Twittens is a fundamentally gentle tile laying game for 1-4 players, although with a surprisingly tense “push your luck” mechanism. In this game, each player spends the day exploring the lanes and alleyways of a country village, trying to combine features to maximise the score. This is repeated over four seasons with different scoring criteria, and whoever has had the best year is the winner.
Genteel and Gentle
This game is designed around the concept of a gentle stroll through an English village. This theme sets the tone and includes some very quaint colloquialisms.
Twittens is an old Sussex name for the small back roads and lanes that run between houses and fields. The objective cards are called Bimbles, which is a term for a slow, meandering walk with no particular purpose. The game comes with a few mini expansions to add variety, but they are listed as Detours. The pinnacle of this cosy phrasing is that when you end your turn, you don’t Pass. No, what you do is Go Home for Tea. This all combines to make you feel like one of the required components is buttered scones or a packet of biscuits. The word “cosy” is becoming overused at the moment, but in this case the phrase is earned, fundamental to the game, but not used to mask a lack of excitement or to ride the zeitgeist.
In line with this, the artwork in this game is simple but pleasant. The main components are the Twitten tiles, with clear imagery combined just enough variety to keep it interesting. As an example, the houses are all similar enough to be easy to count, but varied enough that by the time you’ve finished it looks like a living village rather than just an array of icons.
This seems like a nice place to live
All other tokens and card backs share the same art style. The Bimble cards are nicely clear but still pleasant. All of the icons you’re looking for are shown, and there is a clear explanation of the specific rules.
The rulebook itself is designed to be as easy as possible. The text is large, it’s full of examples and images, and in a surprisingly useful touch the Contents is shown on the cover of the rulebook. Also, the Detours and the Solo mode are both
Getting your Shoes On
Setup of the base game is quick and simple.
Shuffle the Twitten tiles and place it on the table in reach of everyone.
Grab the score pad and give a Time for Tea token to each player.
Shuffle each season’s Bimble deck and place them in season order from Spring to Winter.
To get ready for the first season, draw 2 tiles from the Twittens deck and place them face up beside the deck.
Each player draws 3 Twitten tiles, choose one to be your Favourite Place. All unused tiles are shuffled back into the deck.
Next, each player draws 3 Bimbles from the Spring Bimble deck and chooses 2 or 3 to keep. Any rejected Bimbles are shuffled back into the Spring Bimble deck.
This is the entire game setup
Going for a Stroll
The goal of Twittens is to take tiles and build the route that you strolled that day. The rules are really simple, but the number of scoring opportunities creates a surprisingly complex dilemma on which tile to place where.
Let’s get the easy part out of the way, taking and placing tiles. You are going to take turns adding a tile to your Twitten. The tile you choose is from one of the following:
Firstly, you can take the top tile from either of the face up stacks. If that stack is now empty, immediately draw a new tile and place it face up in that empty space.
If you don’t want either tile, you can draw 2 tiles from the deck. Pick one, and place the other face up on top of one of the two face up stacks.
Lastly, you can choose the Favourite Place tile that you kept at the start of the game.
The tile you’ve chosen and be rotated in any orientation. After the first tile has been placed, any further tile must follow the following rules:
The new tile must be orthogonally adjacent to an existing tile in your Twitten.
The new tile cannot cut off the end of a path, so any path on either new or existing tiles can only connect to another path.
This is how your stroll can go
Just because the game is gentle, doesn’t mean they can’t add a little tension. The main one is a nice bit of push your luck regarding Houses. Each tile has 0, 1, or two Houses on it. You can only have up to 7 Houses (or 8 if you have any substations in your Twitten), if you ever have more than that number in your Twitten, you must immediately Go Home for Tea and you’re done for this season. This doesn’t sound like much, but wait until you have 6 Houses, both of the visible tiles have two Houses, and you have to hope the blind draw from the deck is feeling generous.
Let the Juggling Begin
Where Twittens gets really interesting is the point salad you are going to have to weigh up each time you take and place a tile.
There are a number of different items on the tiles, most of which score as a group:
Houses - As long as you haven’t gone over your limit, you score 1 point per House.
Trees: Find the largest group of continuous orthogonally adjacent trees, score 1 point per Tree in that group.
Streetlights - This one can get awkward, but rewards perseverance. If you have exactly the same number of streetlights as the number of tiles in your Twitten, you score 1 point per streetlight.
The following score individually for each instance of it in your Twitten:
Roads - Score 5 points if this is at an end of the path, 0 if the path continues through it.
Stations - Count all of the animals that can be reached from that station without crossing any paths, roads, or railways. Score an escalating amount based on that number (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5+ animals score 1, 3, 5, 8, or 12 points).
Playgrounds - Score 3 points for each House orthogonally adjacent to it.
Allotments - Score 3 points for each Tree orthogonally adjacent to it.
Stations and Playgrounds/Allotments can seem ambiguous, but make sense with the clear explanations
There are two other items on the tiles that don’t score, but are useful:
Substations – If you have one or more Substations, your maximum House limit is 8 rather than 7.
Schools – When you place the tile, draw 2 Bimbles, you may keep one. Any you don’t keep are discarded.
Just Bimbling About
Once you have placed your tile, check all of your current Bimbles to see if you’ve met the scoring criteria. If you have, reveal those Bimbles and set them aside until the end of the season.
These Bimbles are quite varied, with some combinations of “X number of Y”, “X number of Y adjacent to Z” or “X reachable by Y number of Z”. The more complicated or difficult the criteria, the higher the score.
Just be careful not to be greedy. Each Bimble you’ve completed by the end of the season scores the points shown on the card. Any you didn’t complete subtract those points from your score instead.
Trying to complete a Bimble is the usual reason you end up going bust on Houses.
Everything Stops for Tea
You can choose to Go Home for Tea as long as you have placed at least 5 tiles in your Twitten. You can also be forced to go home if you place too many Houses, if you can’t place your tile, or if the deck runs out (which means it’s too dark to carry on and everyone goes home). You flip you Time for Tea token to the night side and end your turn. You no longer take any actions until the next season. If anyone remains that has not gone home, the next available player clockwise now takes their turn.
In a nice tweak to avoid too much waiting around after one player has stopped, the game changes a bit after each player goes home. After the first player to go home, the two stacks of tiles are discarded and you now just draw the top two tiles from the deck, play one and discard the other. The second player to go home, any remaining players have to take the top card of the deck and must play it. If the third player goes home, the last player gets just one more turn and then goes home. I really appreciate this little tweak to avoid down time and keep the game moving.
Detours Ahead
The base game is a really fun and simple game, but some may find it gets a little repetitive after a while. The good news is that Twittens comes with four “Detours”, mini expansions you can throw in to add a little more variety and increase the point salad.
Pride of place goes to the “Lollies & Lanes” Detour, with the ironically hot potato of this ice cream van.
Gentle does not mean Boring
The current trend for cosy games is starting to mature. Initially, all that was needed to earn the tag of “cosy” was some anthropomorphic animal meeples and a reduced set of rules. This would sometimes still lead to a good game (hello Everdell), but now that the genre is getting bigger it’s becoming more important to make the game itself a good one.
I do think Twittens is doing a great job of being cosy but still maintaining the quality of the gameplay. The rules are simple, but the scoring methods create a surprisingly complex balancing act. There’s not much interaction, but the fight over visible tiles and the way you can see the perfect tile get covered by a discarded one means you’re still interested in what others are doing. The push your luck regarding Houses really does add a little tension to the game, but not enough to spill your cup of tea over.
Add to this the extra Detours and a Solo mode (both with their own separate rule books), and the variety is decent for such a simple game.
