Casual Friday: Data Wing


Little minimalist delta shape, how did you escape the Asteroids and find yourself here in a top-down racing game with a story and narrator straight out of Portal?

Data Wing was last year's surprise mobile darling that was single-handedly produced by Dan Vogt, co-founder of Halfbrick, the studio behind such mobile juggernauts as Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride. You'd think, with that kind of pedigree, that Vogt would have a rainbow-colored cartoony game dropped into your virtual store of choice with endless in-app purchases and splash ads, but Data Wing has none of that. It's not just minimal in design, it's minimal in its execution.

Imagine if the little triangle spaceship from Asteroids was confined to a racetrack and had to use drifting maneuvers to navigate sharp turns. Fun, right? Then add some cyberspace backgrounds, some wonderful vaporwave music, and Mother. Mother is the demanding taskmaster of the game, and much like GLaDOS she is a sophisticated, dry computer system with a series of increasingly difficult tasks for you. For your little triangle is the visual representation of the titular data wing, and your only purpose is to shuttle insignificant portions of data in order for this computer system to execute mundane tasks. That's how it starts, anyway. But pretty soon you start to collect pieces of data with more information about the User, and you are met by another character with race tracks and an agenda of her own. I don't want to spoil things, since it's a surprisingly funny, engaging story.


The controls to navigate your little wing are pleasantly simple, just a left turn, a right turn, and a brake. But the strategy for helping your pace through timed courses and multiple-lap races is a clever boosting mechanic: by gently riding the outside edge of the course like a rail, you are provided with an automatic speed boost. So, the better you get at hanging on the edge of the track, the faster you get. But just like in Asteroids, your "vehicle" displays a constant inertia, so it's easy to over-steer. Then Mother adds temperamental gravity variants throughout the courses, or a key system to unlock gates barring you from finishing. Any time the game throws a new mechanic at you, there's a helpful explanation attached, but Data Wing is not interested in handling players with kid gloves. You might have to hit the restart button a few times before getting a feel for the new rules when they show up.

Okay, cool. But what's your incentive, besides condescending attaboys from Mother? Well, there are the aforementioned data sets that reveal more of the plot, but there's also the Shiny Gems. Mother hands these to you for a job well done, and references your love of collecting them. But, uh...they don't buy anything. The game has no in-app purchases, so these gems are literally meaningless. It's an unexpected, great gag that comments on the very mobile game culture that Vogt helped to popularize in the first place. And that's really a part of the whole game, this sly nudge to the ribs that says, "You know how all mobile games are like this? Doesn't that just bum you out? Well, anyway, here's my game. It has none of that." If this serves as a mission statement for Vogt's future work, he's got a fan right here.


As a matter of fact, Vogt's only request in return for his impressive solo effort is to support the bands and artists that contributed the chopped and screwed electronic music that evokes a John Carpenter film from the 1980s. This is what mobile games should be like, honestly. Stylish without being busy, funny without being overly precious, and addictive without being exploitative. And it's free. Download it. Now. Even if the gameplay itself isn't your cup of tea, the writing and the music are some undeniably good stuff.



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