The Data Wing.
Data Wing is a freeware game for iOS and Android, created by Dan Vogt
. Released on August 16, 2017, the game is something of a mashup of Asteroids (controls and physics) and 2D racing games. If that sounds basic, worry not.
As the player progresses, it becomes clear that they play as a data carrier inside a young girl's smartphone. Through their tasks for an AI known as Mother, they can access normally-blocked documents that detail her life. Through them, perhaps the "DATA WING" can uncover a higher purpose ...
The game is available here (iOS) or here (Android).
Triangle-san! Would you set your payload to these tropes for me?
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Inverted with Rogue, who is a friendly program once created with the intent of stealing data.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Mother believes that she can become human, through doing good deeds for the system and it's User. Turns out: no, she can't.
- Book Ends: The first and last missions you complete in the story involve following a signal.
- Chekhov's Gun: Setting your payload to 0b00000000 breaks things. Handy for foiling an AI's attempt to escape through a comms module.
- Disc-One Final Dungeon: One may think that all they have to do is clear the Security Nexus, but it turns out that Mother wants you to go much, much farther.
- Emoticon: Mother and Rogue are made up of emoticons and their expressions change accordingly with ASCII art.
- Flowers of Femininity: Rogue sports a hot pink flower on the side of her face.
- Heroic Mime: Your Data Wing. Justified; Mother has removed its ability to speak.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Data Wing's memory has been wiped countless times prior to the game's events.
- Minimalist Cast: The only characters you see are your Data Wing, Mother, and Rogue. The only other named character is Olivia, the owner of the smartphone you work in.
- Mundane Made Awesome: All you have to do in the final level is fly in a straight line toward the right side of the screen. Yet it might be the most tension-filled level of all, for some players.
- Retraux: The game includes a visual filter that mimics some distortion effects of a CRT television.
- Timed Mission: Some of the levels
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: While the controls don't change, a few levels have the player attempt some platforming. One level makes the player pilot the Data Wing as if jumping in and out of a pool, dolphin-style.
- The binary quizzes, which become used to unlock a few levels in the second half of the game.
- Vaporwave: The soundtrack is comprised of this. The soundtrack only really kicks in during gameplay, however.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Going back to the game after the credits shows you what happened to the human characters mentioned in Olivia's journal entries. In short you find out Olivia's mother survives with a broken leg and needs crutches, mom and dad are friendly after their divorce, and Olivia likes painting for other people. You also find out the damage Mother did causes the phone to glitch and Olivia thinks it's time for a new phone.
