Twickles

This puzzle game involves moving a board or panel to move a ball to the goal.
The goal is to complete the game in as few moves as possible.
It's so fun that you'll forget to eat.

Yes.

Minimalistic puzzle game. It seems easy at the beginning, but the difficulty ramps up at a nice pace. Additionally new features are added to spice things up a little. I would've appreciated an undo button to avoid having to repeat the whole level. Other than that, it's an interesting game to play.

I'm only half way through the second chapter and I've already got three and a half hours out of this game.

The mechanics aren't hard to understand and the simplicity lends itself to some brilliant puzzles which always feel fun to solve because, unlike some puzzle games I've played, you never seem to find the solution to these puzzles accidentally.

Sure it's nothing ground breaking and it's a bit pricey for how much content you really get (and I did get it during a 90% off sale so I might be a bit biased) but it's got a nice minimalist art style and soundtrack and the puzzles are great so I would recommend giving it a try.

I think it's a sign of a masterfully made puzzle game when the goal is a low number of moves (say 1 to 5 moves on average) and it's still a mind bending experience to make even that many moves. I really enjoyed it.

As per usual I'm not smart enough to do the toughest of the tough puzzles -- another sign of a good puzzle game :P

Fun little puzzle game, Waited till I 100% it to review it as I played it over several months. Enjoyed it. Kinda sad that I won't get to play it any more but non the less worth playing if you enjoy puzzles.

8/10

Beautiful, simple, relaxing game. Simple yet provoking puzzles. A good addition to your library

An interesting, if somewhat complex and tricky puzzle game. I suspect I will hit the wall pretty early on.
That said, there are two levels of success, and the lesser of the two is all that is required to advance, so you don't get stuck, and can go back to work on perfection as you learn new things or simply feel like trying.
The look is simple, as is the sound, and the controls.
The core mechanism, so far, is rotatable squares, with a ball, and passages within the squares. The main conceit is that there are smaller squares, and the large square, and only turning the large square counts against your turn count.
It is turn count that decides if you have passes a leveled perfectly.
So far, imperfect victory is always very easy, it is in striving for the perfect turn that the game gets tricky.
A an only about ten or twelve levels in, but perfect is already often a mind bender.
An easy thumbs up though, a casual, relaxing puzzle game, that challenges while still letting you move ahead. A good combination.

That feeling when you come up with what you think is the perfect solution, after what feels like hours of thinking, only to find out that there is still an even better one. Pure agony.

i review games on steam after i 100% complete them! check out my reviews to see all the games i have completed!

twickles is a minimalistic puzzle game published by assemble entertainment, who have a pretty decent-sized library of games published, but none are anything particularly good. twickles, however, is one of their older games, yet it probably is one of their top-five games overall even though it's an extremely basic puzzle game. it's more a testament to how bad most of the other games they've put out since are. twickles is very basic in gameplay, but the puzzles are fun and unique. overall, this game is a decent puzzle game and grabbing this for 69 cents when it's 90% off (which is frequently) is really the only way i'd recommend this, despite it being one of the publisher's better titles.

A very nice and unique puzzle game! I greatly enjoyed the different mechanics that the game slowly introduced and how calming this game was. Another nice thing is how you don't have to get every level perfect, just some, in order to progress. So, if you're not a perfectionist, there's still fun to be had!

In short: Twickles is a short but clever, somewhat traditional puzzle game. With interesting mechanics and cleverly designed bite-sized levels you get a nice satisfying brain-teaser. The looks, sounds and technical aspects are perfectly functional, but unfortunately nothing to write home about. With a bare-bones game like that and barely 3 hours of content I'm having a hard time recommending it for full-price, but on a discount this is a very easy recommendation from me.

In long: The gameplay is physics-based and revolves around guiding a small ball from start to finish. Every level you are presented with a grid of square tiles. Clicking a tile rotates that tile, which is a "free" move you can do without limit. Arrows below the grid allow you to rotate the whole grid, which adds to your move counter. You can technically beat levels any way you want, but the true goal is to use the least moves possible which completes the level with a trophy. There is no time pressure, it's just a classic puzzle game about planning out the correct sequence of moves. And I mean that literally as there is no undo functionality. Thankfully this is not a big concern as the levels are generally quite short (no level requires double digit moves) and I actually enjoyed not being able to blindly use trial-and-error. The same goes for the game never telling you what the target number of optimal moves is, which - again only given the brevity of each level - adds a nice puzzling layer how far off from the minimum number you still might be.
There is a total of 75 levels across 5 level packs, each pack introducing a new mechanic (basic rotations, fixed tiles, physics blocks, fans, portals). Some of the later challenges combine mechanics in really ingenious ways, but levels are generally short and sweet. I completed the first 2 worlds in about 30min total while the other three worlds are a definite step-up in difficulty and took me 50 minutes each. Usually the majority of time would be spent on 1 or 2 particularly hard levels where the optimal solution was not obvious to me.
I found the game to be over-all quite enjoyable. If you find the optimal solution instantly you feel smart, but completing a hard challenge is equally satisfying. Some of the zero-moves solutions were quite beautiful. With just 15 levels per pack the game never gets old or stale. Every new mechanic opens up some interesting interactions. But the lack of content might honestly be my biggest complaint. Some of the levels are really good and tough, and I wish there were more of them as 3 hours feels barely like a teaser (and somewhat over-priced if you buy without a discount if I'm being honest).

The presentation is fairly weak. The visuals are minimalist-ish, but not really. Everything is quite functional, but lacks in style. The sound effects are not great. The single ambient background track at least is fine and suitably unobstrusive.

The technical side is also fairly bare-bones. For graphical settings you get either full-screen or one of 4 pre-set windowed resolutions. Dark mode is available (and always nice to see), but the game is dim enough where I never felt the need to even try it. On the audio side you get mute buttons for sound effects and music but no volume control. The physics are clearly non-deterministic, but intended solutions never rely on this randomness. Apart from that I've thankfully never encountered a bug or glitch.

In conclusion this is a fun but brief classic puzzle experience. I enjoyed the aspect of optimizing solutions until I found the shortest one. Sadly, apart from the clever level design there is not a lot going on and I wish the game were longer than 3 hours, especially considering its regular price. I bought this on sale for -89% which was well worth the money, so this is still an easy recommendation from me if you can wait on a sale.

A clean, minimal-fashioned puzzle game.
Relaxing background music, which becomes increasingly less and less so with every failed attempt at achieving the perfect solve, to the point that I need a break for my poor, little brain.

Gosh, it still hurts.

Also, I would rather the dev team add the 'undo' button. That would greatly help.

Interesting concept, but missing an undo feature which would have make the game a bit nicer to use, moreover with the cups which allow more interest into solving puzzles the most clever way. But it's not a big issue, apart that it's a pretty nice game to play.

This is a lovely par-based puzzle game. In a clever bit of design, there's a par count for rotating the whole level, while individual tiles can be rotated without penalty. This makes for some very clever puzzle designs (including puzzles with a par of 0 moves).

Puzzles seemed trivial at the start of part 1, but quickly get really challenging. I ultimately needed walkthroughs for the par times on 3 of the 75 levels.

The game has a lovely minimalist aesthetic. Music and sounds are also satisfying. Even the loading screen icon is shaped like an actual puzzle piece in the game. Altogether, the game reminds me a bit of those old wooden marble labyrinth games.

I do have some criticisms, though. There's no undo feature, which isn't a huge deal but was annoying at times. The game doesn't tell you the par count of a level until you reach it, so a suboptimal solution only tells you that you could be faster, without an indication for how close you are. Overall I don't love the philosophy behind this par-based system, since it elevates "perfect" solutions while barely recognizing "imperfect" ones. Rather than a winner-takes-all trophy system like this one, I much prefer a stars system à la Divide By Sheep (where a perfect solution grants all stars, but any valid solution grants at least one star).

Finally, a small number of the later puzzles involve puzzle physics, which has some really unintuitive edge cases. Some of the behavior is almost idiotic. Please, devs, do not implement game-engine physics in your turn-based puzzle games, just script the behavior. Then you won't have to deal with levitating blocks, occasionally glitchy acceleration, etc.

I did enjoy this game overall, though.

Good puzzle game with interesting mechanics ! Lots of fun stuff to do with gravity

Really satisying to solve and I only used part of a guide on a single level in chapter III

Recommended

Nice little game, if bit short and it could use a small introduction to the mechanics. They are so few, I'M sure this would be quick work but help players not having to figure it out by try and error, esp. on mouse & keyboard.
For eveybody who wonders:
Left click on tile: rotate clockwise
right click on tile: rotate counterclockwise
click the rotate buttons at the lower end of the screen: rotate the whole board [(counter-)clockwise]
I played this in just 5.5h and really took my time doing other things in between while having it open.

The levels themselves were fun and at times even a bit trying. Sometimes even finding a solution at all, sometimes finding the way that would save you another turn.

Make more levels!

A supremely elegant puzzle game, in every sense of the word — the visuals are refined and subtle; the sound effects are tasteful; and the level designs are superb. I expected to settle for "good enough" on the later levels, but the game convinced me to keep trying, and eventually I mastered every single board.

Huge thumbs up.

Twickles is a misleading word. It sounds cute. It sounds funny. It sounds innocent.

Let me ask you something. If I pushed you into a loud, droning, mysterious machine that warped you to a new location where you fell 200 feet before being thrusted upward by a fan, only to look up and see a 2-ton block chasing after you, what would you do? Would you scream, or would you say, "Tee hee, that Twickled"?

I rest my case.

The Good:

• Simple concept, challenging game.
  
• The game has a lot of language options, including Klingon.
  
• Dark/bright color options.
  
• Several gimmicks are introduced as you progress: bolted blocks, blocking blocks, fans, and teleportals.
  
• Depressing OST.
  
• I appreciate this game having as much effort put into the sound as it does.¹
  
• Nothing is explained. You just dive in and figure it out for yourself.
  

• 75 levels.
  

• Make an oopsie? There is no undo button, so you have to start the puzzle over.
  
• ¹But there's no sound for a blocking block landing on the ball? Come on!
  

[*]A move isn't a "move" unless it's moving the board, so always get the ball as far as you can without moving the board.

Interesting little puzzle game, not overly hard but also challenging enough if you want all the trophies. Not my favorite option for relaxing though, not sure why.

A nice, original puzzler, where you can both rotate the board and rotate the tiles. (See the store video if that doesn't make sense)

The difficulty ramps up nicely over the course of the game, with a decent number of new features added to keep things varied.

Interestingly, the move count is only based off rotating the board - rotating individual tiles is 'free' for scoring purposes. (This has the slightly odd property that some levels can be completed in "0 moves")

Overall, it's very nicely put together (graphics, sound, music all fit nicely). Recommended.