Text Turbo Twist

It's funny how enjoyable a simple game like noughts and crosses, hangman or cards can be. Yet personally we never think to play them. Why would we when we've normally got more complex new handheld releases to be playing?

Text Turbo Twist is one of those games that transcends both the traditional and the modern by giving you a simple word game to play on your mobile phone.

Like the wordy TV programme, Countdown – or perhaps more accurately, the table game Boggle – it offers you an assortment of letters then challenges you to make as many words as possible from them. And that's it. But as anyone who can easy obsess over a crossword for an hour will probably appreciate, it's enough to create a suitable challenge for anyone who gets at least a bit of enjoyment out of solving anagrams or playing a game of Scrabble.

In its Basic Puzzle mode, Text Turbo Twist simply gives you an assortment of letters – starting with five, then gradually increasing them – and lets you go about turning them into words of three or more letters. The number of words that can be made from your letter selection is displayed at the top of the screen so you can always see how many more three-, four-, five- or more letter words can be made.

You don't need to find them all to move onto the next level and another assortment of letters. Instead, a bar is gradually filled as you whip out words and when it reaches a flag you're given the option to move onto the next level.

But even those who don't normally feel the need to complete things in their entirety might find themselves deciding to stay on a level to try and find every word here. It's incredibly satisfying to fill a word list in 100 per cent. Once you do choose to move on, all the words you've missed are displayed, too, just so you can torture yourself wondering how you possibly missed them.

Pleasingly, moving letters around to create words in the game is very simple. You scroll left and right to highlight the letters on the screen then press 'up' to slot them into the space above. 'Down' deletes a letter again, while '0' brings up a list of the words you've already made.

Text Turbo Twist is perhaps lacking a bit in rules and penalties, admittedly. There's no time limit, although there are awards for solving the longest words within a certain time, and there's no penalty for entering the same word twice or a word that doesn't exist. On one hand this makes the game something you can enjoy quite passively. On the other, it would have been nice to have a few other options of game modes.

As it is, the only other offered is the Twist Puzzle mode. In this, instead of selecting individual letters to make words, you're given one anagram at a time and need to twist the letters around to form the correct word. You can pass on words if you like and once you've solved enough to reach the flag – like in Basic Puzzle mode – you move onto another level with longer words. We didn't find it half as addictive as the normal mode, but it at least offers a different way to play.

It's difficult to praise Text Turbo Twist too much because it's really quite a simple experience with reasonably plain presentation.

That said, there seems to be quite a range of words included in the game and we didn't run out of variations at all during our time with the game. What is here is very solidly done and there's no doubt it's the sort of thing you could lose yourself in for hours trying to discover every word. For having a two-player mode and a bit more depth, Scrabble on mobile is probably a better bet. But word-lovers who've got that and fancy a new challenge will no doubt spend a happy time word finding here.