PRH Children’s to release app as The Twits turn 35
Published July 16, 2015. By Charlotte Eyre
Penguin Random House Children’s and the Roald Dahl Literary Estate will next week release the first ever Dahl app.
Twit or Miss is based on The Twits. Developed with Aardman Digital for children aged six to 11, it is a “food fight” game in which players have to swipe food away from the sleeping Mrs Twit and into Mr Twit’s beard to score points. There are an unlimited number of levels, but if players wake Mrs Twit she will hit Mr Twit with her stick, a move that signals the end of the game.
Luke Kelly, Dahl’s grandson and m.d. of the Roald Dahl Literary Estate, said the game echoes the tricks Mr and Mrs Twit play on each other in the book, such as Mrs Twit serving up a plate of “wormy spaghetti” or dropping her glass eye into her husband’s beer.
“In the original story, the fiendish tricks that they play on each other are part of an ever-escalating game,” he said. “Working with Penguin and Aardman, we thought we had a brilliant opportunity to develop that into a digital game filled with disgusting food, beards, Twit quips and general app-enabled monstrosity.”
PRH Children’s will release the app through Apple’s AppStore and Google Play on 23rd July. It is free to download but integrated within the app is material promoting Dahl books, e-books and audiobooks.
This year is the 35th anniversary of The Twits; in May PRH Children’s released a new edition of the book with a “scratch and sniff ” cover that smells like Mr Twit’s beard. Playwright Enda Walsh has also adapted the story into a play, which was staged at the Royal Court in London in April.
PRH and the Roald Dahl Literary Estate currently have a second app based on The Twits in development, and hope to launch it in September. They also hope to release further apps based on Dahl titles in 2016.