English
Gamereactor
reviews
Twofold, Inc.

Twofold, Inc.

We've been chaining tiles together in this addictive puzzler.

Subscribe to our newsletter here!

* Required field
HQ

We do enjoy a good puzzle game. On the bus. On the couch. On the plane. On the loo. But to be perfectly honest we're also pretty set in our ways when it comes to puzzle games and as Twofold, Inc. challenges some of our preconceived notions of what a well designed puzzle game should be like it took a little getting used to. Once we got into the groove of things we realised this was one of the best designed and addictive puzzlers we'd experienced in recent times.

At its core Twofold, Inc tasks the player with creating combos of coloured tiles. Each tile is worth 2 and that is multiplied by the sum of the previously connected tiles. Two tiles is four points. Three tiles is eight. Four is sixteen. And so on. You can only go through a tile once and you need to include all the tiles of the same colours that touch eachother. You then click arrows at the end of each row on the grind to move the tiles in that row (horizontal or vertical) - so essentially it works a bit like a flattened out Rubik's cube. You then connect then tiles to remove them and fulfill objectives listed above the grid.

It sounds simple, but these basic rules do something that is very rare in puzzle games. They mean that as a player you need to employ a measured approach and try to keep a balance of the colours on the board or else it's going to be really hard to connect any tiles at all. There is an elegant twist here to the design that means that while large combos can be good to knock off your requirements or tasks, sometimes the key to success is to disconnect tiles and isolate them rather than trying to create as big combos as possible.

This is an ad:
Twofold, Inc.Twofold, Inc.Twofold, Inc.

Once you've played the game a few hours you'll begin to recognise shapes and formations and you'll know how to move the tiles around to be able to create the combos. You learn how to exploit the four corners to send much needed tiles across the board in as few moves as possible.

One thing that we had a difficult time with at first was the procedural nature of the game. You will get into fail states where there really isn't a way out. Maybe you should have avoided that large combo earlier, but there is really no way to know how the tiles will drop and if you're unlucky you'll be faced with an impossible situation where maybe there isn't even enough tiles of a certain colour on the board to fulfill your task. But after playing the game and getting better at it, we're more forgiving towards this procedural and somewhat random design. The four lives you have does something to mitigate this randomness (every time you lose a life the required number of tiles for the colour that remains in that task is halved).

While you'll likely play this game with sound turned off mostly (that's how we tend to play puzzle games on our phone, anyway) it must be said that the sound design and music mirrors the addictive gameplay beautifully. There's a tutorial, a standard difficulty and a master difficulty. But it's all the same game. No time pressure. The objectives are sort of the same (though the value and colours asked for varies - and get increasingly more difficult).

This is an ad:
Twofold, Inc.Twofold, Inc.Twofold, Inc.

Our policy is to not review the business model unless it somehow affects the enjoyment of the game. In this case we're faced with something as rare these days as a puzzler that has a cover charge and no in-app purchases on mobile. And while the one time fee may seem stiff compared to other highly entertaining puzzle games, there's something to be said of a game that's not constantly trying to sell you something or distract you from the core experience. Given the amount of time we've spent playing Twofold, Inc over the last couple of weeks there's no doubting the value proposition here. The fact that restarting the game after failing is instantaneous here, instead of taking you to a screen with a slot machine or a screen where you lose a heart or something or an advertisement means you'll give it "just one more go" more often.

Twofold, Inc. is a puzzle game that belongs on any phone. It's easy to grasp, difficult to master, and there is a lot of skilled involved when it comes to figuring out how two or three moves affect multiple potential combos on the board.

HQ
HQ
08 Gamereactor UK
8 / 10
+
Very neat design, Highly addictive, Easy to grasp and difficult to master.
-
Procedural nature can be punishing at times.
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

Related texts

0
Twofold, Inc.Score

Twofold, Inc.

REVIEW. Written by Bengt Lemne

"It's easy to grasp, difficult to master, and there is a lot of skilled involved."



Loading next content