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A basic edutainment game about addition, subtraction and filling in blanks. Developed by Sonic Powered in 2021 (who are best known for their "Traffic Controller / Airport Hero" series as well as "From the Abyss" and "Japanese Rail Sim"), it's honestly somewhat terrible. No, it's not terrible because it's educational, and it's not because of the questionably late 90s graphics and limited OST. It's terrible because of a pure lack of content... it is modestly priced at about 770 yen (less than $6 USD) but you will see almost everything you need to see in under 15 minutes. It seems rather obscure even on the Japanese front, but don't let it discourage you from other SP titles as most of them are kinda nifty.

Well, to talk about it in detail, the game consists of the player who assists two siblings, Rio and Rico, as they dig through the ground looking for treasures left behind on a small remote island. This island is blessed by the power of Haniwa and Dogu, Earthen effigies that protect the island and its secrets... but those kids don't care, because they want glory. They want it so much that they use a quirky drilling machine, Dorirun-Gou, to plow their way through the Dogu protectors and brag about their drilling power. But their drilling machine isn't powered by a normal energy source... it's powered by smarts. Yeah. You gotta be smart enough to take down the enemy, and your drill power determines what "technique" you use (though there is no reason to use anything other than FULL POWER).

The game has three levels. The first level has addition problems, the second has addition and subtraction, and the third has addition, subtraction and filling in blanks. The first level has two Dogu Guardians, the second has three, and the third has five. Besides having more guardians, each level makes the Dogu a little tougher to defeat. Every level starts with the player going first, where a center bar slowly depletes and problems appear on the screen. In other words, you have a limited amount of time to solve problems before time runs out. Each problem you answer successfully will power up your drill a little, while each wrong answer depletes a fair bit of strength. You have a gauge on the right-hand side that shows your drilling strength -- you can attack with "A" as soon as you get one bar, but this will naturally be a weak move. Additionally, even if you fill the gauge to max, that doesn't mean your attack will K.O. the enemy in one hit... it keeps getting stronger even after it's maxed. If you fail to attack before time runs out, you will sustain damage from the enemy.

The game is extremely easy I imagine for anyone over the age of eight, but getting the best treasure still poses a modest challenge even for adults as it requires almost lightning-fast reaction speed to problems to maximize your score (by charging as long as possible for each Dogu). As for the rest like the Dogu themselves, they come in three flavors of common, uncommon and rare. It doesn't really add much of anything to the game, but there are 30 to collect. The game keeps a log of some of your most recent digs and the Dogu are randomized. The game has less than a half-dozen tunes and even with the visuals being fairly basic 3D, the graphics have odd defects and glitching from time to time. That about sums up Sansuu Driller.

This is a video with minor edits showing things in action. You can get it at:

https://store-jp.nintendo.com/list/software/70010000040708.html

Enjoy.

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