Diode Dash

Could you keep your nerve if you were the current itself? In Diode Dash you are a spark of electricity racing across a printed circuit board. Hold anywhere and the spark climbs; let go and it dives. Every move is a crisp 45° trace, and the copper on either side is strictly off limits. The twist sits right there in the name: diode gates stand across the board, and current only flows one way through a diode. Cross a ▲ diode while climbing and a ▼ diode while diving. Arrive the wrong way round and you short out. DAY ONE You switch on the Starter Kit, the first of four boards, and its job is simple: blink an LED. Blinky and Pull-up teach the rhythm of holding and releasing, and you quickly notice the NEXT DIODE panel in the corner, which shows the direction of the next gate and how many millimetres away it is. That little readout soon becomes your favourite instrument. Glance at it, decide whether you need to be climbing or diving, then line up your trace before you reach the gate. Three LEDs sit somewhere on every circuit. Pass through them and they light up; light all three and that circuit's key component drops into your Parts Bin. The very first one is a humble Resistor, coded R1, brown, black and red for one kilo-ohm. Each cleared circuit also pays out joules, the game's only currency, earned purely by playing. If the arrows feel small at first, Settings has a Big arrows option that prints ▲ or ▼ beside every diode. Haptics let you feel diodes, LEDs and shorts, and the motion setting adds current pulses and a short-circuit shake. AFTER A WEEK By now you have tuned in the Radio Set: Crystal Set, Amp Stage, Squelch and Morse Key. The diodes come thicker, and fat electrolytic capacitors sit in the open areas of the board, so routing round them while still arriving at the right angle takes planning. A short circuit sends you back to the start of the circuit, and your furthest percentage and attempt count keep score of each try. The Game Console board follows, with Sprite Bus, Joypad, Sound Chip and Cartridge Slot. Your Parts Bin is filling up with a Capacitor, a Crystal, a Transistor, a Buzzer and an Edge Connector, each with a short note on what the real part does. Joules start to add up, and the Signals shop is where they go. Swap the plain Square Wave spark for Static, Surge, Carrier, Crosstalk, Crystal, Plasma or the 8-Bit pixel spark. There are eight signals in total, and each one changes how the spark looks as it runs the trace. MASTERY The Mainframe is the last board: rooms full of relays. Relay Bank, Core Memory and Punch Reader lead to The Big Switch, the final circuit. Here the goal shifts from finishing to finishing cleanly. Clear a circuit on your first attempt and you earn its third status light and extra joules; light all three LEDs and you complete your set of sixteen components, right down to the Vacuum Tube and the Knife Switch. Then comes Overclock, one board that never ends, thick with diodes. Route as far as you can; every ten millimetres you cover is another joule. The Datasheet keeps your specifications, twelve in all, from Power On for your first circuit to Rectifier for passing 100 diodes and Thermal Limit for a 900 m Overclock run. A scope trace of your last runs shows how your routing is improving. GOOD TO KNOW Diode Dash needs no signal of its own: it is fully offline, asks for no account, shows no ads and sells nothing. Boards resize to fit a pocket phone or a wide tablet. COME BACK TOMORROW Diode Dash does not hand out a daily puzzle, so the challenge for tomorrow is the one you set yourself today. Maybe it is a first-try clear of Morse Key, the last missing LED on Core Memory, or an Overclock run that finally pushes past your previous distance. Each session is short enough for a bus ride or a tea break, and the board will be waiting exactly where you left it. Switch it on again tomorrow and see how much further the spark can go.