'Twelve Minutes' Game Trailer: Daisy Ridley And James McAvoy Star In Interactive Time Loop Thriller

As independent video games continue to push the creative envelope, they'll continue to attract top-tier Hollywood talent to participate. Case in point: Twelve Minutes, an upcoming interactive time loop thriller that features voice work from Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), James McAvoy (X-Men: First Class), and Willem Dafoe (The Lighthouse). Check out the game's trailer and learn more about it below.

The game, which hails from creative director Luis Antonio and Annapurna Interactive, launched its trailer at Gamescom last week, and got the attention of the folks at EW, who explain that the story "begins with one man's attempt to have a romantic evening at home with his wife (Ridley). The man (McAvoy) — all names are withheld from the player at the start to maintain mystery — witnesses a violent home invasion when an intruder (Dafoe) storms their apartment and knocks him out. The man then wakes up 12 minutes earlier, an experience that will repeat itself until he's able to figure out the truth behind this tragic event and, hopefully, prevent it from happening altogether."

The game's Steam page says "Twelve Minutes blends the dream-like tension of The Shining with the claustrophobia of Rear Window and the fragmented structure of Memento." Those are some pretty lofty comparison points, but if that simple trailer could generate a gnawing feeling in my gut, perhaps the entire game will actually be able to achieve those high expectations.

The trailer, with Dafoe's calmly delivered vocals juxtaposed over terrifying footage of a violent home invasion, gave me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach – not bad for a video that's only fifty-eight seconds long. "It's pretty dark," Ridley said of the game. "It goes from being this very joyous, immediate thing to this pretty dark warren of various options. It's cool because you as the player are learning more, so you're trying to figure out more."

Annapurna also released this behind-the-scenes video about the voiceover sessions, featuring some look into the cast reading their lines as well as some insight from Antonio, who likes this era in video games to the black and white era of filmmaking, and suggesting that this game could help bridge the gap into the next phase of what video games can be.

The hope is for Twelve Minutes to be ready by the end of 2020, and when it's released, it will be available on Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and PC.