Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the best — especially when you take the most basic concept and layer in just a few new ideas to keep things interesting. With Twin It!, players will feel immediately familiar thanks to similarities with classic card game Snap, but don’t be fooled — the bonkers artwork and advanced rules might catch you out!
First of all, I should say that Twin It! is a gorgeous product to look at. Stored in a small metal tin, you can easily throw Twin It! Into a rucksack, laptop bag or suitcase to make it suitable for travel, and it fits into a small nook or cranny somewhere in your gaming shelf with ease. The cards within the box are small and a little thin, but the artwork is drop-dead-gorgeous.
There are several modes in which you can play Twin It!, including essentially the most basic variant on Snap, or as a team game if you wish. I’m only really going to focus on the main game mode here however, since that is how I think most people will experience the game.
Twin It! is pretty straightforward, but there’s no doubt that teaching it in person is easier than describing it. In a nutshell, each player has a stack of cards, and will be aiming to create five pairs. Each card is double sided, and the cards at the top of each player’s stack are also counted as “visible” for the purpose of matching pairs.
On their turn, all a player is expected to do is to flip the top card of their stack over and place it on the table. As soon as this happens, all players will be looking for a match between the new card, the cards on the table, and the cards at the top of each of the player stacks. If a pair is spotted, the first player to get a finger onto each card will claim the pair and place the two cards in a stack beside them.
To make matters slightly more complex and to introduce an element of competition, the stacks taken in this way will now also become viable targets for pairs, since Twin It! includes three cards of each face. This would create a stack of three that can longer be paired, but the main thing is that if you spot that third face and match it with an opponent’s claimed stack, you’ll steal it from them.
As soon as any player reaches five claimed stacks, the game will end and that player will win. Honestly, if this sounds very close to Snap to you, then I would certainly have agreed going in, however what Twin It! does do is put a very different slant on things that I must admit, I really have enjoyed.
First of all, Twin It! is barely any more complex to explain (at least when you have the cards in hand to demonstrate) than Snap, or any other basic card game. You can throw it out onto the table and be into your first game within five minutes or less, and seeing as the world is returning to a place where we can be more sociable again, it’s a great icebreaker for otherwise potentially awkward post-Covid gatherings.
Twin It! is also a fantastic game for kids, because it is just one step beyond the basic game of Snap that they will already most likely know and love. There’s a real excitement around the table as each card is flipped, and it’s completely normal to play Twin It! with everyone hovering their hands over the table, waiting to strike.
Thanks to beautiful production, a sensible price point and a low barrier of entry, Twin It! is likely to appeal to a lot of different people. You should be aware that it only tends to last maybe two or three games at a time before the novelty wears off, but in general that’s enough time for players to be ready to move onto bigger games, or in a casual setting, to pack up and move onto other interests.
You can find Twin It! on Amazon.
Love board games? Check out our list of the top board games we’ve reviewed.
