TextTwist Turbo iPhone, iPod Touch Review

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Back on my old mobile phone I had a version of Text Twist. It’s a relatively simple anagram game, perfectly suited to anyone who loves a good game of Scrabble.

In the Basic Puzzle mode you’re given five to seven random jumbled letters with which you must form as many words of at least three letters as possible. To move onto the next level, you must either find the longest word (of which there could be several) or get a set number of points from solving smaller words.

There is also a Twist mode in which you are given a set of three to five letters. In this mode you must use all the given letters to make a word, and as soon as you’ve done that, then you’ll be presented with the next set of letters.

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The game tells you how many words of each there are left to find, and you can easily check which ones you’ve already done at any time. You’ll almost certainly come across some perfectly valid words (such as Arse or Bots) that aren’t recognised by Text Twist, but on the whole the game’s dictionary is fairly wide-ranging.

Sadly, there is one thing that Text Twist Turbo lacks which gave the version on my old mobile phone such an addictive element, a time limit. Without time pressure the only way to lose the game is to give up. This is demoralising to say the least, and the loss of the frantic last-minute word scramble is a rueful one.

However, the touch screen input is a much better control method than the mobile phone keypad of old, and you’ll never have to think about the controls when selecting which letters make up your word.

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There is still some satisfaction in getting a seven-letter word quickly, and there are various awards that encourage you to get to the highest level that you can before throwing in the towel. And of course there’s always the classic motivation of beating your own previous high score.

Essentially though, your enjoyment of this game solely depends on your love of anagrams. If re-arranging letters is your thing, then add another two points to this score.

4 out of 10