Tweet Land Review
PROS
- Unique 'crowd sourced' random level generation; let the whole of Twitter decide your fate.
- Fantastically energetic pixel-art visuals.
- Easy pick-up and play style; technically one-finger controls.
CONS
- Inconsistent collision detection combined with large hit-box; damage occasionally applied or avoided at random - mines are a veritable nightmare along with 'destroyed' cars.
- Randomness of keyword selection not suitably moderated for difficulty; combos such as a meteor shower with mines feels like the game flipping the bird at you.
VERDICT
Innovative, unique and chaotically amusing - Tweet Land embodies all of these things; sadly a combination of inconsistent collision detection and nightmare keyword combos can rip control out of your hands, making it hard to enjoy.
- Full Review
- App Store Info
When someone tells me about a game that features 'randomly generated' gameplay elements, I can't help but cringe as it's either not as 'random' as the person suggests, or said randomness gets in the way of an otherwise decent title. Sadly Tweet Land by Why Ideas and Tree Interactive falls in to the second category and while the idea of having 'The Internet' influence your game may sound great, it invariably results in an inconsistent experience.
Your task involves nothing more than taking control of a fast moving and extremely dextrous vehicle as it slides its way around a side-scrolling highway, knocking cars out of the way to earn points. Unfortunately 'tweets' are influencing the game and certain keywords (such as terrorist, minefield, car accident, meteor, and so on) will bring these things to life, causing no end of chaos that only gets worse as you unlock more keywords with each level.
Tweet Land is best described as a 'feast or famine' game in which you either experience everything that could possibly go wrong happen all at once or experience almost no difficulty thanks to generous power-ups or infrequent penalties. Much of this difficulty can be offset with skill in navigating hazards, however the game's rather awkward collision detection will see you losing lives with almost as much random abandon as the objects that spawn around you. One major offender is the way in which 'destroyed' vehicles become flying projectiles that can still harm you - as such weapons like the flamethrower become more of a penalty as anything you shoot becomes a deadly hazard.
Other bugs including spawned objects making vehicles 'warp' across lanes only exacerbate Tweet Land's already flawed gameplay.
It's a terrible shame that these features work against the game as the concept itself is fantastically madcap and when things go right it's hard not to find the corners of your mouth curling up in to a smile.
Another huge point in the game's favor is its detailed retrotastic pixel-art that manages to clearly indicate most hazards while also emphasizing the madcap energy of so many things happening at once.
There's a cunning and amusing arcade title buried amongst the collision problems, minor bugs and overzealous random level generation, but whether or not you fall in love with Tweet Land will rely on how patient or possibly how lucky you are.
Screenshots
