Ligretto Twist features the familiar Ligretto game play, with players trying to rid themselves of cards from their personal stack as quickly as possible by playing them to shared central stacks. The twist comes in that players must lay a hand on top of the card they most recently played, and they can't use that hand again until they lay a card on another stack – thereby imprisoning that second hand until the first hand plays again. What's more, no other player can lay down cards on a covered stack, so everyone will be fighting to slap stacks first. Finally, unlike other Ligretto games, these cards have only colors – no numbers.
When a player plays the final card in his personal stack, the round ends and all other players score one point for each card remaining in their stack. The player with the fewest points after five rounds wins.