▼ Not recommended
0 hrs
this is TERRIBLE. first of all, it is not even CLOSE to a recreation of the classic text twist web game. sure, it had six letters that you have to unscramble, but that's where the similarities end. there's a reason for that, but i'll get into it towards the end of the review.
you get two modes, timed and untimed. timed gives you two minutes to try and fill in all the words, and your high score is saved at the end of the two minutes. untimed lets you fill in the whole board with no time limit. untimed doesn't really work that well because once you finish a board it doesn't do anything. no new board with new letters, no congratulations screen, nothing. timed mode doesn't work because the score system gets broken if you bother with untimed mode even once. for some reason, your score is saved in untimed mode as well, and it only shows one singular score on the menu, rather than a different score for both modes. that means you can play untimed once, get the max score of 27000, quit to the menu, and then going for high scores in timed mode becomes pointless.
on top of that, they somehow screwed the basic gameplay of text twist in this version. for one, there are so few boards that i ran into repeats multiple times in my meager 30 minutes of gameplay. either i got REALLY unlucky or there just aren't that many sets for the game to randomly choose from. second, and worst of all, are the boards you fill in. plain and simple, they suck. not all words that are possible to make from a set of letters are used in any given board. that doesn't mean you can just pick however many words you can think of to fill them in, no no no, that would actually make sense. instead they have VERY SPECIFIC words that can be used. that means that some real obvious, basic words just will not work when you try them. this issue is most prevalent with three letter words, but there were a few examples of four or even five letter words that didn't work either. on top of all that, you can't even use the six letter word, despite every single set having a six letter word that you could make.
so what happens in a typical timed game is you type in the six letter word, and nothing happens because theres no spot for it. then, you type in a bunch of three and four letter words, only to realize some of the ones you put in didn't work. you try them again, and they still don't work, because for some reason, they just aren't in the game's word library. so you're like "well what else am i supposed to fill in here?" and you start typing every three letter combination you possibly can, and still end up missing a few because despite some obvious real words not being included, it's also filled with those obscure words you've never heard of. stuff like "aal". but sure, "yaw", a basic terminology in airplanes, doesn't count, or even "mobile", which is pretty ironic. then you run out of time with a pretty middling score, only for it to not matter beacuse you already maxed out the high score with an untimed game a while ago. then you start a new game and get a board you've already seen before and STILL can't fill it all in.
as if somehow butchering the gameplay of something as simple as text twist wasn't bad enough, the presentation also sucks. UI that looks like it was made for a mobile game in a 2023 PC release, super generic looking black times new roman text with no outlines or anything, no video options (not even a fullscreen toggle), letters get stuck if you start typing in words before they finish shuffling, and one ambient looping song that sounds oddly stressful. the charm of the REAL classic text twist is not present in this port, nor is the quality gameplay or variety. i loved classic text twist as a kid, and was excited when i saw it was coming to steam, but, despite the name, classic text twist this is not.
in fact, after looking into it a little more, i found out why this bares such little resemblance to the classic text twist it gets its name from. this is actually a port of a 2011 mobile game called Text Twist 2, which explains the funky UI.
Devs, if you're reading this, please be honest here. i feel like i got tricked into buying what i thought was going to be something completely different from what i got. if you had called this "Text Twist 2", which you should've, since that's what it is, then i wouldn't have gone into this game expecting a port of the original text twist. if it's possible to do so, please change the game's name on steam and update it to show the game's original title.
you get two modes, timed and untimed. timed gives you two minutes to try and fill in all the words, and your high score is saved at the end of the two minutes. untimed lets you fill in the whole board with no time limit. untimed doesn't really work that well because once you finish a board it doesn't do anything. no new board with new letters, no congratulations screen, nothing. timed mode doesn't work because the score system gets broken if you bother with untimed mode even once. for some reason, your score is saved in untimed mode as well, and it only shows one singular score on the menu, rather than a different score for both modes. that means you can play untimed once, get the max score of 27000, quit to the menu, and then going for high scores in timed mode becomes pointless.
on top of that, they somehow screwed the basic gameplay of text twist in this version. for one, there are so few boards that i ran into repeats multiple times in my meager 30 minutes of gameplay. either i got REALLY unlucky or there just aren't that many sets for the game to randomly choose from. second, and worst of all, are the boards you fill in. plain and simple, they suck. not all words that are possible to make from a set of letters are used in any given board. that doesn't mean you can just pick however many words you can think of to fill them in, no no no, that would actually make sense. instead they have VERY SPECIFIC words that can be used. that means that some real obvious, basic words just will not work when you try them. this issue is most prevalent with three letter words, but there were a few examples of four or even five letter words that didn't work either. on top of all that, you can't even use the six letter word, despite every single set having a six letter word that you could make.
so what happens in a typical timed game is you type in the six letter word, and nothing happens because theres no spot for it. then, you type in a bunch of three and four letter words, only to realize some of the ones you put in didn't work. you try them again, and they still don't work, because for some reason, they just aren't in the game's word library. so you're like "well what else am i supposed to fill in here?" and you start typing every three letter combination you possibly can, and still end up missing a few because despite some obvious real words not being included, it's also filled with those obscure words you've never heard of. stuff like "aal". but sure, "yaw", a basic terminology in airplanes, doesn't count, or even "mobile", which is pretty ironic. then you run out of time with a pretty middling score, only for it to not matter beacuse you already maxed out the high score with an untimed game a while ago. then you start a new game and get a board you've already seen before and STILL can't fill it all in.
as if somehow butchering the gameplay of something as simple as text twist wasn't bad enough, the presentation also sucks. UI that looks like it was made for a mobile game in a 2023 PC release, super generic looking black times new roman text with no outlines or anything, no video options (not even a fullscreen toggle), letters get stuck if you start typing in words before they finish shuffling, and one ambient looping song that sounds oddly stressful. the charm of the REAL classic text twist is not present in this port, nor is the quality gameplay or variety. i loved classic text twist as a kid, and was excited when i saw it was coming to steam, but, despite the name, classic text twist this is not.
in fact, after looking into it a little more, i found out why this bares such little resemblance to the classic text twist it gets its name from. this is actually a port of a 2011 mobile game called Text Twist 2, which explains the funky UI.
Devs, if you're reading this, please be honest here. i feel like i got tricked into buying what i thought was going to be something completely different from what i got. if you had called this "Text Twist 2", which you should've, since that's what it is, then i wouldn't have gone into this game expecting a port of the original text twist. if it's possible to do so, please change the game's name on steam and update it to show the game's original title.
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