Twirdie is a twitter powered golf game for the iPhone and iPad. To swing, the player enters a word and the number of times that word was mentioned on twitter in the last sixty seconds is how far the ball goes. It was done as a collaboration with Kurt Beig who designed and illustrated the game. Twirdie was coded in Objective C and C++ using openFrameworks.
The player is forced to think of very popular and very obscure words being discussed on Twitter at the moment in order to drive and putt. Twirdie also naturally grows and adapts to current news and events.
The current version is a port of an earlier web-based version that was mentioned at GDC and SXSW. In an interview with NPR’s City Cafe, John Sharpe mentioned Twirdie as an example of a Twitter game that succeeds in getting its players to think about what the world is talking about. John and the host also played live on air. Twirdie’s segment begins at 1:56.
Twirdie was featured in the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the 2012 Game Developer’s Conference in San Fransisco. Kurt and I talked about the game, and played a match by dividing the audience of over 900 people into two teams and pitting them against one another. On the green, Kurt’s team tried “ninjas” and barely missed. My team tried “pirates” and sunk it.