Review: Text Twist by Astraware

The subject of this review is one of Astraware's best sellers, Text Twist. I've mentioned before that word games are my favourite type of game, and Text Twist is another excellent game in this genre.

In each round, you are given 6 letters. The object is to make as many words of three letters or more as you can in the given time. If you find at least one 6-letter word, you advance to the next round. If not, it's game over. You don't have to find all words possible to continue on, which is good because sometimes I get a bit stuck! If you do find all the words, you get bonus points.

Something I like about this game is that you can see how many words of each length are required if you want to find all the words. While this is good sometimes, I also think that it might be a good way to incorporate a slightly more difficult mode of play - maybe an easier mode where you can see how many words are required (as in the picture to the right), and a more difficult one where you just try to find as many as you can without knowing how many words of each length there actually are (but you're shown at the end of the allotted time).

Another good thing about Text Twist is that there's no learning curve - you make words, end of story. I tend to be rather lazy with new games - if it's too hard to learn I generally don't bother with it. With this game you know all you need to know within the first 20 seconds. But don't think that that means you'll get bored with it, because you won't!

Text Twist is one of my all-time favourite Astraware games, and is one of the first games I transfer over when I get a new PDA. If you haven't tried it yet, you really are missing out!

Text Twist is available from Astraware for $19.95.

- Jenny O'Reilly, Associate Writer (Australia)