A staff member presents a game that has influenced him or her. This week: K. Thor Jensen on Digidrive.

Nintendo’s Bit Generations titles, released in 2006 in Japan, are widely regarded as the last gasp of the Game Boy Advance platform. The series of seven games are united by minimalist gameplay and experimental approaches, and vary from the audio-only reflex game Soundvoyager to the color-matching puzzle Dialhex. The last title in the series, the unique action-puzzler Digidrive, is (in my opinion) the best of the lot: a fast-paced game of resource management that expands into a wide universe of strategic choice the more you play.

In the game, you are presented with a cross-shaped play area on the left, which begins to fill with a number of shapes heading towards the center of the cross from the four cardinal directions. Pressing a directional button will cause the shapes to turn when they reach the intersection. When the shapes reach the edge of the play area, they stop. Moving five matching shapes to the same edge (1) causes them to disappear, (2) changes the color of the pathway to match the shape, and (3) fills a triangular fuel tank. Moving more matching shapes into the colored lane fills the tank, and failure to feed the lane will cause the tank to vanish. Every once in a while, a special flashing shape will appear, and steering that shape (the “ambulance”) into a filled lane will cause the lane to clear and the fuel tank to affect the right side of the screen, which in turn shows a disk-like object with a strange plunger approaching it. The plunger moves upward at a steady rate, and if it touches the disk, the game is over.

Every time the ambulance enters a filled lane, the fuel tank is drained and the disk is propelled upwards. As more shapes are fed into the lane, more fuel is in the tank, enabling the disk to travel farther. This essential pair of actions (fill tanks and release them with ambulances) is the core of Digidrive. But with a couple simple modifiers to this formula, the game reveals a complex level of strategy and challenge. If you have a lane filled, steering a shape that does not match the lane into it will cause the lane to disappear. However, if you have other lanes filled, the contents of the disappearing lane will be transferred to them. Have more than one additional lane filled, and the contents are transferred to both, essentially “doubling down” your investment. This constant ping-ponging of lanes back and forth is necessary for truly high scores, but it also creates a mounting sense of panic, as you try to build your lanes up as quickly as possible before the plunger gets too near the disk.

It’s rare to find a game that captures the intersection between reflex action and strategy in such a simple package. In game design, it's a constant struggle to keep from overcomplicating your game with features and interactions in an effort to keep the player's interest. But only a truly well-designed game can take even the simplest of concepts and make it sing. Digidrive is quite an achievement and worth importing if you can get your hands on a copy.

My record is 20842 meters. What's yours?

By K. Thor Jensen, Project Manager.

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