By Alec Meer on September 2nd, 2010 at 5:37 pm.
A lot of people have a problem with Twitter. They think it’s meaningless, reductive, frivolous. This I say to them: what if it was a tower defence game? Oh-ho, now you’re listening.
DeTweet is Shawn Clapper’s canny concept, blending two of the more persistent mainstays of online culture: Twitter trending and tower defence. It’s still in its early stages, so there isn’t much in the way of high-grade weaponry to play with as yet, but the foundations are there, and strong.
What I like it about it is that it requires two different types of knowledge: being reasonably au fait with basic tower placement/upgrading and resource management, and having enough of an ear to the e-ground to know what people are spending their 140 characters furiously frothing about. An invader is created for every recent and ongoing mention of the word you base your game on, so the more popular it is the longer the game will last. And the harder it will be.
For instance, a session based around CODBLOPS didn’t get me very far, as not enough people have picked up LewieP’s splendid contract-o-mock of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Rockpapershotgun also proved disappointingly brief. But it was at least easy, as there wasn’t much of anything to mow down with my gun-nests.
“Blair” though – hoo boy. Not only did chatter about The Demon Prime Minister’s autobiography spawn endless tiny men, but Americans lusting over Gossip Girl’s Blair Lively further filled my screen. The addition of continued discussion about the Exorcist’s Linda Blair to the mix guaranteed there was more pixel-assault than I could quite handle.
While what really sold this to me was the comic surreality of men screaming random political assertions and crazed lechery in little speech bubbles even as they’re bloodily shot to pieces, for next time I’ll need something popular, but not that popular. (Or at least for the turret build time to be decreased a little). I’m sure you’re going to suggest some excellent alternatives below, aren’t you? AREN’T YOU?
<3
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“Daily” works quite well – any links from news websites/papers ensure plenty of bads.
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I got to level 6 (when the game ended) with “Hague”. Do I get a prize? I’d like a rosette please.
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I’m getting good results from “mexico oil spill”, not so much for “news of the world are a bunch of lawbreaking shitheads”.
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Aww, “Fred Wester, CEO of Paradox” got me only one little guy.
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Awesome. I put in my #joeslunch hashtag and was attacked by an army of rice puddings and ham salad sandwichs.
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I tell you, lots of people drinking on twitter.
A search for drink is still going ~20mins later.
3 upgraded towers is all you need at early levels :3
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Having fun with “Justin Bieber”. This is quite bizarre.
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I didn’t last long against Bieber, it was brutal.
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Level 5 on Bieber!
I held the line!
then I died
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I tried Lady Gaga and got to level 2…
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Getting lots for “wtf” and “omg”.
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Also check Hot Trend in: http://www.twitscoop.com/
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Penis. Lots of retweets and lots of blood.
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“FML.” You get to defend yourself from whiny, emo, schoolchildren.
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Obama makes for a lot of dudes, same with Fox.
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Yeah, I was going to say that Beiber would probably present the biggest challenge. And in the game!
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I did Discovery. Very busy, but I was able to get to level 6.
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Wow, it’s an honor being listed on RPS. Honestly my favorite online source for games ..really :). Game is still pretty green so the main thing I’ll be working on now is tweaking difficulty.
Have to spend some time playing myself here to work it out. Suggestions welcome!
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Loving the game btw. It would be nice to have a next wave button. You can end up having to wait around for a while. Also, being able to place towers before the game starts would be nice as I’m slow and dumb.
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http://img691.imageshack.us/i/drinkc.png/
No sign of ending soon and I have to go home :/
Also drinkc :/ damn image names.
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“Apple” and “Android” gave me better results.
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I hate twitter and I hate this.
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I hate Twitter and I love this! Shooting those irritating cocks and their iPhones in the face. Awesome. Now I want a fps version.
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I managed to get to level five against God, by God there were a lot of them, I filled up all the space I had to put turrets in.
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Got to level 6 with CNN :-D
I must try again!
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“Oil” was way too hard, and way too depressing, but “Butt” was hilarious, and not that hard!
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I did very well on “Butt”, in fact! level 11 before the butts beat me!
http://twitpic.com/2kljr6
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Meh, I went with “a”. Let’s just say I didn’t get to the end.
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Just tried ‘love’ – It occurs to me that it makes for a pretty hard game (and probably would consistantly). Makes for dull reading however – which is surely the thing it adds over every other tower defence game.
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“Bong” was far more difficult than I expected it to be.
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Was fun, like the killing the news.
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I need a cheat code! Got through “churros” easy enough, but I can’t seem to beat “nfl”
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#fail was rough.
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Made it to level 14 using “bieber” before I was overwhelmed. Had every single tower slot filled with a fully upgraded tower, thus proving that it is impossible to win against Justin Bieber.
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Tried “true dat” http://thecardchest.com/#detweet/true dat
Was funny with them all agreeing with each other heh but was pretty easy…So then tried “agreed” http://thecardchest.com/#detweet/agreed ….that one killed me heh
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What kind of weird tower is it where they can’t shoot right next to themselves? Game needs more work. Also, Freedom is much harder to beat than Nazis. So there.
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For much hilarity try “OMNOMNOM”
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or just “NOM”
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Seeing the little blue characters bloodily mown down when ‘Tories’ is used is utterly heartwarming. There weren’t many though. Placing the towers seems very hit-and-miss, I’m still not sure what mouse-click combination I actually managed it with.
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Oh, the little figures are blue whatever word you use. Okay.
Also, I keep thinking our cat is in the room because of the mewing noises.
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1) Set the word to “a”
2) Do somewhat fine for the first two levels
3) !!!
4)
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best score was lvl 6 with egg … lots of fun with oil, palin, fish
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I used “DeTweet”. I got one very easy level. It’s rare a game is too accessible and easy because it’s very niche, but if this game takes off it’s only going to get harder and harder. And then fewer people will want to play it. I have no idea where this will end…
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Hard mode:
“Love”.
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“Football” didn’t go so well.
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“Portal 2″ didn’t do much, either. I hope it’s not being prescient.
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“follow” – Nightmare Mode
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I mowed down lady gaga fans, how satisfying.
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alas, there are just too many of them :(
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“ate” gave me a good balance. Still, loads of people out there who need to explain what they’ve eaten. Often it does not even have anything to do with normal food.
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I survived ’til level 10 with Obama, then I ran out of good places for guns. Also, a lot of people Tweet a lot of bullshit about him.
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This is an amazing game. I tried ‘unfair’ and although it didn’t generate many bads there’s a lot of fun to be had gunning down the little fellas as they moan about life being unfair.Of course life is unfair, little people. Your walking down a predetermined path being machine gunned by me!
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Defeated by Earl on level 3 :-(
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used #Oil
Did anyone else go deaf from machine gun fire?
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Hah nice
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As in real life I had ‘beer’ ….
Kept knocking them back for a bit then the beer overwhelmed me and I fell over badly.
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