TUAW's Daily iPhone App: Twirdie
Twirdie is an interesting game that's got one of the most fascinating premises I've ever heard, but it unfortunately gets bogged down in an implementation that's quite a bit less than fun. The basic idea (which you may have heard before -- the game's already been around the Web once) is that you're playing golf, and you use Twitter search results to hit the ball. The more times a word you punch into the game has been mentioned live on Twitter in the past 60 seconds, the farther your ball goes.
The idea is interesting, and it works (though I was playing on a Wi-Fi connection -- I assume 3G or even Edge Twitter searches would be much slower). But the problem is that it's not actually fun. You don't line up an angle or anything to actually "play" the golf course; it's all about just getting distance. And not only is the distance random, based on your search, but if you go too short or too far, you just plain lose the shot.
In other words, the backend "live" functionality is neat, but the game attached to it is sadly disappointing. If you want to see the app in action (and maybe you're better at guessing Twitter results than I am), it's only US 99 cents on the App Store right now. Here's hoping that some other developers pick up on using this "live data" from Twitter or elsewhere, and we get a more substantial game out of it.
