An app that bars you from sending drunken texts in the middle of the night? It sounds too good to be true and, sadly, it is.
If you’re anything like me, your regular Sunday hangover routine begins with flopping over to your mobile phone and indiscriminatingly deleting every single text received or sent. After all, if you can’t remember and don’t have any evidence that your drunken exploits occurred, they probably never happened, right?
If texting ex-girlfriends or your boss while absolutely hammered is becoming a nuisance for you (and them), the recently-released Textalyzer app may be the answer.
As the name suggests, this is the app equivalent of a breathalyzer, as it seeks to prevent you from harassing phone contacts that you’ve entered as ‘forbidden’ within the app.
Booting up the Textalyzer app presents users with three options: Textalyze, Forbidden List, Practice Mode and a settings icon to adjust the difficulty of the gameplay.
Before you get started you should head to the ‘Forbidden List’, which allows you to add library contacts and include three reasons as to why they are to be avoided when the beer goggles kick in. You can even set alerts or hourly reminders before the night begins to ensure that you’re on your best behaviour.
Oh well, at least you’re absolutely hammered
To begin ‘Textalyzing’, users choose the contact number from their library and type the desired message (‘Giz another chance bbz!!!1!’ perhaps). Once you’ve done this and clicked ‘Textalyze’ the test begins, but not before a Spin the Bottle-style scenario randomly selects an icon for your performance, ranging from sober or drunken cartoon images of a shot glass, an exotic bird, a 1950s-style greaser and a pair of dice.
The drunken test itself involves users correctly passing four games – Coconut Monte, Tap Quila, Lucky Numbers and Top Me Off. If you fail miserably at each then you’re probably better off turning your phone off altogether to avoid embarrassment.
‘Coconut Monte’ is a variation of the classic ‘three cups’ game, where you must correctly guess which coconut is hiding a bird underneath – after all three coconuts have shifted position on a table beforehand, of course. As the first challenge, it’s understandably a breeze to run through.
Things get a little trickier with ‘Tap Quila’, however, a ‘Whack-A-Mole’ iteration in which you must tap a worm at the point it raises its head from one of five tequila bottles. There are ten worms so at least six successful attempts are needed to pass the challenge, though we admittedly had difficulty with this one even while sober.
Next up is ‘Lucky Numbers’, where players must use their finger to swipe shells across the screen to reveal and then enter a secret four-number code. Finally ‘Top Me Off’ gives players around 20 seconds to tilt their handset gently and pour five perfect glasses of beer.
As for Practice Mode, it’s really just the sober test run for the hoops that app developer Samantha Deeter has set for inebriated users, as it operates entirely identical to the Testalyzer test. We reckon this mode should’ve at least included an option for players to select each game to practice individually.
Surprising limitations
As you can tell, the four trials of this app are pretty time-consuming and by our estimations, take about 2-3 mins to complete. Considering it takes the average person less than 30 seconds to write a legible text (perhaps a little bit more if they’re on the beer), we’re not quite sure if players will really be arsed in taking on the challenges at all.
Another bone of contention that we have with the app is that it has no control whatsoever over your SMS service, a huge oversight. Even if you add a contact to your ‘Forbidden List’, the app can’t stop you from clicking simply the ‘Messages’ icon at the top of your iOS device and sending the text straight away. You’ll have to accidentally remember to try stop yourself by clicking the Textalyzer app instead of the Messages app each time – so really, what’s the point?
Our guess is that Textalyzer probably began life as a mini-game-centric party app (the small font size are certainly no help to the inebriated), before its creator realised that by employing a crude contact functionality they could market the app as a drunk text inhibitor, which it sadly isn’t.
At just 79c, it’s still a fun conversation piece on a night out, yet the core functionality of Textalyzer falls far short of its initial eye-catching appeal.
Textalyzer is available on Apple iOS devices for 79c.
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