A Gamer's Guide to Playing Twitter

Okay, so a few weeks ago, my husband and one of his friends got me to try out an awesome new game. It's called Twitter. They tricked me into playing by saying that it'd be good for our little indie studio, Frogdice, but I digress. There's several objects to this new game, and I'm enjoying it immensely. Casual and hardcore gamers can both enjoy this game, but I'll warn you that many aspects of the game can be extremely addicting and even downright dangerous. Here, I'll break it down for my faithful readers.

Create a Character

Okay, so you create a character first. That's pretty standard. Character creation is simple, and a player can customize his or her character page easily. I made mine brown and green. I have no idea why since I pretty much hate the color brown. Next, you write a few blurbs about your character. Get as creative as you want. I fashioned my character after my real life self. Not too inspired there.

Learn the UI

The UI for the game is relatively simple. You start off with a little egg for an avatar. (I think that it's because you're supposed to be a baby bird.) You can change this to something that suits you more, but the egg's pretty cute. Next, you have a little bird's nest for your "home" button. (So clever!) You use these buttons to navigate through the game as you send out little "tweets". Tweets are just things you type in under 140 characters or less, and this can be extremely daunting. So many times you'll be at 141 characters, and then you'll have to choose how you want to mangle your use of the English language. (Or whatever language you may be Tweeting in. I'm thinking of trying Thai next when I beat the next boss).

Object of the Game

I'm just kidding. Bosses don't really exist in this game. At least I haven't encountered them yet. There's multiple ways to level up in this game, and I love systems like that. You can count the stats for each of your "tweets". Other characters can "re-tweet" you, and that gets added to your tweet score. They can also favorite your tweet, and that also gets added, too. So many pretty numbers going up and up and up! You can also look at your number of "followers", and that's another thing that you can level up via your "tweets".

Obstacles

Like any good game, I found many, many obstacles in my path. For example, you can run into doors or get run over by cars if you tweet carelessly. I found this out while I was tweeting from my phone. (Did I tell you that this game can be played on your phone, PC, or even your TV? Wow! Talk about multi-platform.) I even read about someone falling off a cliff while tweeting. Or maybe it was texting. The games are pretty similar. So, be careful while you're playing. Play responsibly, and remember to take breaks!

Some characters on the game can be very difficult to conquer as well. You can tweet and tweet and tweet and tweet, and they never respond. Other characters add a lot to the game, so make sure that you keep track of those by "following" them. This will also add to their "followers" score, and they may add to yours.

Re-playability and Retention

I'm still pretty new at this game, so I don't have the answer to this yet. You're welcome to add to my follower score by finding me, @dalaena. (The @ and the # signs will be your best tools while playing this game.)

Grumpy with no Twitter!