bit Generations: Digidrive

The usual action-puzzle title, hopelessly indebted to Tetris, builds upon a grid-based playfield with game elements falling from the ceiling; Digidrive ignores this, with elements appearing at four points and drifting smoothly down two perpendicular lanes. ¹ These elements, of three colors, are abstract vehicles crossing through an intersection, where the player redirects them using the d-pad. These cars stop once they reach a spawn point and stack with like colors; if a different color approaches, the cars previously stationed there will reverse course and return to the intersection. Stacking five cars at a spawn transforms it into a fuel cell for that color, although it disappears if not supplied regularly with more cars of the correct type, the timer for which inversely scales with the amount of fuel.

Inadvertently driving the wrong car into a solo fuel cell fizzles it, throwing away the resource. However, if another cell exists, no matter the color, popping a cell sends its fuel to the other (and replenishes its timer), while popping a cell with two others on the playfield sends its full stack to each, effectively doubling the amount that was stored in the popped cell. Accumulating this fuel is obviously in the player’s interest, and it needs to be delivered to a puck-shaped “core” on the right side of the screen, which is under threat from a “spike” that grinds towards it in real-time. Cracking a cell with an occasional fourth element, the striped “trigger car,” sends the fuel over, careening the core away from the spike with a distance relative to the amount of fuel put in.² A smart player will keep three cells open as often as possible, purposefully popping the largest cell over and over again to double its contents and sending spare fuel to the core when trigger cars arrive.

The multiplayer mode reframes the core as sitting between two players’ bases, with fuel given by one player pushing the core towards the other end. If the core hits the base, the player’s remaining fuel will be automatically used as a shield; if the core pushes past it regardless, the game is over. Items are also given on each fuel transference to the core, with effects such as doubling your remaining stock, halving your opponent’s stock, putting the opponent in a slow mode, or directly pushing the core.

Presumably the car spawn system has some sort of starvation principle, but in practice it happily deprives you of one particular color for 10 to 15 pieces at a time. Reckoning with this makes choosing cell location an ever-shifting problem. With four spawn points and three colors, there’s inherently enough room for a cell for each color plus a trash lane for extra cars; the latter is a must because cars frequently spawn in the same lane as their cell and still travel to the intersection, so having the spare lane open prevents these cars from accidentally popping another cell. If one manages to fill their trash lane and has four cells active, the game transitions to the hypnotic “Autobahn” mode, where the spike stops and the car speed ramps up much more quickly as the player frantically stuffs their lanes. Striking gold here quickly kick-starts the fuel duplication loop as well as adding a manual trigger car to the player’s stock, which they can spawn in at any time with a button press.³ Actually getting to this state consistently requires a willingness to reorient the playfield on virtually every duplication, however. When a car pops a cell, it takes up residence at the newly open spawn, and a stream of these cars coming in at once may signal that it’s time to form a cell of a different color there rather than restart the old cell. This inevitably leads to having multiple cells of the same color on the field, potentially forcing a pop if the unused color appears through the dead lane. Of course, if all three other lanes are filled, a pop may actually be good to drive the duplication process, and so the constant stream of decision-making continues. Rarely does this game give you anything resembling an ideal car distribution, but there’s always workable options to keep the cycle going.⁴

In line with this latter wrinkle, much of Digidrive’s excellent decision-making arises out of its carefully considered edge cases, much like the best of its action brethren. Much of this has to do with the timer. When a car enters the lane of its correct cell, the cell’s timer instantly replenishes rather than waiting for it to actually hit the spawn point. However, when a car enters a differently colored lane, the timer actually freezes during the duration of its travel to the spawn. This makes popping said cell a perfectly valid method for actually rescuing it if it has a chance of disappearing from lack of fuel, even if the fuel would only move to a single other lane rather than duplicating across two. The cells that receive bulk fuel from a popped cell also have their timers replenished. The frozen period before a pop allows moves to be made before the pop resolves, which has an interesting other effect: if a car is in an incorrect lane during this period, it gets removed from the playfield entirely. Popping cells has an incredible multiplicity to it for maintaining board state, whether it be rescuing its own fuel contents, rescuing other cells, erasing pieces, or opening up a new cell from a run of identical cars.