Fuyo and Natsu are the eponymous Weather Twins referred to in the game’s title, TwinGo!, and after losing the stars, it’s up to them to get them back. But they’re going to need your help, or else it will be pandemonium; no more constellations, no more wishes, one less fun shape in kids’ cereals and pastas, and Hollywood will be nothing more than a ghost town…
…okay, so maybe it’s not all bad.
Fuyo and Natsu are the eponymous Weather Twins referred to in the game’s title, TwinGo!, and after losing the stars, it’s up to them to get them back. But they’re going to need your help, or else it will be pandemonium; no more constellations, no more wishes, one less fun shape in kids’ cereals and pastas, and Hollywood will be nothing more than a ghost town…
…okay, so maybe it’s not all bad.
Nonetheless, the collection of the three stars found in each of the game’s 90 stages (spread across three worlds) is the goal of the duo. You can beat the stages (accomplished by getting both twins on their respective launch platforms simultaneously) easily enough without collecting a single star, but the collection of the stars is where the challenge truly lies. Besides which, you’ll find that you might have difficulty moving on from the opening world of Twopical Island to the other two, as they each require a certain number of collected stars to unlock.
That isn’t to say you’re likely to get stuck, though– not in any meaningful way, at least. Though the progression in each world is linear by way of your completion of each subsequent stage, you needn’t worry about puzzles you simply cannot solve. Besides being able to simply move on to the next world once enough stars have been collected, each stage will also allow you to trigger a prompt to see the solution, though you have to give it an honest try first– 10 minutes is the limit before you’re allowed to see it. And if you haven’t the patience for that, then you can just choose to skip a level.
The gameplay itself is rather simple to describe: Each stage takes place on a puzzle-like grid with obstacles (walls, holes), and it is your job to move Fuyo and Natsu around to collect the stars placed throughout. The problem– that is to say, the element which adds challenge to the puzzles– is that the twins are nigh-inseparable; move one, and the other moves the same way with him. In fact, through simple up/down/left/right swipes on the touchscreen, both characters move in tandem. And both must make it to the end of the stage for completion, meaning that if one falls into a hole (the chief obstruction), you must start over.
There are ways to break the two up to a degree, however. If one twin moves against a wall, for example, he won’t go anywhere, but his brother will, so long as there isn’t a hole or wall in his way. In addition, certain stars affect the two individually and differently; if Natsu touches one, he will freeze in place like a statue for one movement of Fuyo, while if Fuyo touches one, he’ll be enshrouded in flames which allow him to move two panels on their next movement. And if you find yourself stuck after a move (or two, or 20…) you realize you shouldn’t have made, a simple “Undo” styled icon in the top right allows you to take it back and reevaluate your strategy.
TwinGo! is an experience which is simple, yet challenging (and very accommodating), and full of charm — the happy Natsu and surly Fuyo are hard to dislike, with their different animations and demeanors, but don’t go so overboard with it as to be thought of as “cutesy,” which is a fine and difficult line to walk.
