Hey Ozzy! I'm one of the devs of the Sexy Brutale and I just wanted to say thanks for including the game in this video! I've been binging your vids the last week and finally watched this one. It was a fun, unexpected surprise to see it pop up. Love your work! (found you through the raging loop one and going back through older ones now)
@@Pluschan It was a fun game I played years ago now and I enjoyed it, I just really wish the finale had been what the game seemed to be eluding to the entire while: figuring out how to save everybody in a single run instead of each one individually.
Yooo! Wanted to say that The Sexy Brutale is one of my favorite indie games ever, genuinely. Beat it 100% three times and I’m planning on buying it on the PS4 soon too for another playthrough. I hope you’re proud of you and your team’s work, you deserve it.
Yeah, just look at Edge of Tomorrow- my guy practiced so much he became a murder machine (both in light novel/manga and movie). And I don't care it makes no sense, it was a great story lol
Ehh... maybe. Within the constraints of 12 minutes, you can certainly read every book in the house. I have the game on Steam, haven't played it yet, but if you have a phone or a tablet or a laptop with internet access, you can in principle read every web page on the Internet that exists at the start of the loop - even some that are created within it. But let's say you're grossly overweight, for example. It doesn't matter if you spend every loop exercising vigorously if only information is retained between loops - you aren't going to be able to get jacked. I would argue that most physical skills are at least partly 'muscle memory'; you might know, theoretically, exactly how to win the fight but that _might_ not mean you're able to actually get your body to do it. "Dodge left, dodge right, duck, jump, punch" or something might work - there are certainly fictional premsises where it does - but if your attacker is enough stronger, faster, or more skilled than you then you might never be able to beat him, no matter how well you know the sequence.
@garysturgess6757 disagree, if you can fight the same fight over and over again while you retain information and your opponent doesn't, eventually you WILL win.
@@garysturgess6757 It takes 1 good hit that lands to win a a proper fight. 2 at most. At that point you have enough of an advantage that you can finish the fight as long as you don't let yourself get surprised. There is absolutely no reason why anyone who isn't wheelchair bound would be incapable of winning a fight while in a timeloop. Even a child could beat a professional in any combat sport you care to name under those circumstances. When the fear of death and the fear of killing someone stops being an issue, it really isn't that difficult to bash a human skull in. Not to mention that grabbing a knife from the kitchen wouldn't be much of a challenge in 12 minutes. At that point, you can even win a fight if you are wheelchair bound. Worst case scenario, it just takes a lucky throw.
Wife: * Sobs * "How can you just sit there eating while I'm having a breakdown!" Husband: "What? I'm about to go to jail. And I'm not going to let perfectly good food go to waste."
Yeah I had roughly the same thing happened to me, wherein at some point in the video I realized "OH, 12 minutes is the name of the game, not something about the video"
I'm literally keeling over in laughter from the protagonist's zany antics. "Babe? Babe? Babe?" *eats cake for 5 minutes* "Sir? Sir? Sir?" As a dramatic tragedy this game sucks ass, but as a black comedy this game is sister-lickin' good!
“oops, incest” is not the hard-hitting plot twist the devs thought it was edit: I did not expect my dumb joke comment that I wrote out in about two seconds to initiate a heated debate about the ethics of incest. Peruse the replies at your own discretion.
I legit forgot about the incest part lmao to the point it didn't hit me until Im knee deep in seeing comments mentioning incest and controversy and tbh, I dont even remember the incest ending clearly
@@GARLICJRkingofthedeadzoneso they're otherwise compatible except for the fact of their genetics? That doesn't actually seem like a compelling reason to dissolve decades of marriage. They could just not conceive a child together
Oh my god I accidentally restarted the video and watched it for 5 whole minutes thinking you were doing a self-aware time loop bit before realizing I set it back💀
A heartbreaking story about a father forced to murder and steal to save his daughter's life. About a couple who hold a terrifying secret that puts their life on the line. No, actually, it was all a daydream and yeah, also, incest.
I hated this game because it felt like halfway through they stopped caring about a game and started caring more about “how do we get more people talking about this game? I know! Let’s just fill it with controversy”!
I have a genuine feeling that if not Willem Dafoe was not voicing in the game it would have flown so far under the radar it'd crash into a bush. Plus the fact that he voices both the Father and the Assassin could be seen as clever if it was not for the fact that they clearly had a limited budget and he was needed to voice 2 characters.
@CommissarMitch Since it's all in his head, an image of his father literally comes back to kill him for his daughters sake. Hence why the father is bald at the end
I don't see how a story having dark subject matter automatically makes it worse. Breaking Bad is universally loved and it features: drug addiction, child murder, the kidnapping of a baby, a man attempting SA his wife, misogyny, racism, ableism, and more horrible things, yet that doesn't make it a worse story, but for some reason other stories don't get that same luxury? Game of Thrones also has inc*st but doesn't get the same flak for it (the last season was hated for different reasons)
@@GARLICJRkingofthedeadzoneit is not the dark subjects, but the implenentation of it. The incest in GoT makes sense in the world and is hinted at straight from the start. Breaking Bad shows it will be dark within the first 20 minutes. Here it is an uno reverse card out of nowhere and it feels like a cheap cop out
I love that this plot hinges on you finding out your wife might’ve murdered her dad and your immediate response isn’t “oh hey! I also murdered my dad! Twinsies!”
I feel like the arguments in the video arent really talking about problems with timeloop games its more of that 12 minutes is terribly designed and has a disappointing ending
@@Bluecho4 there ain't any timeloops in the first place tho, you're playing under a pretence that there is one. and the video did not explain anything about why the game sucks (concerning timeloops) except that there is nothing to do in the first 5 minutes, it's linear and a lil bit dumb.
the problem is repetition. A movie can just montage all the repeat events and only show you the new things, but in a game that's more difficult. If you want to try an event differently, you need to re-do the things that led up to that event and wait for any time-sensitive events to trigger, and if you forgot to do something important than you have to start all over again.
@@android19willpwn Even that isn't truly *necessary,* though. The biggest temptation for developers making a time loop game always seems to be gating progress behind random in-loop events, specifically to prevent players from just skipping to the "final" loop right away. But there's literally no reason to prevent that, just require that doing so has the user either need to have played the previous loops enough to find out what they need... or that they use a guide. Which ultimately is the same thing, as far as the game is concerned.
@@PhysicsGamer This is the best way to do time loops in games. Its also why outer wilds is by far the best time loop game (including one of the best games period), outer wild lets you keep nothing from the last loop, only your knowledge, so everything is knowledge based, all the puzzles only need to be solved once and then you can just easily skip them because you already know what to do.
And? that dosent explain the loops WHY this happens if anything it would just feel cheezy "Oop I did a good thing now magically the loops stop because the power of love"
@@sanicinapanic4264honestly unexplained timeloops are much better then "it was all a dream". Latter one is just invalidation of everything you've done at this point and it annoys so much more then stuff that just isn't explained. Plus I don't believe that writers of this game would do explanation justice so pick your poison.
the sexy brutale was so good, but man I wish it finished and actually included had what it feels like it builds up to all game - solving every single murder in one loop. Such a missed opportunity
Absolutely! A big miss as far as I'm concerned. I even went as far as partially plotting this out: if the day didn't automatically end upon saving someone, there actually is almost enough time to do everything - there would just need to be some small tweaks to movement patterns and probably 1 added mirror. (I proposed the idea to the devs ~6 years ago, and they were at least somewhat interested but assumedly decided it'd be too much work to add.)
That's the thing with the Sexy Brutale to me. It's pretty good. And when the video argues it doesn't hit the lows that are common with time loops part of the reason is that it doesn't hit the highs either. It doesn't use its time loop much at all. The game is good. But I wish it was more. Even outside the time loop every puzzle basically requires 1 action and it's solved. Was really hoping for a Ghost Trick-esque Rube Goldberg machine
The ability to do that wouldn't have worked with the story though. Also it would have been pretty difficult to work into the game mechanically. As-is there's one specific, tightly choreographed schedule of daily events which is 100% non-reactive, that you can interrupt at some point to save somebody but otherwise the day just plays out the exact same over and over. If you could save multiple people they'd need to implement different schedules for each combination of attendees saved and that's quite a number of combinations and a massive load of work.
@@abdulmasaiev9024 the dev has complete control of all schedules in the game as they made them, they can tweak it to allow the player to travel to each point when required. The majority of the work required would be for planning and testing that it is clearly communicated to the player what they have to do. Adding a reaction to each death wouldn't take a huge amount of work as it would just be a list of all the guests and pointers to certain branches depending on if they've been saved or not, as the timeline system and reactions to certain events already exists in the game. A lot of the schedule could be shared between each timeline past a certain point. Yes it would take a decent amount of effort but it'd considerably improve the game
@@jacksonreynolds7433 The Sexy Brutale is one of those games where I love the concept and potential so much, which makes me dislike the final game itself a bit. The first loop in the tutorial is really good and sets up for what could be great detective puzzles which get more and more complex as the loops get longer. The problem is the puzzles don't really increase in complexity, whereas the time does. It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the very last one is just you walking behind the guy who is going to die and solving a rather simple lever puzzle, while having to do an entire day reset walking behind this slow guy again to do it right. Funnily enough, I get to a similar criticism as this video makes about 12 minutes, namely that in this game where time is of the essence, you spend a lot of time sitting around just waiting for the loop to progress so you can perform your one or two actions to save the victim. They maybe could have done it by making more parallel hallways, like ones that are in old mansions sometimes so nobility don't encounter servants (not sure if that's myth but anyway), that way the game could keep a more frantic pacing. Just being reminded of this game makes me not want to play it but think about all the different things it could have been. A different title as well, that for sure.
The moral of the story is “Don’t be a good person and try to grow better than the person you were when you made the worst mistake of your life, just forget and move on!”
One slightly interesting thing about this game, when considering the main details about the story, is that it actually holds quite a few parallels to a Portuguese novel by the name of "Os Maias", which is not only a very important book in our modern Literature, but it also holds a story of incestuous occurrences, to put it lightly. The reason why it's fun to point out is because the game's developer and writer, Luís António, is himself Portuguese; as such he would be privy to such a story, making the parallels go from pure coincidence to possible inspiration. no time loops in the book tho
I remember reading a book in a literature class from about the beginning of 20th century and there was an incestuous plot twist. I was so incredibly unimpressed, the writing in the story was underwhelming too. I thought the standards must've been low back at the time. Honestly can't remember any good story with that twist, terribly sorry for oldboy fans, it's not just because I am so appalled, but it never made for a good story and imo always was used for twist/shock purposes.
I still don't understand why so many games refuses to do the majora's maks approach. Everytime I see a timeloop game they tried REALLY hard to be as far away as Majora, for some reason
Really like the analysis, and I will also recommend: Slay the Princess is a really cool branching pathways horror game that came out this year. It has amazing visual style, good delivery of story, and most of all: time loops!
I was thinking of Slay the Princess as well!! I’ve been obsessed with it since launch and have been dying for more people to play it. I hope Ozzy checks it out!
I love slay the princess but i would argue it doesnt really have time loops but its more of a meta narrative with the actual player as the protagonist, the fact that it loops comes more as a result of how games function rather than being a diegetic thing, it would be like saying doki doki literature club has time loops since you restart the game at various points
Ive been following it since the demo and i have followed the narrator's (and voices') va for a couple of years now because i listened to his other project the magnus archives (also really damn good). And i can promise ya'll the game did not dissapoint.
I would recommend deathloop for the exact opposite reasons, the story is kinda shit but the gameplay is really good and experimental as well as the voice acting and art style being incredible
As someone who spent 8 hours grinding away at this game trying to figure out what the heck to do, then folding and looking up the solutions, this video was a 1000 times more entertaining than the game.
Same here. I got stuck at the part where you knock him out cuz I didn’t figure out that the wife needs the stupid photo cuz she was always knocked out 😂. I just kept knocking her out from habit at that point tbh
Designing a game that makes you want a fast forward button is not really a great thing to begin with. I never found myself wishing for a skip option playing Outer Wilds and the longest I had to wait there was maybe like 2 minutes and only because I was at the very end of the game and knew how to do things I needed to do fairly quickly. The fact that 12 minutes expects you to do nothing but wait for 40% of the loop duration shows that it has no clue how to utilise its main mechanic.
they have that option with this game, with previously heard dialogue, you can click through it, and when hiding in the closet it skips to the next event. by no means am i defending this game, because it has some insane issues, but yea at least it has that
@@pm_me_ur_gluons Outer Wilds does in fact have a skip option though, by dozing on the campfire. Thing is, you actually do have a lot of different things to do elsewhere so you might only rarely need if you really want to get to a particular event on a delay, and I can personally only think of two instances where this is the case.
@@pm_me_ur_gluonsyeah in Outer Wilds the only reason to waste time at a campfire is very late game when you need to wait for the sand on Ash Twin to fall further, and no other mysteries to progress. Or, you’re doing a speed run.
@@pm_me_ur_gluons doing stuff that because of your skill from the repeated loops allows you to do these actions easily. this game it is just an inconvenience and has no interest
Part of the annoyance of 12 Minutes is that the game offer no shortcuts, meaning you will have to wait around for a long time just to do one specific thing late in the loop. Other time loop games like Outer Wilds and The Forgotten City offer mechanics that allow you to skip the repeating sections after you have done it once. In Outer Wilds most location has a hidden shortcut you can find by exploring the area. In the Forgotten City, my beloved Galerius can take care of most errands for you once you have did them in previous loop.
Unbelieveable how in a game called twelve MINUTES, which is about REPLAYING THE SAME EVENTS and some of them REQUIRE WAITING, the devs didn't think of adding a timeskip mechanic which was ALREADY USED in so many games before... What?! Did they playtest this??
@@Elluka_Clockworker oh, I guess you're right. I think in the video it was mentioned how the "waiting around" gets painfully obvious towards the end, taking it as ACTUALLY waiting. Anyway my comment is useless now xD
People keep saying that Outer Wilds let's you skip things, but in my experience that really isn't true. You'll have keep coming back to planets over and over again if you didn't get to explore everything in time, if you navigated wrong, died, or got pushed/teleported/space magicked/pulled away because of the movement mechanics, many dangers and the air limit. I got almost all burned out because of the you-know-what in Brittle Rock, and try to get there too fast and you'll die on the way (forgot what messes up the flight but it happened a few times). And then you did all that effort just to maybe learn 1 significant thing. I found the game extremely tedious with my ability to handle the controls.
I'd be surprised if time loops work less well in games than other media, given repetition is such a key part of many game genres (e.g. roguelikes). Hell, I could see time loops being introduced to games as narrative justification for pre-existing gameplay.
The problem with games as a medium, which the video unfortunately does not mention at all, is the fact that games have little or no access to the montage as a storytelling device. In any other medium, you can skip over or summarize many loops that were mostly uninteresting, but still contained a small amount of useful information between them (see for example Groundhog Day). In a video game, if you do something like that in a cutscene, it's considered bad form because you're taking away the player's control and agency. As a result, if multiple loops need to involve similar events, those events have to be displayed on screen repeatedly, without any summarization or elision. That is boring. The solution is to encourage the player to try different things in each loop, without requiring them to take the same actions as were necessary last time. This probably works best for more exploratory games, like Outer Wilds or Zelda - you can give the player lots of different places to explore, too little time to see them all, and have those places change over time so that the loop is actually doing something useful (rendering some locations more or less accessible at different points in the loop).
@@NYKevin100 I think the away around this is somehow implement a way for you to skip these parts of loops that you have already completed a certain number of times, allowing you to do it in each next iteration. I don't think this entirely solves the problem, but could be a bandage to find a better solution other than adding so many different ways to do things.
@@NYKevin100not really, this game is just really poorly directed. Outer wilds did it very well, where there's no "general setup" that has to be done every loop. As soon as you have control over the rocket, you are either investigating something new, or reattempting a set sequence that you failed, this game has the equivalent of spending the first 15 minutes rebuilding your rocket every loop, which is boring and unnecessary. This game is a massive step pack design wise, to something like dragon's lair or a traditional point and click. They wanted to make a drama and they ended up in the videogame industry because they quite obviously couldn't even score a Netflix drama 😂. Many such cases, gamers sadly have much lower standards than movie goers for character driven entertainment.
12 minutes is one of those games that, when I realised what the twist was; I closed the game and never touched it again. It is the one regarding the main couple. I despise those type of twists and have as of yet found one that works.
For me it's the "WooOOOaah you just FORGOT this life-changingly significant thing" aspect of it. Oldboy or Oedipus work because they're about conscious decisions or tragic error, not "oops amnesia"
This is the worst game I ever completed. I felt absolutely betrayed and disgusted by that ending that acted like it was saying something deep while robbing any semblance of meaning to be found within it
I love how In Stars and Time deals with the potential issues with time loop games. First of all, the repetitiveness is important to the story. By repeating the same events over and over again, you’re going through what the character is experiencing, and a big part of the story is examining how the time loop is affecting the main character and their mental state. Second, there are ways to skip forward and loop back, but there are mechanical and story reasons why you may choose to play through everything in full even if it’s repetitive and tedious. You really feel like you’re experiencing the time loop with the character in a way that doesn’t feel pointlessly frustrating.
I also really, really love time loop stories and video games. It's really unfortunate that a lot of the few ones we have are so... bad at exploring the time loop part. And mostly in the same ways, too - 12 Minutes and In Stars And Time have some similar problems, for instance, though the latter is _infinitely_ more enjoyable thanks to having actual characters. With dialogue you want to read. Anyways, it seems to me that the biggest temptation for developers making a time loop game always winds up being the same. To prevent players from just skipping to the "final" loop right away, progress winds up gated off behind non-time-gated in-loop events. Key A isn't findable in the drawer unless you pick up photo B, which the character refuses to do unless they've heard line C from NPC D, and even then the door is mysteriously jammed until you've also picked up totally unrelated item E... or even worse, the character just refuses to interact with the key in the drawer until they've already reached the door in a later loop and had to reset back. Clearly such protagonists need to play more adventure games. But there's literally no reason to do that. The only thing the dev needs to do is design the puzzles such that either the player needs to have successfully played enough previous loops to find out what they need to advance... or that they use a guide. Which ultimately is the same thing, as far as the game is concerned. Sure, require the player to have the key to open the door, but there's no need for them to wait for another character to mention there might be something behind the door in order to have the key actually appear. Even the best example we probably have of diagetic save/load systems, Undertale, gates off the last chunk of True Pacifist behind seeing the neutral ending at least once beforehand. Though at least it gives a good in-universe reason for it to happen.
Honestly, that's why Outer Wilds is an awesome time loop game. If you go in completely blind, it takes hours. But if you know what you're doing, it's 15 minutes. You don't need to go through a bunch of ridiculous puzzles, all you need is to know where to go. Which, consequently, is why it's impossible to talk about to people who haven't played so you *don't* spoil how to beat it.
@@charlietheuncreative6737 That's a good point! Both on the recommendation and the problem with such games. I'd like to see a similar approach in a somewhat more conventional RPG, admittedly. Breezing through a whole bunch of puzzles way faster than even the characters in-universe expect you to has the potential to be _very_ amusing
@@_amaya. Yep! And really enjoyed it, too. The time loop elements are somewhat downplayed due to all the characters more or less resetting every 2-3 loops, but in between those the writing is phenomenal.
The time loop is way too short if you struggle with the controls. It makes the whole experience way too stressful and frustrating and repetitive. As an aside, why does the air limit exist if you already have another time limit??? I'm outright baffled by the choice to make the air limit less than 30 minutes.
@@isawp5199I don't know how you're playing that made air a problem. It's not a problem for the majority of people. The developers have to cater to the wider audience. I'm sorry to hear that you struggle with the controls, but if they made the loop more lenient then it would trivialize the game for a lot of people.
Why do I keep finding project moon comments and references in totally unrelated stuff it's like I'm being attracted to it by God's will (PM games are my favorite series in the world by the way)
@@Ray_Mosesyou cannot escape loboco brainrot, and neither can i, my friend has been badgering me to play pm games so im just waiting for a sale now also for library of ruina as well limbus is not as good as the other 2 though from what i’ve heard
@@goldencheeze The story of limbus is barely through the halfway point so i say its too early to judge, and personally so far i think its a great continuation of everything! Only downside is that its a gacha, really. but they're chill with the resources they give you, other than that the combat is a liiiitle watered down but its still very fun, plus, form your own opinion on it :D
I thought this game was pretty bad when I played it, but wow watching this video really drives home how terrible it is. Another thing that's so hilariously bad about the game is the voice acting, which is terrible, even though they hired big time, very talented film actors-- James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley and Willem Dafoe for the cast. I imagine that must have been the majority of the games budget. Not blaming the actors either, they were working with terrible dialogue and probably got little to no direction from the game makers who were misguided enough to think throwing money at big actors would fill the void of competent writing.
The problem I find with time loop games is that they never give the player a chance to just, "do it right eventually". Characters in these games often find themselves repeating the exact same failures over and over. Like, how about don't? Ideally, a time travel loop game should let the player grind to perfect optimisation by doing things right eventually. Failure should not be random, but forced. For instance in Life is Strange, Max can shatter I think it was a snowglobe by reaching up to it. Then the devs added insult to injury, because if you rewind and then reach for it again, it shatters again and Max has a new line implying it'll never work and she should stop trying. It's arbitrary, it's an accident, it shouldn't just happen again, yet it always will. An example in this game is stabbing the invader. That should work, eventually. And there'd be no reason not to do it. Let the guy die, cool, now you have to restart anyway, you don't get more information with his death and it probably freaks your sister wife out enough for her to leave.
Well death loop I believe is similar to what you want. You are basically learning how to best play the game, basically speedrunning it as you repeat the loops
I feel like, fundamentally, the concept of a time loop is fascinating. Just look at how INCREDIBLE outer wilds is, y'know? It's just that the loop in 12 minutes, uh. Sucks ass.
12 minutes really is a game that seems shocking for the sake of it. like for the whole hitman arc your justification is surviving the hitmans attack and saving your wife yet the way you progress is to hide in a closet and watch her get murdered and then to drug her. the whole kid having cancer plotpoint only to exists to humanise someone willing to comit murder for money when it simply could have been the revenge plot on its own. and the incest twist is just... if you're going to have it why did you make the woman pregnant? all that said the father murder scene weirdly works cause the whole issue was that the father isolated his children from eachother, the boy was called a monster and when the father hears of this delicate situation instead of calmly explaining things and sitting both kids down and admit his fault in never introducing them two as family he assaults his own son while the sister doesn't even get any punishment adding more to the whole monster thing. the boy at that moment was being assaulted and retaliated, if he were to get arrested it would most likely count as self defence. and yet it is still framed as him being the bad guy for doing something gross when he repressed a traumatic beating. and then the plot twist which is just... so the dude fantasised about murdering his father then? having a kid with his sister? the guy started out as sympathetic from the shitty situation he was put in but the events of the game just make him completely unlikable, which is a problem because you have to play as him. plot twists that the player is actually a terrible person can work, and bad guy player characters can work too, but they need to be endearing and this guy, his one redeeming trait of being tragic is revoked by the true ending.
Just my take, I don't think the protagonist framed him as sympathetic at any point. I think you sympathizing with him isn't the same as the game making him sympathetic. And, to be fair, I do understand the character too, but that's because I looked at him from a certain perspective, not because the game presented him in any specific way. Actually, as much as I think the protagonist repressed the traumatic memory of what happened, the game doesn't even confirm this, he could just be an asshole who's lying to her wife and to himself about the situation. I don't think that's the case, but since the protagonist doesn't really react much to most things, the game isn't offering me enough information to confirm or deny anything about his morals.
@@funyarinpa9464 honestly I'd disagree, the entire game is framed from his perspective, it is designed to be seen from the guys perspective, and as for him knowing and being an asshole, the scene he figures out he killed his father he straight up faints, and that realisation comes from connecting the name of his child to his family. Granted he is portrayed as an asshole by drugging his wife but that is moreso down to the game design than characterisation. His goal is stopping the hitman, nothing assholy about that. Obviously the meta twist ruins it because it turns out to be a fantasy but eh, we can agree that was stupid lmao
I think the game style can really affect the quality of a time loop game, like games that naturally have high replayability are a sort of iterative loop in themselves, just the player is the iterator not the character. So a game like a visual novel has an easier time doing this than most formats as many already have the tools to basically travel the loop built in I think one thing that could make one of these games interesting would be a means of discussing and processing a time loop between loops (or at least the important parts). That way you and your character are forced to process what you’re doing to people in your attempts to try and stop the loop, and thus you don’t end up playing quite an irredeemable monster.
If you’re looking for a game that discusses and processes your actions in each given loop, I recommend checking out “In stars and time”. It’s an rpg maker game, with some turn based combat, but the main focus of the game are the characters. Granted the game’s beginning is kinda slow and the tutorial is… not the greatest. If you can get past those two problems then this might be the game for you.
@@ugggghhhhhhhh1176 I'm going to have to jump in and disagree with you there. In Stars And Time was a game I _really_ wanted to like, and I wound up liking a fair bit anyway thanks to the characters being enjoyable... but the time loop component just _sucks._ The key premise of the game is the inherent disconnect that can develop when one lives through the same period over and over, like how in 12 Minutes the player starts ignoring the wife's romantic gestures. But both games suffer from a failure to _do_ anything with that, mostly relegating it to snippy or snarky comments and the occasional "When did I tell you that?!" That rock trap early on in ISAT is maybe a good example. Having an initial, unavoidable death isn't the worst thing for a game like that, to be clear, though I'd much prefer if you could force the issue by checking that one pillar 20+ times or something. But the game pulls the same exact trick _repeatedly,_ forcing resets mostly in order for the player to "discover" items that genuinely weren't there the first time they checked. The repeated handwaves about how a key is "taped to the top of the drawer" or just... not something the main character spotted somehow don't help. On top of that, the save points don't work like they need to in order to actually be diagetic. Loading into a save point should restore the progress you had when you saved, not... set your progress flag to a specific chapter? Honestly I was never super clear what they were supposed to be doing in-universe thanks to them being so inconsistent. The bit with the pineapple was fun, though. I liked that moment.
@@PhysicsGamer Honestly, I agree with all of your points. Now that I’m thinking about it, I feel like the time loop mechanic was something I kinda forced myself to like??? And all the other stuff I genuinely forgot about cause they annoyed me so much lol. All that to say, you bring up some excellent points. A terrible lapse in memory led to me promoting a game to be something that it is not. I apologise to anyone I’ve mislead. I also like the pineapple bit, relying on players forgetting a small detail like that was surprisingly well done.
@@ugggghhhhhhhh1176 It was also very fun that you could bring it up with the star person afterwards. But the only payoff was a single line of dialog, not an early reveal of any lore or similar. Which would have been appropriate, given you had to go out of your way to bring that up. Thinking on it more, I'd say my biggest issue with the game is really just the lack of real thought into how the save points work. The game at least kinda wants to be about the banal horror of a time loop sucking the meaning out of one's interactions as one repeats them over and over... but it also goes out of its way to obscure that banality at every opportunity. The first time the game outright told me to "loop forward" raised an eyebrow, and when I followed its advice I was expecting a twist to show that I _couldn't_ do that. But no, it worked just fine. Which it shouldn't have. Question: when I go back, change something, and then "loop forward"... what do my party members actually remember? What was their experience of that moment, if any? Do they now remember me going out of my way at that point, despite me never having done so and also gotten back to where they all now were? The game doesn't seem to have thought that part through. Again, I didn't _dislike_ my time with ISAT! The characters are pretty great, honestly, and that made the playthrough worthwhile. It's just that the game drops the ball on the time loop portion, which I was rather looking forward to.
It could be possible for a game to use a New Game+ as a time-loop. Like, if you're on your second or third playthrough the game progresses mostly normally until about halfway through, when suddenly you're character breaks down and confesses to all the other characters that they've lived through this all before. From there on the plot is heavily altered due to the character knowing what's going to happen. Could be interesting?
Disciples: Liberation did exactly that at the end of the game. Unfortunately its like a 60 hour game, that I and many others had zero desire to replay to experience the true ending so many like myself just watched someone else's ending on youtube. It was definitely not worth replaying the game for, it was basically an extra boss fight and a pat on the back during the ending. Very disappointing for an RPG but also understandable as it'd be expensive to do very well.
@@Efra_EMXAs a OneShot fan, I can confirm I am in an Iterative Loop, a fictional story created by none other than God, the author of existence itself, and I break the boundaries of my story's fourth wall by writing this comment, which is better unnoticed. Yes, I broke my braincells
Does anyone else find it weird that the father becomes bald and has William Dafoe's voice... *the same voice as the cop's??* I also would've loved to hear a bit more about time loops in general, but this has amazing production quality. The thumbnail reminds me of Deathloop. My biggest gripe with time loop games is that most of their endings fall flat after really good buildup. Quantum Break (SPOILER) gives you two branching narratives that lead to one ending. However, you don't even get the catharsis that it was only an illusion of choice. It's simply a let down.
@optionboom Yeah since it's all in his head, an image of his father literally comes back to kill him for his daughters sake. Hence why the father is bald at the end
Then my question is what the fuck is Bumblebee and her having cancer. Only a watch can cure her, insurance won’t help. Is the “baby” cancer, a wrong thing to be removed? But due to it being insest or what? Why is the watch both important and Valuable, time? I’d take it back if I could only go back? It’s full of questions and none are good ones. I thought quantum break sucked btw, looked so bad. I knew it was gonna flop at the end. Time loops are hard, and making the ending when you run out of funds, ruins them lol.
@@Red_Steampunker my guess is that bumblebee being the bald guys daughter having cancer is a metaphor for the dad who dies trying to help rid his daughter of a cancer (her brother who married her), but ends up dying.
When I clicked on the video, I was concerned that it was gonna be calling ALL time loop games bad. Including gems such as Outer Wilds. Ngl, so relieved that didn't end up being the case.
How does Palm Springs not even get a mention? Easily one of the best time loop movies that actually touches on some of the horrors (and advantages) of living in a time loop. And there's no contrived exit from the loop of learning to love or solving a mystery.
is anyone gonna forget that at the start of this game the wife thought that she killed the grandad? and how the mc forgot that he killed the grandad? how could you forget that you didn’t kill someone?
It's an old video and this has been said before, but In Stars And Time is such a good timeloop game. SPOILERS, PRETTY BIG ONES: Sure, it's a timeloop game but eventually you manage to escape it. What the game moreso focuses on is less the actual timeloop and more on how your character feels. It captures Siffrin's anguish and self-loathing so well, I could write an essay on it.
Thanks for explaining the causal loop vs iterative loop thing; ive always noticed this but never known the words for this. Beyond strictly time loop stories, anything with time travel is one of the two (like harry Potter vs back to the future). The latter is definitely easier to write but i think it also is popular outside of the mystery genre because it plays into the idea of a multiverse, which is all the rage these days.
Man am I glad someone is giving props to Time Crimes and Sexy Brutale. 2 semi-hidden gems that practically perfect the time loop on their respective mediums.
I recommend Ghost Trick Phantom Detective! Its not quite a conventional timeloop in the Groundhog Day-esque sense, but it does see you reliving moments to change events. A little trial-and-error but the puzzles are fun, its well paced, and its REALLY funny. It was headed by the main director on the original Ace Attorney games, so if you like the humor in AA it'll def be for you (although its a little more ridiculous than AA). Seriously, I wish I could relive those plot twists...
All modern games use time loops. It's called the save and load functions. Morrowind handled this really well with a god recognizing the hopelessness of fighting you. Haven't played it but heard undertale handles it well too.
Undertale fan here! The game handles it wonderfully by making your actions REMEMBERED BY CERTAIN CHARACTERS ACROSS TIMELINES! I highly reccomend playing it, or at least watching a playthrough.
In Stars And Time is a lovely time-loop game anyone with an interest in the genera should play. It's very character-focused, but it has so many quality-of-life features for its gameplay mechanics that that alone is worthy of praise. (Though to be clear, it's *very* well written, too.)
Interestingly, I think there are lots of games that narratively utilise timeloops, but not mechanically. And even more ironically, I have a couple of them in mind, but dropping names is basically spoilers. So I guess they do rely on time loops for shocking and powerful plot resolutions. And it can also work as a way to fluently tie the end of one playthrough with the beginning of the next one or NewGame+. But gameplay-wise, it is rather a niche.
@@1049662 Huh! That's funny, but on a more serious level, also very much a good point! You're making me think that it's not possible to just engender mechanics from their semiotic interpretibility, and saveloading is a good example of this - if the characters recognize the player's ability to manipulate the timeline (like certain metanarrative games), then maybe this standard mechanic, in and of itself, qualifies into the timelooping genre?
@@chuckblaze5147 My tongue was firmly in-cheek and yes it does make me think, the narrative component has to be there to make a genre distinction and meanwhile all games bar few allow you to try again. I sense a ludonarrative elephant in the room.
@@kitosanimations Haha yes! This is the exact title I thought of. Undertale in general plays on the player's expectations about which game mechanics are outside or inside the gameworld: levels represented as LVL and EX are one thing, but saving and loading is another - it is basically a spoiler to even mention that they in the end become questioned by the game characters. So you are right on the money with that one being among the examples that represents my line of thinking, as stimulated by this video :D another one would be Hell is Others, perhaps certain Soulsborne instalments? It's not the same as with e.g. Furi, which does not give context to starting from a checkpoint or redoing a playthrough (it's seemingly treated like a standard game mechanic - much like in games like Fire Emblem or Sonic the Hedgehog 3, you just gotta save the progress cause it's a game) but with Furi there's also the context of the protagonist being so powerful that they cannot be killed, just brought back to the beginning of the game to try and start over), or Celeste, which seems to suggest it's some magic that teleports you back to a checkpoint. Not to mention Metal Gear Solid which does treat saving and loading as something characters are aware of but don't treat it as a timeloop either. In MSG saving a game is narratively treated as saving a game, because it's humorously selfaware, without "breaking" the fourth wall (talking to the player directly). And there's also Void Stranger.
Can only heartily sign the "Go Sexy Brutale" message. Back when I played it I occasionally stream to a group of friends and I couldn't put it down but was so *mad* that I couldn't stream it to them fresh by the time I'd finished it offline.
just here to recommend In Stars and Time as a perfect time loop game. it uses the time loop not just as a narrative device, not just as a setting, but as a genuine element of the story interwoven with the others, and playing through each loop gets faster and faster as you go through each one. there is still tedium but it's intentional. I don't wanna say any more to avoid spoilers but. 10/10 time loop game. a must play.
okay, wow, i just watched this whole video without realising it somehow only had 2k views. this is super well-made, the commentary is great and it absolutely earned a sub from me. i heard a little about 12 minutes and why it wasn't exactly great but nothing could have prepared me for the things i learned about it in this video. that plot is... certainly something.
My favorite example of a causal loop in video games might have to be Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. It's been about a decade since I played it, but IIRC the story goes that the big bad's village was destroyed when he was a kid, and the cause was a burst of magic high in the sky. So as an adult he spent his time amassing wealth and power to build a tower to that elevation to figure out/prevent the disaster. However, by building his tower and using the power of the crystal to manipulate time, he became the cause of the disaster.
'In Stars and Time' is a REALLY good time-looping game if anyone's interested in that! The story telling is phenomenal and the ending literally made me cry
I was considering _12 minutes_ because _Outer Wilds_ was so good. Honest to goodness, I am so glad I saw this first. I'd have been _pissed_ if I'd played that game on the couch with my partner and kid. On the other hand, we just started _Sexy Brutale_ a few days ago, and I agree, it's great!
@@corvus8638 Indeed I do. That's one of the reasons I watched this video. I didn't see a CW: Graphic Suicide warning in the Steam listing. I also generally check DoesTheDogDie for triggers before playing; that's far more comprehensive, if mildly spoilery at times.
Only 17.5k subscribers? Woah. You could've fooled me. The editing, pacing, and research in this video had me thinking you were in the millions of followers. Please keep going. I don't know a lot about a lot but I know this platform and it's extremely rare I find someone this talented with such a small following....... Heck or at all
I'm not kidding. I don't even have any criticism. I was actually thinking half way through that I might comment asking how you got the sound mixing so perfect. The music you use in the background slaps so hard but it never distracts from the video or is two loud. Well done sir! 👏👏👏
I remember watching the GTLive for 12 Minutes and at some point, MatPat gives up on finding the endings. Eventually, as they look through the walkthroughs, they go absolutely insane. "YOU READ HIM A BOOK?!"
@Ozzy II I HIGHLY recommend checking out the "12 monkeys" TV show as well as "Dark". 12 Monkeys has some very intricately planned and consistent time travel (though it does have a few moments where they decide to get campy for fun) and is overall a genuinely well-made time travel show, and is massively underrated/unknown. Dark is similar in it's consistency/planning, but a lot more serious and, well, dark. Both feature time loops and consistent time travel, and if you're as big of a fan of the concept as I am, then you absolutely should watch both shows.
Or "the problem with thinking that a shocking hook, an oedipus parody, a bunch of money thrown at actors to voice act and a quote from a random book can make a compelling video game"
Came here to say, there’s a really good timeloop game atm called in stars and time! It deals with time loops really well with how it deals with repetition and makes you feel how the main character feels! Especially with how you can feel how frustrated the character get as well as know the script by heart (note that you can skip dialogue, and get even stronger than your party in your future loops, as well as spacing out in a conversation) so you can speed through the game like how the main character feels after each loop, when you do things like not go to a key component of knowledge where the party finds a spell that no one knows where only the mc knows, when you teach this important spell to one of your main friends early on and go to this information spot later in a much farther level, they will be suspicious of how you knew of such a spell before going to the library.. I will say, this game is more focused on the mc’s mental struggles of dealing with the time loops as well as internal struggles, there is no weird or bad plot twist that breaks the immersion of the story, it is a heartfelt journey through and through and deals with you and your parties relationships! (No weird drama btw! So no love triangles that break immersion!) In short, It’s a time loop game, while a simple rpg game with your party to fight the final boss, is quite good at conveying emotions and struggles as well as change.. it’s really good to get into it without spoilers at all
Speaking of stories with timeloops, Surviving Romance starts as one, though it progresses when our protagonist tries to get close to people. It's a manhwa, and I think of it as like Re-Zero meets Crazy Ex Girlfriend.
while i personally felt fine with surviving romance's ending, apparently some of the other readers were pretty dissatisfied with it :') + i saw another comment on this video talking about how sexy brutale also didn't have the best ending, haha. timeloop stories and endings, man :')
@@i_guess108raging loop also had a controversial ending. I think when the story/experience is good while leading up to the ending, the writers start feeling under pressure to finish it with a bang, and it inevitably ends up in a mess that these endings usually are.
Can't believe this is a dead channel. The video quality is insane, this is a very good video essay, and even though I don't often watch video essays, I enjoyed it a lot.
Im in LOVE WITH THE CONCEPT OF TIME LOOPS I DONT KNOW WHY BUT IM JUST EXTREMELY IN LOVE WITH THEM i recently have been watching a 15 episode series called "reset" and i have been eating up that series REAL GOOD
I’d recommend playing DEATHLOOP. It’s not the greatest game, but it’s pretty entertaining if you want a time-loop mechanic with an action-shooter playstyle
I think time loops work better narratively than mechanically in games simply due to the nature of how games work as a whole, time loops are more of a storytelling device than anything if you ask me.
If you like The Sexy Brutale you should really try out Ghost Trick! It's a really fun puzzle mystery game with a super interesting story. And it utilizes time loops really well.
Imagine you're having a dramatic, deeply personal conversation with a man who is accusing you of murdering your father. You're trying desperately to convince him you didn't, fighting for your life to not end up his victim, and while this is happening your husband without saying anything just picks up a spoon and walks into the closet for the entirety of the conversation.
As you were describing Sexy Brutale, I thought of the VR game The Invisible Hours, an experience where the player just observes and tries to understand the scenario that plays out among several characters. Then I look up Sexy Brutale, and it's by the same company!
AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES was a super fun time loop game although my problem with time loop games is that u usually can’t win if the time loop person doesn’t somehow connect the time loops or use information they could only know from previous timeloop
9 หลายเดือนก่อน +4
I think Outer Wilds use the time loop concept differently than the other games in this analysis. In Outer Wilds you're not trying to change the events in each loop to stop murders, but you're merely exploring a world and gathering information from an ancient civilization. The time loop only works to reset astronomical events you have no power over. All of that leads to a different dynamic than 12 Minutes or Sexy Brutale
"Oops I accidentally my own sister" OR "It was all in le head" My god, we're in a 'worst ending' competition and they made 2 entries at once! I was almost expecting the triple-threat with a boss fight that's just QTEs. Fun fact, you could keep asking your sister-wife about the book for the quote, or, keeping in line with the theme of this game, you could kill her with the kitchen knife, take the book from her body, and read it aloud while she dies. This also works to unlock the alternate ending. In case this game didn't have enough 'bullying wife' content. Also, while a more minor point, having the father and hitman use the same distinctive voice actor is a really weird and dumb choice. You have like 4 characters with lines, you really can't just have someone else voice the dad? It's so confusing because it makes them seem related somehow. And the last thing this story needs is more people being related...
Seems strange to (correctly) give this game shit for flinching at the last second, while also recommending The Sexy Brutale, which also (spoilers!) flinches at the last second.
The difference is that Sexy Brutale is a _really good game_ up until that last second. There are serious puzzles to solve, there's actual gameplay, there's an entire mansion to explore and observe throughout the loops... Meanwhile, Twelve Minutes isn't exactly a great game even _before_ the absurd ending.
But it doesn't? It was always about saving one person in particular, and that gets hinted at plenty in the game. There's plenty of oddities that don't make sense if the goal was to be the big hero at the end of the day.
How ironic that TH-cam recommended this video again, not showing that I already watched it, and I didn't remember I watched it already until a certain point. For a second I thought I was in a timeloop
Hey Ozzy! I'm one of the devs of the Sexy Brutale and I just wanted to say thanks for including the game in this video! I've been binging your vids the last week and finally watched this one. It was a fun, unexpected surprise to see it pop up. Love your work! (found you through the raging loop one and going back through older ones now)
It's crazy to find someone like you here! I am going to check your game, it sounds like fun
@@looniemoonie5955 thanks so much !!!
@@Pluschan
It was a fun game I played years ago now and I enjoyed it, I just really wish the finale had been what the game seemed to be eluding to the entire while: figuring out how to save everybody in a single run instead of each one individually.
Yooo! Wanted to say that The Sexy Brutale is one of my favorite indie games ever, genuinely. Beat it 100% three times and I’m planning on buying it on the PS4 soon too for another playthrough. I hope you’re proud of you and your team’s work, you deserve it.
I found Sexy Brutale because of this video! My friend and I played it last month and we had a great time, thank you for making an amazing game!
9:09 "Start the loop, grab the mugs, drug your wife, hit the switch, hide in the closet and wait for the hitman"
We've all had them days
Well... Day.
Well actually 12 minutes.
But after 120 12-minute loops it becomes "days", so there's that.
I'm not a morning person, don't even talk to me until i drugged my wife.
I don't care how bad you are, there is no way you lose a fight when you have an unending time loop to practice and retry it
Yeah, just look at Edge of Tomorrow- my guy practiced so much he became a murder machine (both in light novel/manga and movie). And I don't care it makes no sense, it was a great story lol
@@looniemoonie5955why does it make no sense?
Ehh... maybe. Within the constraints of 12 minutes, you can certainly read every book in the house. I have the game on Steam, haven't played it yet, but if you have a phone or a tablet or a laptop with internet access, you can in principle read every web page on the Internet that exists at the start of the loop - even some that are created within it.
But let's say you're grossly overweight, for example. It doesn't matter if you spend every loop exercising vigorously if only information is retained between loops - you aren't going to be able to get jacked. I would argue that most physical skills are at least partly 'muscle memory'; you might know, theoretically, exactly how to win the fight but that _might_ not mean you're able to actually get your body to do it. "Dodge left, dodge right, duck, jump, punch" or something might work - there are certainly fictional premsises where it does - but if your attacker is enough stronger, faster, or more skilled than you then you might never be able to beat him, no matter how well you know the sequence.
@garysturgess6757 disagree, if you can fight the same fight over and over again while you retain information and your opponent doesn't, eventually you WILL win.
@@garysturgess6757 It takes 1 good hit that lands to win a a proper fight. 2 at most. At that point you have enough of an advantage that you can finish the fight as long as you don't let yourself get surprised. There is absolutely no reason why anyone who isn't wheelchair bound would be incapable of winning a fight while in a timeloop. Even a child could beat a professional in any combat sport you care to name under those circumstances. When the fear of death and the fear of killing someone stops being an issue, it really isn't that difficult to bash a human skull in.
Not to mention that grabbing a knife from the kitchen wouldn't be much of a challenge in 12 minutes. At that point, you can even win a fight if you are wheelchair bound. Worst case scenario, it just takes a lucky throw.
oh my god how he just sits eating cake while his wife is sitting in the couch crying thats so fucking funny
late reply, but go have a look at the Joseph Anderson 12 Minutes Supercut. pretty dang good.
Wife: * Sobs * "How can you just sit there eating while I'm having a breakdown!"
Husband: "What? I'm about to go to jail. And I'm not going to let perfectly good food go to waste."
Don’t listen to AttacMage. Go watch the video on this game by RTGame, it is way better.
@@AttacMagewas thinking that as soon as I read this comment!
@@Sahxocnsba I'm surprised how many people found the reply, lol.
Forgot 12 minutes was a game and thought this was a series called "12 minute analysis" which looped a couple times talking about games with time loops
i was confused about the video being 32 minutes
I thought the same, which would have been genius
Thank goodness it wasn't just me!
Yeah I had roughly the same thing happened to me, wherein at some point in the video I realized "OH, 12 minutes is the name of the game, not something about the video"
So real
-12 minute analysis
-look inside
-32 minutes
Fitting to a game called 12 minutes that takes several hours.
My thoughts exactly.
-buys game called 12 minutes
-play
-2+ hour game
Damn, this doing numbers
THATS EXACTLY WHAT I THOUGHT. I was like oh an analysis that takes 12 minutes NOPE
I'm literally keeling over in laughter from the protagonist's zany antics.
"Babe? Babe? Babe?" *eats cake for 5 minutes* "Sir? Sir? Sir?"
As a dramatic tragedy this game sucks ass, but as a black comedy this game is sister-lickin' good!
licking your sister is not good
"sister licking" 🤨
just as this comment is
That last sentence captured the same shock the plot gave me very well, 11/10 I hate it
Must be related to Detective Halligan
“oops, incest” is not the hard-hitting plot twist the devs thought it was
edit: I did not expect my dumb joke comment that I wrote out in about two seconds to initiate a heated debate about the ethics of incest. Peruse the replies at your own discretion.
It works in context, it explains why the relationship is fucked up and needs to be avoided. Otherwise why would he need to undo decades of marriage?
I legit forgot about the incest part lmao to the point it didn't hit me until Im knee deep in seeing comments mentioning incest and controversy and tbh, I dont even remember the incest ending clearly
it’s like oldboy but Bad
@@GARLICJRkingofthedeadzoneso they're otherwise compatible except for the fact of their genetics? That doesn't actually seem like a compelling reason to dissolve decades of marriage. They could just not conceive a child together
@@The_Jovian yeah, it's not something to pursue but if you find out after the relationship is long established then it gets really muddy
Oh my god I accidentally restarted the video and watched it for 5 whole minutes thinking you were doing a self-aware time loop bit before realizing I set it back💀
Bro 💀
That's so good hahaa
Dawg 😂
How immersive..
A heartbreaking story about a father forced to murder and steal to save his daughter's life. About a couple who hold a terrifying secret that puts their life on the line.
No, actually, it was all a daydream and yeah, also, incest.
Such a waste of not one, not two, but THREE Hollywood actors.
Idk sounds pretty hot
@@stellviahohenheimyou got. like
one like from saying that
was it worth it?
@@stellviahohenheim digital footprint
@@Spencer_TheSpenderit's not about the likes... it's about sending a message
I hated this game because it felt like halfway through they stopped caring about a game and started caring more about “how do we get more people talking about this game? I know! Let’s just fill it with controversy”!
I have a genuine feeling that if not Willem Dafoe was not voicing in the game it would have flown so far under the radar it'd crash into a bush.
Plus the fact that he voices both the Father and the Assassin could be seen as clever if it was not for the fact that they clearly had a limited budget and he was needed to voice 2 characters.
Sudden incest is not a clever plot twist. Any idiot who wants to make a 'shocking' ending can just add incest.
@CommissarMitch Since it's all in his head, an image of his father literally comes back to kill him for his daughters sake. Hence why the father is bald at the end
I don't see how a story having dark subject matter automatically makes it worse. Breaking Bad is universally loved and it features: drug addiction, child murder, the kidnapping of a baby, a man attempting SA his wife, misogyny, racism, ableism, and more horrible things, yet that doesn't make it a worse story, but for some reason other stories don't get that same luxury? Game of Thrones also has inc*st but doesn't get the same flak for it (the last season was hated for different reasons)
@@GARLICJRkingofthedeadzoneit is not the dark subjects, but the implenentation of it. The incest in GoT makes sense in the world and is hinted at straight from the start. Breaking Bad shows it will be dark within the first 20 minutes. Here it is an uno reverse card out of nowhere and it feels like a cheap cop out
I love that this plot hinges on you finding out your wife might’ve murdered her dad and your immediate response isn’t “oh hey! I also murdered my dad! Twinsies!”
In a relationship, it's important to have things in common :)
@@Dinnyeifythats a wild thing to say in this context but alright
@@mufinboi975well it’s true :)
Can someone explain the ending? I STILL don't understand it...
I feel like the arguments in the video arent really talking about problems with timeloop games
its more of that 12 minutes is terribly designed and has a disappointing ending
You kind of have to understand timeloops, game or otherwise, in order to understand why 12 Minutes sucks.
@@Bluecho4 there ain't any timeloops in the first place tho, you're playing under a pretence that there is one.
and the video did not explain anything about why the game sucks (concerning timeloops) except that there is nothing to do in the first 5 minutes, it's linear and a lil bit dumb.
the problem is repetition. A movie can just montage all the repeat events and only show you the new things, but in a game that's more difficult. If you want to try an event differently, you need to re-do the things that led up to that event and wait for any time-sensitive events to trigger, and if you forgot to do something important than you have to start all over again.
@@android19willpwn Even that isn't truly *necessary,* though. The biggest temptation for developers making a time loop game always seems to be gating progress behind random in-loop events, specifically to prevent players from just skipping to the "final" loop right away.
But there's literally no reason to prevent that, just require that doing so has the user either need to have played the previous loops enough to find out what they need... or that they use a guide. Which ultimately is the same thing, as far as the game is concerned.
@@PhysicsGamer This is the best way to do time loops in games. Its also why outer wilds is by far the best time loop game (including one of the best games period), outer wild lets you keep nothing from the last loop, only your knowledge, so everything is knowledge based, all the puzzles only need to be solved once and then you can just easily skip them because you already know what to do.
The fact that literally all the game had to do was end it in the “we find your brother and we move foward” and it would have had a decent ending 😭😭😭
E
Ehhhh that’s worse but it would make for a decent proof of concept demo I guess?
It still would've felt incomplete at the very least.
And? that dosent explain the loops WHY this happens if anything it would just feel cheezy "Oop I did a good thing now magically the loops stop because the power of love"
@@sanicinapanic4264honestly unexplained timeloops are much better then "it was all a dream". Latter one is just invalidation of everything you've done at this point and it annoys so much more then stuff that just isn't explained.
Plus I don't believe that writers of this game would do explanation justice so pick your poison.
*wife is having a breakdown*
"Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe?"
I'm fucking loosing it, help
*stranger beats up wife*
"Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir?"
@@upumpkin LOL
*Wife having the mental breakdown*
“What, what, what, what, what, what, what”
E
*wife is having a*
*breakdown breakdown breakdown breakdown*
The calling the cops thing is funny, imagine if you could order pizza and they showed up in ten minutes
There is a game called cleansuit that has a pizzaman ending
E
Imagine you then eat the pizza while your wife is getting tortured
the sexy brutale was so good, but man I wish it finished and actually included had what it feels like it builds up to all game - solving every single murder in one loop. Such a missed opportunity
Absolutely! A big miss as far as I'm concerned. I even went as far as partially plotting this out: if the day didn't automatically end upon saving someone, there actually is almost enough time to do everything - there would just need to be some small tweaks to movement patterns and probably 1 added mirror.
(I proposed the idea to the devs ~6 years ago, and they were at least somewhat interested but assumedly decided it'd be too much work to add.)
That's the thing with the Sexy Brutale to me. It's pretty good. And when the video argues it doesn't hit the lows that are common with time loops part of the reason is that it doesn't hit the highs either. It doesn't use its time loop much at all. The game is good. But I wish it was more. Even outside the time loop every puzzle basically requires 1 action and it's solved. Was really hoping for a Ghost Trick-esque Rube Goldberg machine
The ability to do that wouldn't have worked with the story though. Also it would have been pretty difficult to work into the game mechanically. As-is there's one specific, tightly choreographed schedule of daily events which is 100% non-reactive, that you can interrupt at some point to save somebody but otherwise the day just plays out the exact same over and over. If you could save multiple people they'd need to implement different schedules for each combination of attendees saved and that's quite a number of combinations and a massive load of work.
@@abdulmasaiev9024 the dev has complete control of all schedules in the game as they made them, they can tweak it to allow the player to travel to each point when required. The majority of the work required would be for planning and testing that it is clearly communicated to the player what they have to do.
Adding a reaction to each death wouldn't take a huge amount of work as it would just be a list of all the guests and pointers to certain branches depending on if they've been saved or not, as the timeline system and reactions to certain events already exists in the game. A lot of the schedule could be shared between each timeline past a certain point.
Yes it would take a decent amount of effort but it'd considerably improve the game
@@jacksonreynolds7433 The Sexy Brutale is one of those games where I love the concept and potential so much, which makes me dislike the final game itself a bit. The first loop in the tutorial is really good and sets up for what could be great detective puzzles which get more and more complex as the loops get longer. The problem is the puzzles don't really increase in complexity, whereas the time does. It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the very last one is just you walking behind the guy who is going to die and solving a rather simple lever puzzle, while having to do an entire day reset walking behind this slow guy again to do it right. Funnily enough, I get to a similar criticism as this video makes about 12 minutes, namely that in this game where time is of the essence, you spend a lot of time sitting around just waiting for the loop to progress so you can perform your one or two actions to save the victim. They maybe could have done it by making more parallel hallways, like ones that are in old mansions sometimes so nobility don't encounter servants (not sure if that's myth but anyway), that way the game could keep a more frantic pacing. Just being reminded of this game makes me not want to play it but think about all the different things it could have been. A different title as well, that for sure.
The moral of the story is “Don’t be a good person and try to grow better than the person you were when you made the worst mistake of your life, just forget and move on!”
One slightly interesting thing about this game, when considering the main details about the story, is that it actually holds quite a few parallels to a Portuguese novel by the name of "Os Maias", which is not only a very important book in our modern Literature, but it also holds a story of incestuous occurrences, to put it lightly.
The reason why it's fun to point out is because the game's developer and writer, Luís António, is himself Portuguese; as such he would be privy to such a story, making the parallels go from pure coincidence to possible inspiration.
no time loops in the book tho
as someone who is reading Os Maias" and about to analyse it in class, i'm glad to see someone else also thought about this
I remember reading a book in a literature class from about the beginning of 20th century and there was an incestuous plot twist. I was so incredibly unimpressed, the writing in the story was underwhelming too. I thought the standards must've been low back at the time.
Honestly can't remember any good story with that twist, terribly sorry for oldboy fans, it's not just because I am so appalled, but it never made for a good story and imo always was used for twist/shock purposes.
@@aliveslice modernity always thinks of the past as limited.
I still don't understand why so many games refuses to do the majora's maks approach. Everytime I see a timeloop game they tried REALLY hard to be as far away as Majora, for some reason
Outer Wilds really embraced the Majora's Mask influence
yeah i noticed too, its really sad because that's what made majora so good, there are good exceptions tho (like returnal)
@@DoudoussinI second this
never played majora's mask would you mind explaining that
@@danielschons7691schedules and a way of tracking them
Really like the analysis, and I will also recommend: Slay the Princess is a really cool branching pathways horror game that came out this year. It has amazing visual style, good delivery of story, and most of all: time loops!
It’s amazing!!
I was thinking of Slay the Princess as well!! I’ve been obsessed with it since launch and have been dying for more people to play it. I hope Ozzy checks it out!
I love slay the princess but i would argue it doesnt really have time loops but its more of a meta narrative with the actual player as the protagonist, the fact that it loops comes more as a result of how games function rather than being a diegetic thing, it would be like saying doki doki literature club has time loops since you restart the game at various points
Ive been following it since the demo and i have followed the narrator's (and voices') va for a couple of years now because i listened to his other project the magnus archives (also really damn good). And i can promise ya'll the game did not dissapoint.
I would recommend deathloop for the exact opposite reasons, the story is kinda shit but the gameplay is really good and experimental as well as the voice acting and art style being incredible
As someone who spent 8 hours grinding away at this game trying to figure out what the heck to do, then folding and looking up the solutions, this video was a 1000 times more entertaining than the game.
Same here. I got stuck at the part where you knock him out cuz I didn’t figure out that the wife needs the stupid photo cuz she was always knocked out 😂. I just kept knocking her out from habit at that point tbh
That cake must have been really good. Ive never had a slice last longer than a minute.
Or really bad
Must be as good as that sandwich from "When Harry Met Sally."
I love how during the intense heartnwarking scenes with the hit man you are just doing the most random shit, hiding in the closet, eating noodles
The only problem with the time loop here is no fast forward/skip button. The majority of the actual issues comes down to plain ole bad storytelling.
Designing a game that makes you want a fast forward button is not really a great thing to begin with. I never found myself wishing for a skip option playing Outer Wilds and the longest I had to wait there was maybe like 2 minutes and only because I was at the very end of the game and knew how to do things I needed to do fairly quickly. The fact that 12 minutes expects you to do nothing but wait for 40% of the loop duration shows that it has no clue how to utilise its main mechanic.
they have that option with this game, with previously heard dialogue, you can click through it, and when hiding in the closet it skips to the next event. by no means am i defending this game, because it has some insane issues, but yea at least it has that
@@pm_me_ur_gluons Outer Wilds does in fact have a skip option though, by dozing on the campfire. Thing is, you actually do have a lot of different things to do elsewhere so you might only rarely need if you really want to get to a particular event on a delay, and I can personally only think of two instances where this is the case.
@@pm_me_ur_gluonsyeah in Outer Wilds the only reason to waste time at a campfire is very late game when you need to wait for the sand on Ash Twin to fall further, and no other mysteries to progress. Or, you’re doing a speed run.
@@pm_me_ur_gluons doing stuff that because of your skill from the repeated loops allows you to do these actions easily. this game it is just an inconvenience and has no interest
Part of the annoyance of 12 Minutes is that the game offer no shortcuts, meaning you will have to wait around for a long time just to do one specific thing late in the loop. Other time loop games like Outer Wilds and The Forgotten City offer mechanics that allow you to skip the repeating sections after you have done it once. In Outer Wilds most location has a hidden shortcut you can find by exploring the area. In the Forgotten City, my beloved Galerius can take care of most errands for you once you have did them in previous loop.
Galerius is a real one 10/10 and he’s just totally cool with you being stuck in a time loop
Unbelieveable how in a game called twelve MINUTES, which is about REPLAYING THE SAME EVENTS and some of them REQUIRE WAITING, the devs didn't think of adding a timeskip mechanic which was ALREADY USED in so many games before... What?! Did they playtest this??
@@frohnatur9806Isn’t the closet a time skip thing? Like you close the closet door and the guy goes “now we wait” and time passes?
@@Elluka_Clockworker oh, I guess you're right. I think in the video it was mentioned how the "waiting around" gets painfully obvious towards the end, taking it as ACTUALLY waiting.
Anyway my comment is useless now xD
People keep saying that Outer Wilds let's you skip things, but in my experience that really isn't true. You'll have keep coming back to planets over and over again if you didn't get to explore everything in time, if you navigated wrong, died, or got pushed/teleported/space magicked/pulled away because of the movement mechanics, many dangers and the air limit. I got almost all burned out because of the you-know-what in Brittle Rock, and try to get there too fast and you'll die on the way (forgot what messes up the flight but it happened a few times). And then you did all that effort just to maybe learn 1 significant thing. I found the game extremely tedious with my ability to handle the controls.
I'd be surprised if time loops work less well in games than other media, given repetition is such a key part of many game genres (e.g. roguelikes). Hell, I could see time loops being introduced to games as narrative justification for pre-existing gameplay.
The problem with games as a medium, which the video unfortunately does not mention at all, is the fact that games have little or no access to the montage as a storytelling device. In any other medium, you can skip over or summarize many loops that were mostly uninteresting, but still contained a small amount of useful information between them (see for example Groundhog Day). In a video game, if you do something like that in a cutscene, it's considered bad form because you're taking away the player's control and agency. As a result, if multiple loops need to involve similar events, those events have to be displayed on screen repeatedly, without any summarization or elision. That is boring.
The solution is to encourage the player to try different things in each loop, without requiring them to take the same actions as were necessary last time. This probably works best for more exploratory games, like Outer Wilds or Zelda - you can give the player lots of different places to explore, too little time to see them all, and have those places change over time so that the loop is actually doing something useful (rendering some locations more or less accessible at different points in the loop).
@@NYKevin100 I think the away around this is somehow implement a way for you to skip these parts of loops that you have already completed a certain number of times, allowing you to do it in each next iteration. I don't think this entirely solves the problem, but could be a bandage to find a better solution other than adding so many different ways to do things.
@@NYKevin100not really, this game is just really poorly directed. Outer wilds did it very well, where there's no "general setup" that has to be done every loop. As soon as you have control over the rocket, you are either investigating something new, or reattempting a set sequence that you failed, this game has the equivalent of spending the first 15 minutes rebuilding your rocket every loop, which is boring and unnecessary. This game is a massive step pack design wise, to something like dragon's lair or a traditional point and click. They wanted to make a drama and they ended up in the videogame industry because they quite obviously couldn't even score a Netflix drama 😂. Many such cases, gamers sadly have much lower standards than movie goers for character driven entertainment.
@@NYKevin100 You could do a "fake" cutscene like in the ending of Journey.
To be fair with video games you could just use the save load reset mechanics stamp in a in universe reason to why they exist and call it a time loop
12 minutes is one of those games that, when I realised what the twist was; I closed the game and never touched it again. It is the one regarding the main couple.
I despise those type of twists and have as of yet found one that works.
Oldboy is the only one that works. That's because the movie is fantastic.
What about in Oedipus?
@lilowhitney8614 Yeah I don't like that story.
For me it's the "WooOOOaah you just FORGOT this life-changingly significant thing" aspect of it. Oldboy or Oedipus work because they're about conscious decisions or tragic error, not "oops amnesia"
Then you are a coward
This is the worst game I ever completed. I felt absolutely betrayed and disgusted by that ending that acted like it was saying something deep while robbing any semblance of meaning to be found within it
The game equivalent of the end of GOT ending
im watching this right now and if the character youre playing is the brother im ending my life.
god damn it.
R.I.P bro 😔
Rip i guess
Gg
Today's the day
I love how In Stars and Time deals with the potential issues with time loop games. First of all, the repetitiveness is important to the story. By repeating the same events over and over again, you’re going through what the character is experiencing, and a big part of the story is examining how the time loop is affecting the main character and their mental state. Second, there are ways to skip forward and loop back, but there are mechanical and story reasons why you may choose to play through everything in full even if it’s repetitive and tedious. You really feel like you’re experiencing the time loop with the character in a way that doesn’t feel pointlessly frustrating.
What a waste of wilem Dafoes talent, his performance is pretty good though.
I also really, really love time loop stories and video games. It's really unfortunate that a lot of the few ones we have are so... bad at exploring the time loop part. And mostly in the same ways, too - 12 Minutes and In Stars And Time have some similar problems, for instance, though the latter is _infinitely_ more enjoyable thanks to having actual characters. With dialogue you want to read.
Anyways, it seems to me that the biggest temptation for developers making a time loop game always winds up being the same. To prevent players from just skipping to the "final" loop right away, progress winds up gated off behind non-time-gated in-loop events. Key A isn't findable in the drawer unless you pick up photo B, which the character refuses to do unless they've heard line C from NPC D, and even then the door is mysteriously jammed until you've also picked up totally unrelated item E... or even worse, the character just refuses to interact with the key in the drawer until they've already reached the door in a later loop and had to reset back. Clearly such protagonists need to play more adventure games.
But there's literally no reason to do that. The only thing the dev needs to do is design the puzzles such that either the player needs to have successfully played enough previous loops to find out what they need to advance... or that they use a guide. Which ultimately is the same thing, as far as the game is concerned. Sure, require the player to have the key to open the door, but there's no need for them to wait for another character to mention there might be something behind the door in order to have the key actually appear.
Even the best example we probably have of diagetic save/load systems, Undertale, gates off the last chunk of True Pacifist behind seeing the neutral ending at least once beforehand. Though at least it gives a good in-universe reason for it to happen.
Honestly, that's why Outer Wilds is an awesome time loop game. If you go in completely blind, it takes hours. But if you know what you're doing, it's 15 minutes. You don't need to go through a bunch of ridiculous puzzles, all you need is to know where to go. Which, consequently, is why it's impossible to talk about to people who haven't played so you *don't* spoil how to beat it.
@@charlietheuncreative6737 That's a good point! Both on the recommendation and the problem with such games.
I'd like to see a similar approach in a somewhat more conventional RPG, admittedly. Breezing through a whole bunch of puzzles way faster than even the characters in-universe expect you to has the potential to be _very_ amusing
Have you played Slay the Princess?
@@_amaya. Yep! And really enjoyed it, too. The time loop elements are somewhat downplayed due to all the characters more or less resetting every 2-3 loops, but in between those the writing is phenomenal.
@@PhysicsGamer I agree! it didn’t feel repetitive to me because of the fun writing and wanting to find the different princesses and
Outer Wilds is an example of a game that does the time loop concept PERFECTLY without any of the drawbacks in this game scenario.
I love it.
Yeah, I don't even like time loops, but I adore that game... Even the time loop aspect, because it's done in a clever way.
The time loop is way too short if you struggle with the controls. It makes the whole experience way too stressful and frustrating and repetitive. As an aside, why does the air limit exist if you already have another time limit??? I'm outright baffled by the choice to make the air limit less than 30 minutes.
@@isawp5199I don't know how you're playing that made air a problem. It's not a problem for the majority of people. The developers have to cater to the wider audience. I'm sorry to hear that you struggle with the controls, but if they made the loop more lenient then it would trivialize the game for a lot of people.
0:42 Lobotomy corporation is one of those timeloop games and uses it to contextualise the story and Gameplay loop
Why do I keep finding project moon comments and references in totally unrelated stuff it's like I'm being attracted to it by God's will (PM games are my favorite series in the world by the way)
@@Ray_Moses in this case this is relevant atleast for the beginning portion of the video
Sleeper PM agents strike again, and we never miss xD
@@Ray_Mosesyou cannot escape loboco brainrot, and neither can i, my friend has been badgering me to play pm games so im just waiting for a sale now
also for library of ruina as well
limbus is not as good as the other 2 though from what i’ve heard
@@goldencheeze The story of limbus is barely through the halfway point so i say its too early to judge, and personally so far i think its a great continuation of everything! Only downside is that its a gacha, really. but they're chill with the resources they give you, other than that the combat is a liiiitle watered down but its still very fun, plus, form your own opinion on it :D
There is a callousness to this game that I don’t think is necessarily intrinsic to time-loop games
I thought this game was pretty bad when I played it, but wow watching this video really drives home how terrible it is. Another thing that's so hilariously bad about the game is the voice acting, which is terrible, even though they hired big time, very talented film actors-- James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley and Willem Dafoe for the cast. I imagine that must have been the majority of the games budget. Not blaming the actors either, they were working with terrible dialogue and probably got little to no direction from the game makers who were misguided enough to think throwing money at big actors would fill the void of competent writing.
Holy shit that's Willem Dafoe? I was thinking the hit man had the best voice and that certainly explains why
The problem I find with time loop games is that they never give the player a chance to just, "do it right eventually".
Characters in these games often find themselves repeating the exact same failures over and over. Like, how about don't?
Ideally, a time travel loop game should let the player grind to perfect optimisation by doing things right eventually. Failure should not be random, but forced.
For instance in Life is Strange, Max can shatter I think it was a snowglobe by reaching up to it. Then the devs added insult to injury, because if you rewind and then reach for it again, it shatters again and Max has a new line implying it'll never work and she should stop trying.
It's arbitrary, it's an accident, it shouldn't just happen again, yet it always will.
An example in this game is stabbing the invader. That should work, eventually. And there'd be no reason not to do it. Let the guy die, cool, now you have to restart anyway, you don't get more information with his death and it probably freaks your sister wife out enough for her to leave.
right? like especially since our protagonists' memory follows them through the loops, why shouldn't he get it right eventually? likee
Well death loop I believe is similar to what you want. You are basically learning how to best play the game, basically speedrunning it as you repeat the loops
I would definitely love to hear your perspective on how higurashi and umineko handle time loops in comparison to 12 minutes and other media.
E
I feel like, fundamentally, the concept of a time loop is fascinating. Just look at how INCREDIBLE outer wilds is, y'know? It's just that the loop in 12 minutes, uh. Sucks ass.
the first thought I have when I see this video is, "wait a second, this video is longer than 12 minutes?"
12 minutes really is a game that seems shocking for the sake of it.
like for the whole hitman arc your justification is surviving the hitmans attack and saving your wife yet the way you progress is to hide in a closet and watch her get murdered and then to drug her.
the whole kid having cancer plotpoint only to exists to humanise someone willing to comit murder for money when it simply could have been the revenge plot on its own.
and the incest twist is just... if you're going to have it why did you make the woman pregnant? all that said the father murder scene weirdly works cause the whole issue was that the father isolated his children from eachother, the boy was called a monster and when the father hears of this delicate situation instead of calmly explaining things and sitting both kids down and admit his fault in never introducing them two as family he assaults his own son while the sister doesn't even get any punishment adding more to the whole monster thing.
the boy at that moment was being assaulted and retaliated, if he were to get arrested it would most likely count as self defence.
and yet it is still framed as him being the bad guy for doing something gross when he repressed a traumatic beating.
and then the plot twist which is just... so the dude fantasised about murdering his father then? having a kid with his sister?
the guy started out as sympathetic from the shitty situation he was put in but the events of the game just make him completely unlikable, which is a problem because you have to play as him.
plot twists that the player is actually a terrible person can work, and bad guy player characters can work too, but they need to be endearing and this guy, his one redeeming trait of being tragic is revoked by the true ending.
Just my take, I don't think the protagonist framed him as sympathetic at any point. I think you sympathizing with him isn't the same as the game making him sympathetic. And, to be fair, I do understand the character too, but that's because I looked at him from a certain perspective, not because the game presented him in any specific way. Actually, as much as I think the protagonist repressed the traumatic memory of what happened, the game doesn't even confirm this, he could just be an asshole who's lying to her wife and to himself about the situation. I don't think that's the case, but since the protagonist doesn't really react much to most things, the game isn't offering me enough information to confirm or deny anything about his morals.
@@funyarinpa9464 honestly I'd disagree, the entire game is framed from his perspective, it is designed to be seen from the guys perspective, and as for him knowing and being an asshole, the scene he figures out he killed his father he straight up faints, and that realisation comes from connecting the name of his child to his family.
Granted he is portrayed as an asshole by drugging his wife but that is moreso down to the game design than characterisation. His goal is stopping the hitman, nothing assholy about that.
Obviously the meta twist ruins it because it turns out to be a fantasy but eh, we can agree that was stupid lmao
I think the game style can really affect the quality of a time loop game, like games that naturally have high replayability are a sort of iterative loop in themselves, just the player is the iterator not the character. So a game like a visual novel has an easier time doing this than most formats as many already have the tools to basically travel the loop built in
I think one thing that could make one of these games interesting would be a means of discussing and processing a time loop between loops (or at least the important parts). That way you and your character are forced to process what you’re doing to people in your attempts to try and stop the loop, and thus you don’t end up playing quite an irredeemable monster.
If you’re looking for a game that discusses and processes your actions in each given loop, I recommend checking out “In stars and time”. It’s an rpg maker game, with some turn based combat, but the main focus of the game are the characters.
Granted the game’s beginning is kinda slow and the tutorial is… not the greatest. If you can get past those two problems then this might be the game for you.
I believe one of the better executions of the time loop is Lobotomy Corporation
@@ugggghhhhhhhh1176 I'm going to have to jump in and disagree with you there. In Stars And Time was a game I _really_ wanted to like, and I wound up liking a fair bit anyway thanks to the characters being enjoyable... but the time loop component just _sucks._
The key premise of the game is the inherent disconnect that can develop when one lives through the same period over and over, like how in 12 Minutes the player starts ignoring the wife's romantic gestures. But both games suffer from a failure to _do_ anything with that, mostly relegating it to snippy or snarky comments and the occasional "When did I tell you that?!"
That rock trap early on in ISAT is maybe a good example. Having an initial, unavoidable death isn't the worst thing for a game like that, to be clear, though I'd much prefer if you could force the issue by checking that one pillar 20+ times or something. But the game pulls the same exact trick _repeatedly,_ forcing resets mostly in order for the player to "discover" items that genuinely weren't there the first time they checked. The repeated handwaves about how a key is "taped to the top of the drawer" or just... not something the main character spotted somehow don't help.
On top of that, the save points don't work like they need to in order to actually be diagetic. Loading into a save point should restore the progress you had when you saved, not... set your progress flag to a specific chapter? Honestly I was never super clear what they were supposed to be doing in-universe thanks to them being so inconsistent.
The bit with the pineapple was fun, though. I liked that moment.
@@PhysicsGamer Honestly, I agree with all of your points. Now that I’m thinking about it, I feel like the time loop mechanic was something I kinda forced myself to like??? And all the other stuff I genuinely forgot about cause they annoyed me so much lol.
All that to say, you bring up some excellent points. A terrible lapse in memory led to me promoting a game to be something that it is not. I apologise to anyone I’ve mislead.
I also like the pineapple bit, relying on players forgetting a small detail like that was surprisingly well done.
@@ugggghhhhhhhh1176 It was also very fun that you could bring it up with the star person afterwards. But the only payoff was a single line of dialog, not an early reveal of any lore or similar. Which would have been appropriate, given you had to go out of your way to bring that up.
Thinking on it more, I'd say my biggest issue with the game is really just the lack of real thought into how the save points work. The game at least kinda wants to be about the banal horror of a time loop sucking the meaning out of one's interactions as one repeats them over and over... but it also goes out of its way to obscure that banality at every opportunity.
The first time the game outright told me to "loop forward" raised an eyebrow, and when I followed its advice I was expecting a twist to show that I _couldn't_ do that. But no, it worked just fine. Which it shouldn't have.
Question: when I go back, change something, and then "loop forward"... what do my party members actually remember? What was their experience of that moment, if any? Do they now remember me going out of my way at that point, despite me never having done so and also gotten back to where they all now were? The game doesn't seem to have thought that part through.
Again, I didn't _dislike_ my time with ISAT! The characters are pretty great, honestly, and that made the playthrough worthwhile. It's just that the game drops the ball on the time loop portion, which I was rather looking forward to.
This game just feels like another episode of "The Writer's Barely-Disguised Fetish"
I don't know how you draw that conclusion from the ending saying incest is wrong.
don't think you know waht a fetish is
_"Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe? Babe?"_
this video is so good lol
Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir?
It could be possible for a game to use a New Game+ as a time-loop. Like, if you're on your second or third playthrough the game progresses mostly normally until about halfway through, when suddenly you're character breaks down and confesses to all the other characters that they've lived through this all before. From there on the plot is heavily altered due to the character knowing what's going to happen. Could be interesting?
So like Starfield if they actually put more effort into it.
This is basically OneShot
Alan Wake 2 Final Draft
Disciples: Liberation did exactly that at the end of the game. Unfortunately its like a 60 hour game, that I and many others had zero desire to replay to experience the true ending so many like myself just watched someone else's ending on youtube. It was definitely not worth replaying the game for, it was basically an extra boss fight and a pat on the back during the ending. Very disappointing for an RPG but also understandable as it'd be expensive to do very well.
@@Efra_EMXAs a OneShot fan, I can confirm I am in an Iterative Loop, a fictional story created by none other than God, the author of existence itself, and I break the boundaries of my story's fourth wall by writing this comment, which is better unnoticed.
Yes, I broke my braincells
Does anyone else find it weird that the father becomes bald and has William Dafoe's voice... *the same voice as the cop's??*
I also would've loved to hear a bit more about time loops in general, but this has amazing production quality. The thumbnail reminds me of Deathloop.
My biggest gripe with time loop games is that most of their endings fall flat after really good buildup. Quantum Break (SPOILER) gives you two branching narratives that lead to one ending. However, you don't even get the catharsis that it was only an illusion of choice. It's simply a let down.
Yeah, that was an interesting choice. I suppose that means in the hypnosis ending the cop represents the father?
@optionboom Yeah since it's all in his head, an image of his father literally comes back to kill him for his daughters sake. Hence why the father is bald at the end
Then my question is what the fuck is Bumblebee and her having cancer. Only a watch can cure her, insurance won’t help.
Is the “baby” cancer, a wrong thing to be removed? But due to it being insest or what?
Why is the watch both important and Valuable, time? I’d take it back if I could only go back?
It’s full of questions and none are good ones.
I thought quantum break sucked btw, looked so bad. I knew it was gonna flop at the end. Time loops are hard, and making the ending when you run out of funds, ruins them lol.
@@Red_Steampunker my guess is that bumblebee being the bald guys daughter having cancer is a metaphor for the dad who dies trying to help rid his daughter of a cancer (her brother who married her), but ends up dying.
When I clicked on the video, I was concerned that it was gonna be calling ALL time loop games bad. Including gems such as Outer Wilds. Ngl, so relieved that didn't end up being the case.
Same XD
This channel is a hidden gem.
a hidden*
For some reason, all of the Sexy Brutale comments made me think you said: "This sexy channel is a hidden gem."
The problem with Time Loop Games is that we need more of them
How does Palm Springs not even get a mention? Easily one of the best time loop movies that actually touches on some of the horrors (and advantages) of living in a time loop. And there's no contrived exit from the loop of learning to love or solving a mystery.
is anyone gonna forget that at the start of this game the wife thought that she killed the grandad? and how the mc forgot that he killed the grandad? how could you forget that you didn’t kill someone?
It's the dumbest twist ever. She DID go and shoot him. But he didn't die. Then a week later the son went and shot him. Rough week for him.
@@Winasaurus that clears it up a bit lol
(still a dumb twist)
It's an old video and this has been said before, but In Stars And Time is such a good timeloop game.
SPOILERS, PRETTY BIG ONES:
Sure, it's a timeloop game but eventually you manage to escape it. What the game moreso focuses on is less the actual timeloop and more on how your character feels. It captures Siffrin's anguish and self-loathing so well, I could write an essay on it.
SO TRUE!! was scrolling down to see if somebody would mention it; love ISAT
Thanks for explaining the causal loop vs iterative loop thing; ive always noticed this but never known the words for this. Beyond strictly time loop stories, anything with time travel is one of the two (like harry Potter vs back to the future). The latter is definitely easier to write but i think it also is popular outside of the mystery genre because it plays into the idea of a multiverse, which is all the rage these days.
Can confirm, Sexy Brutale is a freakin' banger of a game.
And has a much better and more satisfying ending.
Man am I glad someone is giving props to Time Crimes and Sexy Brutale. 2 semi-hidden gems that practically perfect the time loop on their respective mediums.
My favorite thing about this game watching Xqc's chat spam "Sir" over and over for like an hour
Seems like no one mentioned "Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective," which is _PEAK_ time loop game design.
I watched a TH-cam video about that game from Ben Again! You're very right
I WAS GONNA COMMENT THIS
Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? (this is a great video, well argued and well presented) Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir?
Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir?
I recommend Ghost Trick Phantom Detective! Its not quite a conventional timeloop in the Groundhog Day-esque sense, but it does see you reliving moments to change events. A little trial-and-error but the puzzles are fun, its well paced, and its REALLY funny. It was headed by the main director on the original Ace Attorney games, so if you like the humor in AA it'll def be for you (although its a little more ridiculous than AA). Seriously, I wish I could relive those plot twists...
Ghost trick is great
All modern games use time loops. It's called the save and load functions.
Morrowind handled this really well with a god recognizing the hopelessness of fighting you.
Haven't played it but heard undertale handles it well too.
Undertale fan here! The game handles it wonderfully by making your actions REMEMBERED BY CERTAIN CHARACTERS ACROSS TIMELINES! I highly reccomend playing it, or at least watching a playthrough.
In Stars And Time is a lovely time-loop game anyone with an interest in the genera should play. It's very character-focused, but it has so many quality-of-life features for its gameplay mechanics that that alone is worthy of praise. (Though to be clear, it's *very* well written, too.)
Interestingly, I think there are lots of games that narratively utilise timeloops, but not mechanically. And even more ironically, I have a couple of them in mind, but dropping names is basically spoilers. So I guess they do rely on time loops for shocking and powerful plot resolutions. And it can also work as a way to fluently tie the end of one playthrough with the beginning of the next one or NewGame+. But gameplay-wise, it is rather a niche.
Mechanically you're playing a time loop game any time you press quick load. 😂
@@1049662 Huh! That's funny, but on a more serious level, also very much a good point! You're making me think that it's not possible to just engender mechanics from their semiotic interpretibility, and saveloading is a good example of this - if the characters recognize the player's ability to manipulate the timeline (like certain metanarrative games), then maybe this standard mechanic, in and of itself, qualifies into the timelooping genre?
@@chuckblaze5147 My tongue was firmly in-cheek and yes it does make me think, the narrative component has to be there to make a genre distinction and meanwhile all games bar few allow you to try again. I sense a ludonarrative elephant in the room.
@@chuckblaze5147does this mean that undertale counts as a time loop game? i never really thought of that until i read these comments
@@kitosanimations Haha yes! This is the exact title I thought of. Undertale in general plays on the player's expectations about which game mechanics are outside or inside the gameworld: levels represented as LVL and EX are one thing, but saving and loading is another - it is basically a spoiler to even mention that they in the end become questioned by the game characters. So you are right on the money with that one being among the examples that represents my line of thinking, as stimulated by this video :D another one would be Hell is Others, perhaps certain Soulsborne instalments? It's not the same as with e.g. Furi, which does not give context to starting from a checkpoint or redoing a playthrough (it's seemingly treated like a standard game mechanic - much like in games like Fire Emblem or Sonic the Hedgehog 3, you just gotta save the progress cause it's a game) but with Furi there's also the context of the protagonist being so powerful that they cannot be killed, just brought back to the beginning of the game to try and start over), or Celeste, which seems to suggest it's some magic that teleports you back to a checkpoint. Not to mention Metal Gear Solid which does treat saving and loading as something characters are aware of but don't treat it as a timeloop either. In MSG saving a game is narratively treated as saving a game, because it's humorously selfaware, without "breaking" the fourth wall (talking to the player directly). And there's also Void Stranger.
I think youll love in stars in time,
Another GREAT timeloop game
really appreciate you putting the song names in the description! it's one of those things that i wish every youtube did
24:40 Bro really went: fuck lets just copy OMORIs plot twist (but 10 times worse)
Can only heartily sign the "Go Sexy Brutale" message. Back when I played it I occasionally stream to a group of friends and I couldn't put it down but was so *mad* that I couldn't stream it to them fresh by the time I'd finished it offline.
just here to recommend In Stars and Time as a perfect time loop game. it uses the time loop not just as a narrative device, not just as a setting, but as a genuine element of the story interwoven with the others, and playing through each loop gets faster and faster as you go through each one. there is still tedium but it's intentional.
I don't wanna say any more to avoid spoilers but. 10/10 time loop game. a must play.
@@epicguy75844 Thanks for the spoilers-
You just described Outer Wilds
okay, wow, i just watched this whole video without realising it somehow only had 2k views. this is super well-made, the commentary is great and it absolutely earned a sub from me. i heard a little about 12 minutes and why it wasn't exactly great but nothing could have prepared me for the things i learned about it in this video. that plot is... certainly something.
My favorite example of a causal loop in video games might have to be Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. It's been about a decade since I played it, but IIRC the story goes that the big bad's village was destroyed when he was a kid, and the cause was a burst of magic high in the sky. So as an adult he spent his time amassing wealth and power to build a tower to that elevation to figure out/prevent the disaster. However, by building his tower and using the power of the crystal to manipulate time, he became the cause of the disaster.
Huh, that sounds like a time paradox though, if the explosion is the reason he builds the tower that causes the explosion.
I did the right thing when I stopped with cop trying to find the brother ending, it's not good but it's so much better
'In Stars and Time' is a REALLY good time-looping game if anyone's interested in that! The story telling is phenomenal and the ending literally made me cry
I was considering _12 minutes_ because _Outer Wilds_ was so good. Honest to goodness, I am so glad I saw this first. I'd have been _pissed_ if I'd played that game on the couch with my partner and kid.
On the other hand, we just started _Sexy Brutale_ a few days ago, and I agree, it's great!
Do you usually not research games at all before playing in front of a child?
@@corvus8638 Indeed I do. That's one of the reasons I watched this video. I didn't see a CW: Graphic Suicide warning in the Steam listing. I also generally check DoesTheDogDie for triggers before playing; that's far more comprehensive, if mildly spoilery at times.
Only 17.5k subscribers? Woah. You could've fooled me. The editing, pacing, and research in this video had me thinking you were in the millions of followers. Please keep going. I don't know a lot about a lot but I know this platform and it's extremely rare I find someone this talented with such a small following....... Heck or at all
I'm not kidding. I don't even have any criticism. I was actually thinking half way through that I might comment asking how you got the sound mixing so perfect. The music you use in the background slaps so hard but it never distracts from the video or is two loud.
Well done sir! 👏👏👏
At one point in the “flashback” the father alludes to the sister being pregnant, so I think that sequence is also a dream, or something?
I remember watching the GTLive for 12 Minutes and at some point, MatPat gives up on finding the endings. Eventually, as they look through the walkthroughs, they go absolutely insane.
"YOU READ HIM A BOOK?!"
@Ozzy II I HIGHLY recommend checking out the "12 monkeys" TV show as well as "Dark". 12 Monkeys has some very intricately planned and consistent time travel (though it does have a few moments where they decide to get campy for fun) and is overall a genuinely well-made time travel show, and is massively underrated/unknown. Dark is similar in it's consistency/planning, but a lot more serious and, well, dark. Both feature time loops and consistent time travel, and if you're as big of a fan of the concept as I am, then you absolutely should watch both shows.
While hearing the twists all I could think is “I could just be fucking watching Dark again, man…”
This seems less like "The Problem with Time Loop Games" and more like "The Problem with Games that Suddenly Have Shitty Writing."
Or "the problem with thinking that a shocking hook, an oedipus parody, a bunch of money thrown at actors to voice act and a quote from a random book can make a compelling video game"
Came here to say, there’s a really good timeloop game atm called in stars and time! It deals with time loops really well with how it deals with repetition and makes you feel how the main character feels!
Especially with how you can feel how frustrated the character get as well as know the script by heart (note that you can skip dialogue, and get even stronger than your party in your future loops, as well as spacing out in a conversation) so you can speed through the game like how the main character feels after each loop, when you do things like not go to a key component of knowledge where the party finds a spell that no one knows where only the mc knows, when you teach this important spell to one of your main friends early on and go to this information spot later in a much farther level, they will be suspicious of how you knew of such a spell before going to the library..
I will say, this game is more focused on the mc’s mental struggles of dealing with the time loops as well as internal struggles, there is no weird or bad plot twist that breaks the immersion of the story, it is a heartfelt journey through and through and deals with you and your parties relationships! (No weird drama btw! So no love triangles that break immersion!)
In short, It’s a time loop game, while a simple rpg game with your party to fight the final boss, is quite good at conveying emotions and struggles as well as change.. it’s really good to get into it without spoilers at all
Hearing someone mention sexy brutale always makes me think of Totalbiscuit and how he strongly recommends that game. RIP TB, we miss you
Speaking of stories with timeloops, Surviving Romance starts as one, though it progresses when our protagonist tries to get close to people. It's a manhwa, and I think of it as like Re-Zero meets Crazy Ex Girlfriend.
while i personally felt fine with surviving romance's ending, apparently some of the other readers were pretty dissatisfied with it :')
+ i saw another comment on this video talking about how sexy brutale also didn't have the best ending, haha. timeloop stories and endings, man :')
@@i_guess108raging loop also had a controversial ending. I think when the story/experience is good while leading up to the ending, the writers start feeling under pressure to finish it with a bang, and it inevitably ends up in a mess that these endings usually are.
@@i_guess108aw damn I really liked it but I may be a bit biased as I really liked the author and their previous work
Can't believe this is a dead channel. The video quality is insane, this is a very good video essay, and even though I don't often watch video essays, I enjoyed it a lot.
Interesting detail. The carpet outside the door when his wife leaves is the carpet from the Overlook hotel in The Shining.
Im in LOVE WITH THE CONCEPT OF TIME LOOPS I DONT KNOW WHY BUT IM JUST EXTREMELY IN LOVE WITH THEM i recently have been watching a 15 episode series called "reset" and i have been eating up that series REAL GOOD
In regards to games id recommend “in stars and time”
Its a new time loop game that I absolutely loved
I’d recommend playing DEATHLOOP.
It’s not the greatest game, but it’s pretty entertaining if you want a time-loop mechanic with an action-shooter playstyle
I think time loops work better narratively than mechanically in games simply due to the nature of how games work as a whole, time loops are more of a storytelling device than anything if you ask me.
If you like The Sexy Brutale you should really try out Ghost Trick! It's a really fun puzzle mystery game with a super interesting story. And it utilizes time loops really well.
And GT is a much better puzzle game with actual characters at that!
Jessie Gender’s video essay on this game is one of my favorite video essays I’ve ever seen
Imagine you're having a dramatic, deeply personal conversation with a man who is accusing you of murdering your father. You're trying desperately to convince him you didn't, fighting for your life to not end up his victim, and while this is happening your husband without saying anything just picks up a spoon and walks into the closet for the entirety of the conversation.
As you were describing Sexy Brutale, I thought of the VR game The Invisible Hours, an experience where the player just observes and tries to understand the scenario that plays out among several characters. Then I look up Sexy Brutale, and it's by the same company!
😮 twist
@25:00 I just realized that reflection matches with the hallways and carpet from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.
before i clicked on this i was like "this video aint 12 minutes"
then i realized
AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES was a super fun time loop game although my problem with time loop games is that u usually can’t win if the time loop person doesn’t somehow connect the time loops or use information they could only know from previous timeloop
I think Outer Wilds use the time loop concept differently than the other games in this analysis. In Outer Wilds you're not trying to change the events in each loop to stop murders, but you're merely exploring a world and gathering information from an ancient civilization. The time loop only works to reset astronomical events you have no power over. All of that leads to a different dynamic than 12 Minutes or Sexy Brutale
"Oops I accidentally my own sister"
OR
"It was all in le head"
My god, we're in a 'worst ending' competition and they made 2 entries at once! I was almost expecting the triple-threat with a boss fight that's just QTEs.
Fun fact, you could keep asking your sister-wife about the book for the quote, or, keeping in line with the theme of this game, you could kill her with the kitchen knife, take the book from her body, and read it aloud while she dies. This also works to unlock the alternate ending. In case this game didn't have enough 'bullying wife' content.
Also, while a more minor point, having the father and hitman use the same distinctive voice actor is a really weird and dumb choice. You have like 4 characters with lines, you really can't just have someone else voice the dad? It's so confusing because it makes them seem related somehow. And the last thing this story needs is more people being related...
Seems strange to (correctly) give this game shit for flinching at the last second, while also recommending The Sexy Brutale, which also (spoilers!) flinches at the last second.
The difference is that Sexy Brutale is a _really good game_ up until that last second. There are serious puzzles to solve, there's actual gameplay, there's an entire mansion to explore and observe throughout the loops...
Meanwhile, Twelve Minutes isn't exactly a great game even _before_ the absurd ending.
TSB is a masterpiefe of a game, I spent half an hour trying to understand the end but is still a very good game
But it doesn't? It was always about saving one person in particular, and that gets hinted at plenty in the game. There's plenty of oddities that don't make sense if the goal was to be the big hero at the end of the day.
Play "In Stars and Time", it's an excellent time-loop game.
As someone who is 100% biased because its their favorite game of last year, I can only agree.
I'm shocked to see this video only having 800 or so views. It's a very good analysis with high production values.
How ironic that TH-cam recommended this video again, not showing that I already watched it, and I didn't remember I watched it already until a certain point. For a second I thought I was in a timeloop
Recently, there’s been a game that came out called In Stars and Time. And it is a very good time loop game.
If you love time loops, wait until you see Homestuck. The whole comic is a time loop.