how they explore and how they try to, you know, get information for the loops would be pretty entertaining. This is definitely a game that you could play with like your spouse watching and saying like, Hey,

why don't you try doing that? Or something along those lines. I feel like it lends itself very well to being spectated and commented on, which not all games are, let's be honest. So this one does kind of fit that bill, but I didn't like it. Speaking of Heavy Rain, did you catch the Easter egg reference to Heavy Rain? No. In this game? speaking of heavy rain did you catch the easter egg reference to heavy rain no if you take your guy yeah if you take your guy into the bathroom and click on the window he goes wow there's some heavy rain out there and i was like yeah that's that's definitely an overt reference to the game that's not a coincidence there was a lot of easter eggs like that like you said with the carpet from the shining and stuff like that i did not pick up on that one um which is a shame because it

makes total sense and i remember the guy saying that but i didn't i didn't catch like the click yeah so how funny all right well let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up All right. So Josh and I have covered a total of 54 games on our deep dive episodes. We always at the end of a deep dive have to come to a consensus for where we will rank this game. Hope you got your boxing gloves on, Paul. Regardless of whether it's single player or multiplayer, regardless of the genre or the price. We just use our own personal preference and we just try to put it on the list. How are we going to recommend it? And a lot of the times we start off in pretty similar territory.

This one, I know we are not. So when you look at the 54 54 where are you inclined like what kind of range are you looking at uh like one above overcooked two get out of here i really i despise this game below pub g yes i would rather play pub g and get shot by hackers at least that's gonna make me laugh you know then to have to set the table and fill those stupid mugs up with water and hide in the closet and make a phone call and all that stuff that you have to do every single time, you know, dude,

Paul, it got so bad. Like honestly, in the beginning of the game, when your wife walks out of the bathroom and gives you a kiss, I was getting aggravated at the fact that she was slowing me down to give me a kiss. And you can skip it.

And then she goes rude. Yeah, I know, but you can't skip it fast enough. It's like, I don't want you to kiss me. I just want to go into the bedroom and look this and try to get this next loop going. I did not like this game at all. I found it terrible.

It was torture. Your gaming ADHD probably was really being set off trying to play 12 minutes. It really was i mean the the grabbing if i could have angrily snatched the plates out of the refrigerator paul and like and just smash them on the table i would have started doing that yeah but the game wouldn't allow me to express my displeasure like that they don't let you trash the place no yeah uh i would put it right in the middle of our list i liked it a lot i would i if i was ranking it on yeah uh i would put it right in the middle of our list i liked it a lot i would i if i was ranking it on my own i would put it below no man's sky stardew valley far cry

five i would probably put it above killing floor two raft vermentide two and outer wilds so you know i liked it quite a bit i'd have it middle of the pack. You have it at the very, very bottom. I don't see how we could put this below Valorant or Tarkov or Minecraft Dungeons. PUBG, I have trouble believing. I think if one of our friends said, hey, Josh, I've never played 12 Minutes. Will you come hang out with me and we can play this together? Or we can play PUBG for the next six hours. I don't see how you pick pub g is this a friend or an enemy paul because if it's a friend i'm gonna say hey let me do you a favor as your friend and i'm gonna save you six hours worth of torture don't play this game unless you like setting tables and filling mugs if you like that i mean we could call this like like house keeping simulator you know and just all right so

i'd be okay we do have to compromise i'm not gonna try to force the whole putting it at the very bottom of the list um i if i had to compromise i would put it at like 43 where human fall flat is and say this game might be fun for some people it's going to be really really bad for other people which i feel like human fall flat fits into that category all right how about i just talk you up only a couple of spots what if we put it between the cycle and civilization six so it'll be in the 40s That's fine. I think that might be just the best place to put it. That's fine. All right. And then we can always lower the cycle later

as it keeps getting worse and worse over time. All right. So we'll put 12 minutes here at a very respectable 42 out of now 55 games. Rip to 12 minutes. I liked you more than this. I know what can i do i liked you i liked you worse this was a big compromise oh i love it i do hope that we get more time loop games i i think that this there is something to be said for this game does some things really really right it does i agree people improve on, I'm all for it. I 100% agree. There were enjoyable moments in this game for me. Like I said, there's a lot

that they did very well. The overall feeling is what I am talking about. But I am with you in that please give us more time loop games. I think the premise is drastically underexplored. I get that it's hard to do. Maybe this is a learning experience for other developers to say, hey, pure repetition is not fun for some people. Other people love it, you know, but I think you're going to turn off of a lot of people by doing that. So maybe either incorporate some shortcuts after you know some certain things or don't make it as mundane as setting a table and filling mugs with water. I don't know. And again, you never, ever have to touch the mugs or the plates. Yes, you do. No, you don't. We're going to talk about that in spoiler

territory. You don't have to do any of that because I literally do not have to do that. I'm going to question this. Let's get to the spoiler part. You have to do it once. All right. So yes, we're going to enter spoiler territory. So I will give you all a second to pause your podcasting app if you need to. We are going to major, major... We're going to blow out this thing. The very ending, everything. Yes.

So hopefully no one is just fast forwarding and finding themselves right here at the end of the episode. So, you know, a couple of major reveals about this game. Essentially, you find out that your wife thinks that she killed her father eight years ago at Christmas time. It turns out that he actually died a full week later when you had met your wife at a New Year's Eve party or something like that. So basically you have proof that on New Year's Eve, your wife was with you and that was the day that her father died. So you can prove that it was not her,

but you have to find out who actually did kill the father. The father's last words as he died were monster. And you find out that your wife knew that her dad was having an affair with the nanny and she got pregnant and her mom used to call this you know bastard baby a monster so everyone kind of thinks okay well this must be her half brother that killed the dad now this game has three characters so on my paper notes that I jotted down, I immediately wrote down, am I the monster? Because that kind of seemed like the only

thing that it could be. So I think that's one of the major twists. How'd you feel about the fact that you've got an incest baby on the way with your half-sister? Yeah, it's a little weird, man. That is one of the reveals in one of the loops is that your wife is giving you dessert to break the news to you that she's pregnant, which should be a joyous occasion until a cop comes in and murders everybody. And then until you realize that this is an incestuous baby with her half-brother, you are the monster, which is a very weird plot twist. I mean, it is shocking. This is one of those things where it's like, it is a little bit easy to figure out because when you get that monster and that's one of those aha moments, you kind of

do the same thing. Like I was like, well, wait a minute. Am I the monster too? And then I was like, nah, that's kind of gross. But you really are. You really are. And your character says that they have no memory and no knowledge of this. So now you've been with her for eight years, and you're married, and now you've got this baby on the way. And then the final two minutes of the game that are not part of the normal loops is where you get a couple of different endings where basically it goes back in time all the way eight years before you pursue this relationship with your half-sister and your shared father is talking with you and asking you what are you gonna do because you cannot be with your half-sister. By the way, kind of on the dad's side. Not okay, right? And then you have a couple of options.

You can choose to not pursue it, in which case you get like this alone ending where you go back to your apartment, but everything's different. It used to be that your apartment was one of three. Well, now it's just one door and all of your furniture is gone. So that's kind of a weird ending. And then you have another ending where you can choose to not make any decision. And then he tells you that he's going to give you some hypnosis and make you forget about her. And you're going to forget the pain. And now you can make your own decisions moving forward, and you're not going to know any of this. So you kind of get these different endings that are all a little bit crazy. And I think what I ended up really appreciating is that clearly the entire game is in his head. None of this is real. Right.

It's the only explanation that makes sense. It is. And that would explain the time. It explains a lot of things, real. Right. It's the only explanation that makes sense. It is. And that would explain the time. It explains a lot of things, to be honest. It explains the time loop, right? Because anytime something bad happens, whether his wife dies or he dies, it resets the loop. Because in his mind, he's not capable of understanding that this relationship is over, you know, in that regard. So I think that is one reason for it. It's a little weird

that the dad is still voiced by William Dafoe, because it's like, is he the cop or is he the dad? Is he both? See, that's what I really love about this explanation of the game, because your father, now that you've gone back eight years in the past, he talks about you having a baby on the way. Well, how would he know that? It literally doesn't make sense. Your paintings in your apartment are literally changing over time. It's very surreal. This is not rooted in realism. And I really love the theory that basically your father is telling you you can't be with your half-sister and you're playing these scenarios, the time loops, in your head, and they all end in pain. It's just not possible.

You can't be with her. And the whole reason for why the cop is the same voice as your dad is that he's that presence who's trying to hunt you down and disapproving of what's happened and coming to get you. And to me, that kind of like, oh, because I was so confused. Why is it the same voice? And why would he know that we're expecting a baby eight years in the future? So I think that all kind of makes it make more sense. Now, I hate that trope. I hate the trope, it was all a dream, or it was all in a snow globe. I do too. And that's a little bit of the issue that I have with it when I said that there are twists, but I feel like they missed the mark a little bit. And I couldn't say that during the non-spoilery part, but I'll never forget, Paul, this is a little story. I wrote a story in like third grade

English that I was very proud of, but at the end I did the, and then I woke up and it was all a dream. And I remember my teacher getting very mad at me, like no lie, like in red ink on my paper, they wrote, don't ever do this. This is a cop out. Right. I still remember it to this day. And I'm talking, this is a long time ago, buddy. And I felt like that was like the moment in this game where I'm like, wait a minute, you can't do that, man. Like my third grade teacher said no. Yeah. And it is open to interpretation. So i don't know if that's what the developers really intended i think it is i think you would have to say that's the real ending um it didn't bother me in this case i normally hate that trope but i hate that in the sense where like you watch

the tv show roseanne and you find out that the whole last season john goodman that was terrible too and it's all being played in her mind like I do hate that in this game it's short enough that I didn't feel cheated it's six hours oh it's actually your character descending into this nightmare where he has perversions and he can't be with her and it keeps getting worse so if this was a 30 hour game it would have made me really mad. But I did it in one playthrough, and that's why it didn't bother me. The only reason that it pulls off at all is because if you take the fan theory route of all of the time loops are in this guy's head, his father

is trying to show him how he's not going to be able to be with his half sister and be happy. I think that the loops are the guy trying to reconcile how it can happen. How can I make this a happy marriage? How can I come home to my wife and have dessert and learn about this baby and life is good? But no matter what you do, life is not good. And even if you figure out the whole issue with the cop and the watch and you give the cop the watch and he just leaves, that's still not a happy ending. You know what I mean? At that point, you think like, oh, I figured... I still remember the moment where I was like, oh, the cop's leaving. I gave him the watch. I'm alive. My wife's alive. I did it. I beat the game. And then the loop restarts again.

Yeah. You know what I mean? And then I went, what? And that was like another moment of frustration for me because it was like, well, dude, what the heck, man? I thought I beat this game. And it's one of those things where I like the idea that this guy is trying to reconcile something in his mind that really isn't reconcilable. Right. And so I get that part of it, but the whole, it's all a dream. It's in his mind. It's not real thing. It's just kind of, it leaves that like sour note to me too. Yeah. I think just like the gameplay, it won't be for anyone and not for and not for everyone i agree with you but i think if it if it clicks it really clicks i initially i i was on the fence of whether or not i liked

this game but once i just kind of accepted oh it was all fictitious and this is just part of the story i ended up being on board so i actually do like it i think i will play this game again in the future i mean not anytime soon but a couple years down the road i might hop back in and say hey it's just a six hour playthrough you know i'll buzz through it again why not and what's kind of interesting you will i will not i can tell you that maybe i'll log in to just see how many things i can flush down the toilet but But honestly, after that, I probably will just uninstall. But there are several different endings in this game. There's one true ending.

So there is the discovery of which ending is the real ending. And I think that plays into the kind of guy exploring his psychosis in a way. Because like you said, you can get the alone ending. You can get the coward ending, which I think is pretty hilarious, right? Like where you can actually let, you can help the cop. Like, you know, you tie him up and then he says, hey, if you help me, I'll leave you out of this. And then you go like, okay, I had nothing to do with it.

I'm innocent. And the cop goes, yeah, I know. And then he kills your wife and takes the watch and just leaves. And you get this like achievement. More than that. He tells you to call 911 and say your wife committed suicide. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And you get this achievement. More than that. He tells you to call 911 and say your wife committed suicide. Oh, that's right.

And you do it. Yeah, and your guy does it too. And then the police are going to be in there. Yeah, exactly. So there all are these endings. But what's really weird is even when you get one of those, it just loops again.

There is one ending where you see the clock and the credits start to roll. That's considered the true ending. in like i there is one ending where that you see the clock and the credits start to roll like that's considered like the true ending but it's very difficult to get there and i like personally i don't know that it's worth playing through like eight different times to try to get that because it doesn't really answer any questions or anything either so i i like the the the twist the aspect of the twist is neat i think the execution was flawed. I think the game is flawed. But I like anything that makes you wonder afterwards. I instantly, once I beat it,

I went to Reddit and I was like, hey, 12 minutes fan theory. And there's a lot of really cool discussion about the different aspects of the game. And anything that can do that is interesting to me. And so I have to give them kudos in that regard. It just took an immense amount of effort for me to get to the point where I cared about any of that stuff because the loop was so frustrating. Yeah, for you, the payoff didn't excuse the repetition, where I just feel the exact opposite. Yeah, the last thing I'll say is, I don't know if this is still the case, but the developer did say that there were at least two major things that you can unlock in the game

that, as far as they know, people have not discovered, or at least not posted about it. So it's not necessarily like a Steam achievement, but something you can do in the game that they think is still secret and hidden, which I think is really kind of fun and fascinating it makes you go in and just goof around like you know well what if i flush the watch down the toilet and then when the cop comes in i tell him i know where the watch is and my guy starts cackling saying i flushed it down the toilet you know like that's a really

funny unique option that you can get and so apparently there might still be a couple things like that still to be discovered that's neat to. Honestly, kudos to them because the fact that they can account for so many different things, like me smashing the flower vase, you flushing the watch down the toilet, that can't be easy. So I give them kudos. I really do. I'd love to see more stuff like this. I just wish it had slightly different aspects for me, because there's some very good something there. I just feel like it was overshadowed by broccoli. Oh, I love broccoli. I do actually like broccoli, but okay, maybe like mushrooms. Let's say mushrooms. It's like, there's this delicious delicious spaghetti but it's got mushrooms in it and so i don't want it yeah yeah all right well that's all the time that

we have here for today i know this one was longer than normal but we didn't want to cheat our you know listeners who just didn't want anything spoiled so just consider this all bonus content for those of you who stuck around and then we will be back with this week in gaming on thursday and again if you want to come game with us and talk to us and other listeners of the show, come hit us up on Discord. And also, please consider supporting us through Apple subscriptions or on Patreon at MultiplayerSquad.com. It's just a couple bucks a month, and it really does go a long way. And we are very appreciative to those of you who already support.

And I think that's it, Josh. So let's get out of here. Let's go. We got another game to play, Paul. We sure do. All right. We'll see you guys next time. See everybody.