Major narrative spoilers for 12 Minutes and Last Day of June, but no puzzle spoilers for LDJ.
12 Minutes is more problematic than it intended to be. The incest was a bit shocking, sure, but I’m not as morally appalled by that as I am by how the wife was treated throughout the actual gameplay.
But first, an introduction to the similarities between Last Day of June and 12 Minutes. Both are puzzle games where you (the husband) try to manipulate the world around you to stop your wife (who has just announced or is about to announce pregnancy) from dying. You can only embody and change the actions of one character per loop, although that character remains constant for the entirety of 12 Minutes. You are never able to take the wife’s perspective.
And yet, in 12 Minutes, the wife is relegated to an object instead of a character. For starters, the wife in 12 Minutes is just given a relational placeholder, not a name. Sometimes, this can be done to great effect to generalize a story and emphasize the bond between two characters, such as between the father and the son in Horacio Quiroga’s short story, “El hijo” (“The son”). 12 Minutes is not a generalizable story with relatable characters, nor one where the relationship would’ve been obvious had the label “wife” not been part of the UI. In contrast, Last Day of June‘s tutorial involves you (again, the husband) learning the controls by retrieving a blanket from the car when June is shivering whilst drawing on the pier. When you return, she reveals she’s been drawing you as a superhero. You laugh together and she hands you a present, which you are giddy to receive. There is more relationship building in that minutes-long tutorial than there is in all of 12 Minutes.
“But it’s actually narratively in-line for the 12 Minutes’s relationship to be troubled.” To the level of abuse shown in 12 Minute’s? And to have abuse as the “correct” successful answer to many of the puzzles? I’d push back on that. For one example, to progress through 12 Minutes, you are supposed(!!!) to drug your wife. Without consent. And then you can leave her unconscious in your room with the main aggressor to enact his will. Or you could shoot and murder her yourself. Returning to the drugging because I cannot see any way to justify the latter two, why not ask if she’s willing to be used as bait? She’s been a supremely understanding wife thus far; and “thus far,” you’ve verbally and emotionally abusing her, demanding her to confess to murder and reveal her past abuse when she just made you dessert. In 12 Minutes, the wife is an object, one to be murdered and interrogated and drugged and used as bait. She’s there to provide you information, give you closure, and advance your plot forward–all at her expense.
There is a lot more wrong with the relationships, choices, and objectives within 12 Minutes, especially with the endings and which the game considers to be the best. Jessie Gender on YouTube sums it up as, “Instead of your character becoming a better person or handling his trauma, it rewards him for perpetuating trauma against himself and others. It stokes and rewards his most harmful and controlling and toxic characteristics.” In Last Day of June, acceptance is the only solution: Driving home from your date, the passenger will die. At this point, you can choose to get into the passenger seat, saving your wife and unborn child. And at that point, you can tell her about the inevitability, or you can simply kiss her cheek one last time. Both games subvert the “perfect ending” of time loops. But Last Day of June emphasizes community* along the way, and acceptance and humility and empathy on the part of the main character.
*I cut out a section about the puzzles in LDJ and how the “correct” solution for one character doesn’t remain the correct solution when more neighbors are added to the scene. One character’s solution can inhibit another character from succeeding. The neighbors need to work together for progress to happen, with LDJ focusing on sharing and community as opposed to 12 Minutes’s very individualistic standard for the main character’s progress, regardless of consequences inflicted on the other characters.
Gender, Jessie. “12 Minutes Is a Pretentious Misogynistic Nightmare.” YouTube, 30 June 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmO4J8vf4s4.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/635320/Last_Day_of_June/
