Fidget Spinner for Playdate is out now!
Text
“Do you have a type?” Melanie Martinez and Jodi are two of the prettiest women to me.. no I do not lmaoo ˃̶͈◡˂̶͈
Text
[Review] Playdate Roundup 1
Here’s the first in what I plan to make a semi-regular review series. Playdate games are small but sweet, and I will inevitably play some that I don’t always want to finish, so I plan to bundle some mini-reviews together into a roundup with no set schedule or expectations. Yippee! In this instalment, I start working through the included games in Season 1.
[[MORE]]Casual Birder
A cute RPG about taking photos of birds, despite your character having no skills or knowledge in the area. The writing and character designs are fun, and I like the mechanic of moving your camera frame around the screen to capture the perfect bird photo (or even a barely legible one), filling out a birddex with uninformed but enthusiastic descriptions. The fiddliness of the inventory and adventure game style puzzles I was less thrilled with. The Playdate’s unique crank mechanism is used to focus the camera, which works OK although it’s rarely intuitive how you need to change it, so there’s some trial and error. I played for an hour or so but got stuck trying to progress.
Whitewater Wipeout
An arcadey score-chasing game that acts as a tech demo for the Playdate crank (not to mention its one-colour screen thanks to a heavy use of dithering techniques), making it a good choice for week one. The combination of fast and slow movement that the analogue crank affords works well with this surfing simulation, and it was a decent showpiece on Christmas Day when I unwrapped the device, but it didn’t hold my attention too long. A brief note that the weekly trickle of games via the Season format isn’t really to my taste; I don’t like being dictated what to play via a slow drip feed, which is why it’s taken me until now to go back and plough through Season 1’s games.
Boogie Loops
Case in point. Rather than a game per se, this is a music creation tool; it shows that the Playdate is capable of more than “just” games, but this kind of creativity app is always going to be niche or divisive. I could tell after a few minutes this wasn’t for me, so then I only have one game to play for a whole week if I’m following the Season’s schedule? Hmm. Anyway, the dancing characters are cute.
Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure
A sort of puzzle game entirely controlled with the crank, which advances your robot character along a set path with the speed that you turn it. The trick is aligning his actions to the hazards coming his way—including cranking backwards to reverse his movements—so he dodges them all Mr. Magoo-style. There’s some comedy to this and the animations, but it wears off quickly as the levels get more demanding, requiring trial-and-error with great precision, so I got fed up with it at a certain point.
Pick Pack Pup
It’s the first game I played all the way through! A match-3 puzzle game of sorts, you have to match items to ship them from an Amazon-like warehouse. Making a match forms a box which can block further matches, while you’re trying to make more boxes to ship them all at once for a combo, so there’s some strategy to it. The story mode does a great job varying the parameters and objectives in each level within the basic framework, changing your playstyle from getting combos to careful placement to deliberately trashing objects, etc. Between levels is a little story about your eager (and adorable) pup working in a dystopian corporate environment, with plenty of satire delivered via memos and cute crank-controlled comic segments. Supplementing the 30-stage campaign are replayable modes with different degrees of pressure to them. Lovely stuff.
Lost Your Marbles
Billed as a visual novel, this cute adventure has crank-controlled gameplay segments where you rotate a map to roll a marble around an obstacle course to hit targets that represent choices for your character Prota to make, and consequently affect the path the story takes. Her small community is very wholesome but the humour has some bite to it too, with fun silly characters to meet. The marble bits can be a bit finicky but switching up the themes and layouts kept them engaging, and the game has ten endings so I found it better to try for the best outcome but go along with whatever comes (I only did one playthrough, as well). It felt a little wordy to me, but it is a visual novel after all, and you can always skip dialogue sections (vital for subsequent runs).
Text
I’ve just released a small video game for the Playdate handheld called QUEST. I started developing it some time after I got the Playdate for Christmas using Playdate’s Pulp editor. It took a bit longer than it should have, mostly because I stuck it between other projects and job searching. But hey, it’s out now. You can play it for free, but only if you have a Playdate!
Get it NOW on itch.io. Please at least check out the website I worked hard on this.
Anyway, here’s some concept art I made while I was working on the game. It’s nothing crazy, since the Playdate is a one-bit console and I wanted to work within those limitations.
I’m gonna put tags on this hoping someone actually sees it.
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
Text
[Review/crítica pessoal] Um dia fora de controle (Playdate) - Divagando
Sempre
[Review/crítica pessoal] Um dia fora de controle (Playdate) - Divagando Sempre
Dois pais, duas crianças, perseguições pela cidade e um mistério. Aquele tipo de ação comédia escrachada mas que diverte. Mais no blog 👇🏻
Text
Movie Review: PlayDate
Brian tries to bond with his step-son, who is very different than him and he meets Jeff, who is caring for a weird little dude himself named CJ who is very strong and fast and… probably not entirely human? Because that’s the weird twist this movie would have.
There was a fight sequence at a Buckey Cheese where mascots were used as part of the fight, meanwhile another mascot animal is forcing Brian into a hug. It’s so ridiculous but I laughed several times.
The character of Jeff is a big, strong, but dumb man. He’s over the top when he’s trying to be a normal person. But Jeff took CJ from bad people, but didn’t provide more details before taking them on a high speed chase through the suburbs while jamming to Rhythm of the Night. 🤣 And we find out that Jeff is CJ’s father… because the government clones Jeff.
The movie was so fun. It was silly and stupid and ridiculous but I truly loved it and enjoyed. I laughed so much. Alan Ritchson was delightful in his hugeness and then being simple and sweet. If you’re looking for something light and silly - this is it. Additionally, the soundtrack is unhinged and adds to the humor.
Fave Dialog
Brian: Read the signs!
Jeff: They’re suggestions
Jeff: I saved him like the Yellowtone guy from Bodyguard.
Text
[Review] Sketch, Share, Solve (PD)
A pleasant puzzler on the Playdate.
[[MORE]]I got a Playdate for Christmas! There’s lots of cool, inventive games on it, but the one I went to directly to put this remarkable little machine through its paces was an iteration of my beloved nonogram logic puzzles (most famously known as Picross when published by Nintendo). Maybe not the best showcase of the device’s capabilities, but a nice diversion for me.
Like many Playdate games this was made by a solo hobbyist, in this case RDK who has two games in the official catalogue. Many developers also offer games elsewhere, and I found I already owned this game via an Itch.io bundle. Panic makes sideloading onto the Playdate very simple and painless, so I was quickly loading dozens of experimental jam games onto mine; this has more polish but like many Playdate games retains a handcrafted indie vibe.
The title indicates that solving puzzles is only part of the equation; you’re also able to Sketch your own with an in-built editor. The process is smooth and you’re asked to solve your own puzzle before you can then Share it, rather than implement any kind of auto-solving technology on the device (RDK does have webtool to check if a puzzle is solvable, though). You can sideload new ones yourself which is relatively easy (the Itch page links to ShyPlay’s expansion pack of 55 excellent puzzles, and its comments section points to a Discord server as a further source for public sharing); otherwise there’s plenty to start with in the included set of 250 courtesy of the game’s creator.
Each and every puzzle is a 10x15 grid, a good fit for the Playdate screen size. Solving them shows a simple black and white grid, no extra shading or animation, but I liked the simple yet recognisable renditions in the default puzzle set. Some solutions are displayed rotated by 90 degrees, which does make it hard to guess what you’re drawing. The Playdate’s one-colour screen (no shades of grey here, except by clever dithering) is not backlit but is surprisingly visible, as long as you’re in good lighting conditions; sometimes finding the right angle is a struggle, and it’s especially important for this game with its fine detail on the number clues. The settings to adjust the appearance of clues and marks were appreciated to help with this.
As a nonogram game, SSS has a good set of features: clue auto-marking, configurable auto-crossing, and the ability to hold and mark/cross multiple (without overwriting) with screen wrap. All good choices. There’s not any kind of hinting or checking (free mode only here) and a few puzzles do require extrapolation/guessing which isn’t my ideal, but a nifty use of the Playdate’s unique crank mechanism to quickly undo your actions makes this a little more palatable. The buttons on my new device were a bit stiff and took some getting used to, but it’s light and very well put together so play sessions were undemanding. My main ding against the game is that it does only have one music track, which seemed a little moody to fit the breezy puzzling. All in all a lovely little game, and unlike other nonogram games in the catalogue it’s entirely human-made so I don’t feel conflicted at all recommending it!
Text
I hope one day I get enough influence to force Sony’s hand into rereleasing Tokyo Jungle, on my device of choice.
Also for the Playdate - those people deserve it for having a console with a fun little crank.
Text
Chance’s Lucky Escape (Playdate): COMPLETED!
A silly little point and click adventure game on the games console probably least suited to the genre. Although I suppose I did play Batty Zabella so perhaps not.
According to the official Playdate podcast, Chance’s Lucky Escape picks up where a different game in the same universe – Inspector Waffles (which I’ve not played) is set. The Waffleverse? Maybe. Anyway, Chance is a dog who was supposed…
Text
SuperTrainStationH is LIVE! ◉ 5:00 PM EST 12/27/25
- Variety stream of games for Panic’s Playdate console.
Its the last stream of the year! Let’s sample a variety of games from a completely unique system, the Panic Playdate!
See you in stream!
Twitch.tv/SuperTrainStationH
——————————————————–
[🅗Twitch] [🅗Carrd] [🅗YouTube] [🅗 FA] [🅗Ko-fi]
Text
97. Flipper Lifter
Release: May 10, 2022, Playdate
Beaten: Dec. 19, 2025, Playdate (S1)
bleurughghh it’s ok i guess
A casual score-chasing game which I played earlier this year and then dropped and then picked back up again just now. I don’t see myself coming back to this, like, ever.