Mobile Game Review of "TwinkleTown"

Image via Wikipedia Twinkle Town is a series of logic puzzles with the backdrop of a very light-hearted "battle" between "good" and "evil". Basically, a professor has invented a way to power houses from lightning storms, and the town is bright... when the electric company guy flew over saw that the town is not paying him, and decided to sabotage the whole thing. The town went dark, and the professor needs YOUR help to reset the connections and bring every building back to light.

The game basically has two modes: the "connect the path" mode, and "crossbar" mode. Both are logical puzzles that needs a little bit of explanation.

Connect the Path mode, known as "timing" in the game, has you guiding the electricity by completing the path. Normally, it's just vertical, horizontal, but they also added right-down, left-down, right-up, and left-up, for total of SIX keys. When you come to a Y-split, you can go either way, but you better choose quickly and wisely... Going into a deadend means level restart. Then add specials like "reverse flow", which reverses flow of electricity for one junction, "power area" which powers all the lights in the area, special requests like "zap the rats", and you have to really watch your step. You can't queue the commands either. Only the immediate next junction can be selected. Oh, did I mention that you must guide the electricity down to where the professor is? Guess not. When electricity picks up speed due to long flow, and distances between junctions gets shorter, and you aren't too such which keys to press... It can be frantic.

The crossbar mode is another logic puzzle that appeared before in various brain teasers. Basically, the electricity moves down these parallel power "bars". It will always move DOWNWARD, but if there's a crossbar it will move across as well. Thus, you need to place the crossbars strategically to pass them through certain items, avoid the gaps or bombs that'll end the trip, power more lights, and even pick up speed (in order to avoid the power man) as you make your way down to the professor.

The "story mode" is the campaign where you play competition where you need to turn the entire town's lights back on, one house at a time. Every few houses, the powerman challenges you to a special duel, all have to do with aligning power flow.

The loading screen itself is a "shoot-em-up". Basically, send the professor up like "space invaders" and try to "shoot" the powerman's plane out of the sky. It's a cute way to make the wait time more "bearable". Though asking for 200 hits? Gee.

Grpahics are good 2D sprites, a bit cute, but very visible. It's just those SIX BUTTON CONTROLS I worry about in the "complete the path" mode. When the level gets long, ONE small mistake will force a redo, and that is just frustrating. Music is cute at first, boring later. As stated, controls are okay to bad.

All in all, Twinkletown is a new wrapper on "snake" and similar logic puzzles, but with a bit more "action" twist. It's mostly average though, nothing to really special to recommend it, except very well done loading screen, and some rather inventive backstory.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Logic puzzles are easy to learn, and pacing is good
Cons: That's all there is? Been there, done that.