3 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

3 Minutes to Midnight by Spain's Scarecrow Studio, a small development team whose motto is "we make point-and-click adventure games", is one of the most ambitious adventures of recent years. It was initially launched in 2019 with a successful Kickstarter campaign, which had an indicative release date of June 2020 (!).

Obviously, that didn't happen, as the people behind the development team decided not to stick to the basics of a typical adventure adventure that would last a few hours and then fade into oblivion, but to create something very powerful that would be a benchmark for years to come. Undoubtedly, a very big challenge for an indie studio's first title, but a decision that raised some questions to its credibility. Delays came and went, from six months to a year, and minimal updates on its development process, to the point where some people came to believe that the project would never be completed.

Eventually, these fears were allayed and on August 22, 2024, 3 Minutes to Midnight was ready for release. The question is, was it worth the wait and did the team from Spain manage to live up to the huge expectations they created?

The answer is not easy to give. Mainly because the game, from the first moment one starts playing, one realizes that it is full of quality and passion. This is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful point 'n' click adventures we've seen, full of vibrant colours, detailed character designs, gorgeous locations with exquisite colour schemes, while at the same time featuring a very strong cast of voice actors, where even the smallest (in role) character has his own unique voice. Scarecrow Studio left nothing to chance, and it's clear as day that countless meaningful hours of work went into the game's five years of development.

However, in the core of the game, namely the story, the plot, the characters and the dialogue, the situation is a bit ambiguous, although it starts with the best of omens. 3 Minutes to Midnight places us in the late 1940s, shortly after the end of World War II in a small town (not named) in New Mexico.

The main character is Betty Anderson, a thoroughly unruly young woman who is abruptly awakened by a large explosion that has shaken the quiet of the city. This explosion was caused by some sabotage of the dam in the area, which in turn caused other problems, such as the breakdown of telecommunications, but most importantly...no one remembers anything. Both Betty and the rest of the town's residents woke up with amnesia and can't even recall their names, let alone what happened the day before or what the explosion was.

Betty, by nature curious and meddlesome, will begin to investigate what's going on, but at the same time she has to deal with her mother and mayor Eliza Barret's steadfast refusal to help her, considering her immature and generally... dangerous (not without reason). The mystery gets more interesting though, as, an overnight, a military base is set up near her town, with the officers keen to prevent civilians from approaching it or answering any questions...

Of course, all this is just the tip of the iceberg, as the case becomes more and more complicated as Betty progresses in her investigation (as if she would listen to her mother), as prominent personalities and agencies are involved, such as President Truman, Russian intelligence (pre-KGB), the FBI and the...chipmunks. Don't be surprised by the latter, as 3 Minutes to Midnight is, for the most part, a humorous adventure, so there are dozens of situations that escape earthly reality and adopt much more "lighthearted"/supernatural explanations for the goings-on. Alas, even the Necronomicon exists as part of a series of puzzles!

Speaking of puzzles, 3 Minutes to Midnight ranges from medium to low difficulty, with little to no moon-logic situations, with the game helping the player regularly with various hints, either of an audiovisual nature or by watching the protagonist monologue what she should do. Where it typically wins the day is in the fact that there is more than one possible solution to almost every challenge presented before us. If not for the first time, it's been many years since we've seen something like this implemented so well that it justifies the years of development of the game. So in the majority of cases, the solution can come either through dialogue or through the use of objects, and not necessarily specific ones each time.

In many dialogues, we only have one chance to give the right answer, in order to avoid, for example, searching for two or three objects that will lead us to the desired conclusion. Most impressively, we are actually allowed to "treat a character badly", which has subsequent consequences (the game informs us of this situation, so if it doesn't satisfy us, we can reload a previous save state). Besides, the game has four different "paths", and also finale, depending on the choices we have made during the game. Therefore, replayability is, without a doubt, among the strong assets of 3 Minutes to Midnight, along with its huge length. The first playthrough took 17 hours to complete, which means that the game is probably the longest of its genre ever, if we take into account the fact that it can be played up to four times in total.

However, I'm not sure that anyone will actually like the game enough to want to return to it three more times, as it has some structural problems, especially with the characters that make up the adventure and the dialogue that accompanies them. For starters, Betty isn't the most sympathetic protagonist we've seen, being primarily a spoiled college girl with zero empathy and tendencies to destroy everything, in the style of Deponia's Rufus, minus his clumsy charm. Combined with her shrill voice, there will be a handful of players who won't feel comfortable controlling her. Possibly, this was done on purpose by the developers, but in general, we appreciate that in adventures where players can't identify enough with the main protagonist, it's hard to keep them interested.

In contrast, Eliza Barret, who we also get to control for quite some time, is clearly more thoughtful, being a cold and greedy politician, with her phlegmatic humour spot on. Beyond that, the other characters we meet are rather unusual and often end up being rather unlikable. Certainly though, standouts include Sheriff Amos and his obsession with chipmunks and conspiracy theories and the semiliterate Ben who is obsessively chasing... communists, but beyond that, I can't say I was thrilled with their implementation. And Mike, the owner of the worst and dirtiest restaurant in all of America, is almost repulsive and not funny at all.

However, the attempt to create a complete "biography" of all our interlocutors is remarkable, as through the (sometimes blathering) dialogues, we can learn everything about them. It's just that the majority of the characters aren't as interesting as the developers think they are, and the humour isn't always as successful as they think it is.

Granted, humour is something subjective to each individual, however 3 Minutes to Midnight consistently falls into the "hit and miss" category. I have to admit that I laughed on several occasions, while on others the "joke" either dragged on so much that it just stopped being funny, or it wasn't funny enough in the first place to build an entire sequence around it. And the "breaking the 4th wall" could have been done with less frequency, though that's where some of the game's cleverest lines were heard.

In short, 3 Minutes to Midnight is a thoughtful and satisfying adventure, it just doesn't manage to become the "next big thing" that the development team tried to achieve. Technically it's flawless, we didn't notice any bugs throughout the adventure, and in terms of controls, it's exactly what one would expect from a modern point 'n' click adventure. Personally, I would have liked it more, but in the end what I received was a reasonably lengthy adventure, telling a decent story (nothing earth-shattering), but it failed to make me love it and ardently want to revisit it again.

However, the beginning was made with a positive sign and we are looking forward to the next steps of Scarecrow Studio. Hopefully in less than a decade (as they themselves mention in the credits of the poor and "to be continued-style" finale).

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