Inside Social Games

In recent time there have been a rather large rush of Twitter based games and applications to flood the social network. We have seen dating apps, games, and now even coming virtual worlds. Nonetheless, OuTwit.me has just launched a suite of five mind coaxing games for our tweeting amusement.

1. Tweet Quiz

Self-explanatory, right? To a degree, yes. But Tweet Quiz isn’t so much your traditional quiz. The way this little game works is Twitter followers are presented with a phrase such as “A way of honoring a hero.” Below the statement are blocks of question marks that show all the possible answers there are and the total possible points available (this particular example has 58 answers and a maximum point value of 90k+).

Every couple of minutes, the game will provide its players with a clue, and the game will last a total of 16 hours in order for the start times to go around the world fairly. Suffice to say, an extremely challenging mental game, requiring tremendous thought, that is quite a bit of fun if you are in to such things.

2. TWord Chains

This game is really cool and actually has a vague semblance of social, multiplayer play. Anyone following this game (@tWord Chains) will be presented with two words that look like this: “EXIT to ENTRANCE.” This is where creativity and strong vocabulary comes into play as the followers work together to manipulate the word “exit” so that it becomes “entrance.” Here’s the trick though: You can only change, drop, or add ONE letter to create a new word. The example OuTwit gives is MILK to MILL to MILLS to SILL (change K to L, add S, delete M).

Interestingly enough, they developer is looking to create this game in 12 other languages as well. Certainly ambitious for a word play game.

3. Story Teller Me

A personal favorite due to the creativity involved, this game is a bit like the improvisation game often played on the TV show Who’s Line is it Anyway? Each player gets one line in a story, and the object is to Tweet one that makes since to those prior as you attempt to make a coherent and interesting tale from multiple sources.

Unfortunately, the fun factor of this game is a little hit or miss. Sometimes you will end up with a funny, and fairly decent story or poem, but a lot of the time you get such random nonsense that the effort turns into a rather disappointing endeavor (not to mention the occasional jerk that just throws something ridiculous in to mess things up – though that isn’t uncommon on the internet in the first place).

4. Tweet Words

Next on the site is something anyone who has played Hangman would be familiar with. Sans the man, this game has you guessing phrases of varying difficulty as clues every few minutes. After every successive tweet another letter of the word/phrase is revealed, and points are awarded upon guessing. The more guesses it takes, the less you get.

Of all the games from OuTwit, this one is the least interesting. When the game begins, there isn’t much to go off of, so it comes down to completely random guessing until you get some clues, but even then there is nothing terribly helpful until more letters are revealed, creating a trial and error form of game play with little thinking or strategy involved. However, the developers are looking to implement days of specific themes to this game, so perhaps that context will help out the current issues.

5. Guess Word

Last is the verbal…well, written, version of the board game Mastermind. In the game, players had to figure out random color patterns by random guessing and forming a strategy around those guesses. Guess Word works in a similar fashion, except the color pattern is a secret word. Players must reply to @GuessWord to receive a clue which everyone can see. Using the clues, players must solve the mystery, and first one to do so wins.

Unfortunately, this game is about the same as Tweet Words in amusement as it just feels random, with nothing to make any educated guesses off of. Eventually, there are enough clues to piece something together, but until then it is very unintuitive. Like the previous game, it really needs some sort of context to go off of beyond the length of the word. Of course, if you like games like 20 Questions or aforementioned Mastermind, then you may enjoy this app.