Review of Twitch

At first glance, the basic rules for Twitch seem to be too simple to be any fun. When it is your turn, you must play a card. That card will indicate who has the next turn. That person must then play a card which will say who should play next. And so on.

But after only thirty minutes of playing the game with three hyperactive teenagers, one is almost ready to thank the heavens for the simplicity of the rules. If it had been in any way complex, I think my brain would have exploded.

The key to Twitch is speed. If you do not play your card as soon as it is your turn, someone else can play a challenge card. A correct challenge makes you take all of the cards played so far. The object of the game is to get rid of all your cards, so you want to play as soon as you figure out that it is your turn.

The cards come in but a few flavors: left, right, 2 to the left, and 2 to the right indicate that the person in that position must play the next card. Each person is assigned a color at the start of the game, and some cards indicate that that color must play. There are also cards which force the person who last played to play or act as a duplicate of the last card played. Those are the basic cards.

It's the advanced cards which make your head spin as you try to figure out "is that me, and if not, who is it?" before anyone else. These cards switch left and right, change the players' color assignment, and allow a player to choose who plays next. So there are these tense moments where you have to track, "OK, it's two to the left of Sven, but left is right and I am sitting..." And by then someone has challenged you and you have to take all of the cards.

Games actually go by fairly quick - less than ten minutes - and are quite fun. One of the teenagers given to hyperbole proclaimed Twitch "the greatest game ever made," and it seems to have created a few addicts here. I found it a fun diversion, perfect if you want to play a game but only have a short time, but I couldn't see playing it for hours on end.

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Regarding Substance: The real question is substance relative to what? The game has far less substance than a similarly sized deck of Magic(tm) cards, but has more substance than a deck of Uno(tm) cards.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 3 (Average)