Common Sense Media Review
By Paul Semel
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Simple arcade game undermined by aggressive advertising.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 11+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Download
Videos and Photos
Twist Hit!
Parent and Kid Reviews
Privacy Rating Warning
Privacy Rating
Our expert evaluators create our privacy ratings. The ratings are designed to help you understand how apps use your data for commercial purposes.
Pass
Meets our minimum requirements for privacy and security practices.
Warning
Does not meet our recommendations for privacy and security practices.
Fail
Does not have a privacy policy and should not be used.
Privacy Rating
Our expert evaluators create our privacy ratings. The ratings are designed to help you understand how apps use your data for commercial purposes.
Pass
Meets our minimum requirements for privacy and security practices.
Warning
Does not meet our recommendations for privacy and security practices.
Fail
Does not have a privacy policy and should not be used.
What's It About?
In an attempt to make some trees, the arcade game TWIST HIT! has you hold a button that fills in a tree's ring. Except there's moving blocks that try to impede your progress, so you have to time it just right. As for why you're doing this, it's never said, but we chose to believe it's because the creators like to breathe and understand that trees are important for providing the air we all need to survive.
Is It Any Good?
While some good mobile games are undermined by overly aggressive advertising, this has the dubious distinction of being rendered unplayable by being so ad-friendly. In Twist Hit!, you have to make trees by holding down the button that systematically fills in the tree's ring. Fill in enough rings, and you're rewarded with some in-game currency and a nice tree. Just make sure you time it right, because there are moving barriers that will get in your way, and as you progress, they can get increasingly more intricate, moving in multiple directions and speeds at the same time.
If that's all there were to this mobile arcade game, it would be an entertaining but overly simplistic game that would hold your attention for an hour or two. But you won't last five minutes when you see how often this runs video ads you can't skip. It runs them when you win, when you lose, even when you're about to start playing. They're so frequent, in fact, that we wonder if the real point of this game is to see how many ads you can watch before flinging your device at a tree. Which is why, despite being an interesting if simplistic arcade game, Twist Hit! is instead an obnoxious and greedy example of how not to monetize your mobile game.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about rewarding bad behavior. Twist Hit! has so many ads that it's basically unplayable ... unless you spend money to purchase the ad-free version. But should the developers be rewarded for designing the game like this?
In Twist Hit!, you help grow trees, which is a nice idea, but since this game isn't trying to raise money to plant real trees, should you instead donate some money to a charity that plants trees?
App Details
- Devices : iPhone , iPad , Android
- Pricing structure : Free
- Release date : May 2, 2019
- Genre : Arcade Games
- Publisher : SayGames LLC
- Version : 1.6
- Minimum software requirements : Requires iOS 9.0 or later; Android 4.1 and up
- Last updated : May 19, 2019
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