Threads
- The time rewind concept and the emotional story make the experience enjoyable as if you’re watching a movie.
- With no tutorials and simple controls, this choice-based 2D point-and-click game takes you on an emotional rollercoaster.
- The voice-over and the interactive items allow for an immersive experience.
Neflix’s 12 Minutes game has shown how a 2D point-and-click game with minimal graphics has told a great story and kept players hooked. Let’s see how they did that.
Short Game With Simple Controls
This 2D game works with a click of a mouse button and is only around 2 hours long. Despite that, it engages players due to its interesting concept and incredible story.
Time Rewind Concept
12 Minutes has an outstanding plot that revolves around the concept of time being reminded each time our protagonist dies. Each time you’re brought back up to the same place where you started in the beginning but with new information.
Engaging Story
This choice-based game starts with a husband (you) arriving home to his wife, who’s excited to reveal to her husband that he’s going to become a father. Each choice allows you to have a chat with your wife where she reveals information.
After about 3 minutes, there’s a knock on the door and a man forcefully rushes into your house, demanding a watch. The intruder cuffs you and upon your wife’s denial of possessing any watch, he kills you right away.
This is where time rewinds and you are back in your house where you entered and your wife is excited to reveal to you that you’re going to become a father. However, only your character is aware of the time rewind and now there are more choices for you to make.
These choices are in the form of new questions that you can ask your wife. Some of the choices are also about convincing your wife that you’re stuck in a loop. Either way, the concept of time rewind in a choice-based game is fascinating and extremely immersive.
Wrong Choices Lead To Right Choices
This is one of the choice-based games that doesn’t punish you right away if you make wrong choices. Instead, the game allows you to make choices for the most part to guide you to get more information.
Interactable Items
With such simple controls, we might expect that this is just another boring point-and-click game. However, the story evolves as we interact with the objects lurking in the game. For most players, it took a great deal of time to find out that items play a vital role in the story.
While some items work when you directly click on them. However, most of them work when you click on them and then click on the character to initiate an action with them regarding the item.
For instance, clicking on a cup then on the tap, followed by a click on your wife will let you fill up your cup with water and present it to your wife. This subtle interaction will change the story of your game.
Similarly, by clicking on rooms and cabinets, you can interact with them to either enter them or see their contents respectively. This also allows you to toy around and come up with creative ways to progress the story.
Immersive Voiceover
Netflix featured some of the most talented actors such as Willem Dafoe, James McAvoy, and Daisy Ridley as the voice-over artists for the three in-game characters. If someone’s unfamiliar with these, let me highlight some of their popular work.
Willen Dafoe played the role of the infamous green goblin from the Spiderman series. James McAvoy portrayed young Professor Charles Xavier from the X-Men Series. Daisy Ridley is best known for her role as Rey in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
Despite being talented actors, they were incredibly immersive with the voice-overs for the 12 Minutes game. They portrayed all the emotions with their voice, using different tonalities as the situation demanded.
Feels Like Watching A Movie
This point-and-click game turned out to have one of the most immersive experiences with its story turning out to be a ride on the emotional rollercoaster. As the story progresses, you go from hating the antagonist to feeling empathy for him.
Despite being only a 2 hours long 2D game, 12 Minutes gives you insane plot twists that will leave you baffled. After the game ends, you’re left wanting more of it, and playing it feels like you’ve just finished watching a 2-hour long movie.
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[News Reporter]
Abiyan is on track to complete his Computer Science bachelor’s degree. His enthusiasm for writing and gaming motivates him to keep readers and gamers updated with the latest information from the industry. In his free time, Abiyan enjoys playing Dota 2 and Rocket League. Abiyan has also been cited in reputed websites such as Kitguru, Comicbook, GamingBible, Eurogamer and Gamingbolt.
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