The Playdate
June 23, 2023
In which I discuss my thoughts on the Playdate console and the games I've played on it.
Written on an MacBook Pro while listening to the Fistshark Marketing podcast.
So after literally two years of shipping delays, my Playdate console finally arrived on 2023-01-13! I've had it over six months now and I figure I can give good thoughts on it, having played all the Season One games and a good heap of other games too. (I was gonna make this post after I unlocked all the Season One games but never got around to writing it until now XD. I figured better late than never now that pre-order Group 4 is finally shipping)
What is funny is for a month or two before I first heard about the Playdate, I was earnestly looking for a device that was more pocketable than my original model Game Boy Advance but was more capable and/or cheaper than however much GBA Micros are now. I had decided on getting a Miyoo Mini and was just waiting for them to get back in stock when someone on the Fediverse posted about the Playdate, and literally the instant I saw it I knew I had to get one.
Tangent, I think the main reason it was so hard to find a console in this form factor is that the display is necessarily small, which is not an issue for me because I have rather excellent eyesight but I could see the Playdate being illegible for a large number of people even with Panic's graphics sizing guidelines.
Hardware
The thing is just about the perfect size. It's easily pocketable and just large enough to not be uncomfortable to hold (unless you have really big hands I suppose).
Some pictures of the console in comparison with an AGB-001 GBA:
A Playdate sitting on top of a Game Boy Advance. The square Playdate covers the center display part of the GBA but the GBA's buttons stick out to the sides.
The comparison but the Playdate and GBA are sitting next to each other instead of placed on each other.
Similar but the GBA is displaying the boot up word mark and the Playdate is showing the “winking” screen unlock animation
The only part of the construction that I'd say is not too great is that the crank on mine tarnished within two weeks of getting it, apparently the factory missed adding the anti-oxidation coating to some subset of parts even as late as my pre-order group 3 unit. If you file a support ticket supposedly they'd either send you a new one or possibly just replace the crank on yours, even though it is just a minor cosmetic issue. I didn't bother though, I think it gives my console a unique character.
Close up of the front of my Playdate's crank, showing how the silver metal has darkened in areas due to tarnishing
Close up of the back of the crank showing similar tarnish but to a much lesser extent
It's also annoying that the console doesn't show a battery percentage, it shows it while charging but no other time. According to one of the designers on the Playdate developers forum, they accidentally removed the battery fuel gage IC from the board at some point in the design process so they don't have a way to accurately measure the battery level at all :(. The battery gauge is enough to tell when it's fully charged or when you need to charge it, but the level jumps around a quite a lot, especially when there's a temperature change (i.e. taking it from your bag into your pocket), and especially when the battery is around 50%. The battery does last at least ten days with me playing it every day, so it's not as important to babysit the battery level as with, say, a smartphone.
Controls
Sure the crank is a gimmick but I personally believe it's the single best thing about the console. Especially conspicuous is the at least three games reviving arcade-style games that would've used spinner
controls such as Asteroids, and shocker, those games play fantastically with a crank when compared with a d-pad or joystick. I myself am working on a game inspired by (read: basically a clone of) Tempest, one of my favorite arcade games but not too great playing with a keyboard.
Using the B-button simultaneously with the crank works fine and is what most crank-based games use as the primary button, but the d-pad or A-button are a bit of a stretch to use while cranking.
One complaint I have is that the d-pad doesn't have enough travel. It works great for general navigation and slower paced games, but for platformers or situations where you need to very rapidly change the direction being pressed it's less comfortable than say, my GBA. Although it and all the other buttons are wonderfully clicky and give excellent tactile feedback, without being uncomfortably difficult (i.e. tiring) to press.
I do wish they had added one more menu
button that the game could use arbitrarily. The menu button on the console always opens the system menu, and while games can add their own rudimentary options to it and display a custom image to the left of the pop-out menu, it is too limited for many games and results in rather awkward control schemes. For instance, in The Ratcheteer to open up the inventory you have to hold the B button for the entire time you're in the inventory which makes it very awkward to use versus just pressing a menu button.
Official Cover
On the official cover, it unfortunately has some issues. I do like how it doesn't add to the bulk of the console and you don't need to have somewhere to pocket it or set it down like you need with zipper cases.
The front of the Playdate with the purple “sandwich” cover on it
The side of the Playdate with the cover on, showing that the cover only covers the front, back and top of the console with everything else still exposed.
The official cover taken off of the console, showing how it's just a smooth purple rectangle with cutouts for the various buttons and three metal pins sticking out the back to align the cover with the screw holes on the back of the console.
There's one rather major issue: there's no good way to fold it back, so the console is always awkward to hold with the case open. Either you have the top flapping around instead of fully folded over which makes it tiring to hold (because it's constantly pulling the top of the console), or you have it folded back, but it can't fold flat so it's awkward to hold. Having it folded all the way back also causes the case magnets to interfere with the Hall effect sensor that detects if the crank is docked and undocked.
Cover opened, with the top part that covers the top and front of the console flapping about
Cover folded back, but it folds into a triangle-like shape instead of flat because there's a narrow section that normally covers the top part of the console and the large panel that normally covers the front of the console
The cover is perfectly fine for short play sessions and I would certainly not carry the console around as much as I do without the cover, but does make it annoying for longer play sessions. Luckily it's super easy to remove with only some strong magnets attaching the backside, so I just pop it off the console for longer play sessions.
OS/System Software
The OS is rather minimalist but easy to use. Other than various system settings and game management menus, the entire OS is dedicated to browsing the list of games installed on the device. But for what little is there, it has a lot of excellent sound design, and lots of fun little animations that never feel tedious to sit through. I think they definitely accomplished their goal when designing the UX:
So a big focus for me was that this is a device that gets you to playing the next game that you want to play and kind of stays out of your way. Now, when I say it stays out of your way, that doesn't mean that it's dry and has no personality. You know, there are times when you have to use the OS, you have to connect to WiFi, you have to change something in Settings. You have to choose the game that you're going to play or install. So we tried to make that part fun.
From Episode 1 of the Playdate Podcast
I have one complaint: I strongly dislike that games are permanently sorted in the order you downloaded them, with no way to reorder or sort them. Even if they never implement manual reordering or changing the sort order, it's so annoying that they're not sorted by most recently played so I have to scroll all the way down the games list in order to play my favorite games. Maybe not an issue for the regular season
games—although twenty-four games is still quite a lot to scroll through—but when you have a large number of homebrew titles like I already do it's very irritating. In the recent OS 2.0 update they did add a much condensed list view
to supplement the previous card view
, but it's still the same amount of scrolling.
Catalog
Until March the only way to get games was the Season One games included with the Playdate, and from third-party stores like Itch.io. However, in March they released an on-device (but also available on the web) games store called Catalog. It's very nice and convenient, it just adds games to your account for immediate installation without needing to manually download the .pdx and sideload it.
Sideloading, Cloud Services
You can sideload games from Itch or wherever by mounting the Playdate's disk and copying the files over, but Panic additionally provides a page on their website where you can upload .pdx files. This lets you delete the games from your device, reinstall them, and generally manage the games just like you can with the Season One and Catalog games, which is very convenient given the relatively small internal storage. Luckily you aren't required to use their service to sideload games though, you can mix and match whatever methods you want.
While the Playdate has a number of internet-reliant features—primarily scoreboards for official games, and game/system updates—the whole console works well offline and seems like they'll continue working just fine after all of Panic's servers inevitably shut down. Games certainly don't have the ability to do anything with the network other than the aforementioned scoreboards, and that functionality is only available to games on Catalog and in the official seasons.
Catalog doesn't provide a ready way to directly download a .pdx, but several official Panic sources have said that mounting the Playdate's disk lets you back up all the games you have installed. I was worried because the Catalog terms of service mentions DRM but it must be boilerplate that the lawyers put down, because AFAICT there's no DRM in any Catalog game. So that bodes well that even the Season One games that come with the console can be saved and copied to another device if your console breaks and Panic's servers are down.
(Note that I'm not actually worried about the Panic servers going around considering that the company has existed for 26 years and Playdate has been massively successful. It's just good to think about these things for the far future since most modern games and consoles have always-online nonsense and are riddled with DRM, so Playdate games will some of the few games retro gaming enthusiasts will actually be able to play :P)
Games
Third-party Games
I'm maintaining a semi-almost-comprehensive list of every game I've come across on Itch.io:
https://itch.io/c/3033855/playdate-games-and-apps
I'm trying to write blurbs under all the games I've played, so assume all the ones without blurbs I haven't gotten around to playing yet. Grep for highly recommended
for my favorite games.
There is also a list of available Catalog games (which are highly curated) on the official Playdate website:
I'm listing my personal favorite games below. While there are excellent games in Season One I'm gonna detail further down, every Playdate comes with those so I want to get the word out about these games first.
(Games listed in no particular order)
Gravity Express
Fantastic game, very tight controls and feels as polished as any game with a similar scope I've played. Gravity and the ship's acceleration feel perfectly fine-tuned to feel “natural”. The full motion video is a bit gimmicky but is fun and adds extra onto what would've already been great game. Highly recommended, certainly worth the asking price.
Despite the crank controls currently being “experimental” they're fantastic, far more precise and intuitive to use than D pad controls IMO.
Skwish
Super fun puzzler. Really well put together with simple but fun graphics. Doesn't feel difficult at first but does ramp up rapidly. Very hard to put down.
Instant classic, highly recommended.
Shift
Absolutely my favorite tile-matching game for Playdate, and honestly the only tile-matching game I've ever really gotten into. Deceptively simple but can get very difficult especially when trying to maintain a streak.
Very highly recommended.
Sparrow Solitaire
Absolutely fantastic Mahjong-style solitaire with a staggering number of board layouts and customization options. Highly recommended.
Core Fault
Excellent little game, nice progression and almost reminiscent of roguelites like Dead Cells or The Binding of Isaac in it being randomly generated with random upgrades gotten at each level, and you restart from the beginning but with additional upgrades. Quite a fun little game that you can sink a lot of time into. Highly recommended.
TapewormDiscoPuzzle
Really fun game with good music. Puzzle difficulty can vary wildly but that's common for games such as this. Like the password system to let you transfer saves between devices and such! Also very cute art of creatures that most people dislike or are ambivalent about is immediately a thumbs up from me. Highly recommended.
Spike II: The Great Emu War
Fun little game! Starts out incredibly basic but builds up from there a bit without ever getting too complicated. Fun graphics and very crank-heavy gameplay.
Direct Drive
Very simple but quite fun game. I love the roaring 20s aesthetic and pseudo-period music. Honestly worth buying just for the soundtrack XD. Highly recommended.
Factory Farming
Certainly the most ambitious and large-scale Playdate game to date. Really fun, although I'm nowhere near even halfway through the game. Very deep gameplay with lots of variety. Very well adapted to the Playdate's display in terms of size and legibility as well. Highly recommended.
Trapdoors
Surprisingly difficult Game & Watch style game. Very polished, even in the menus. The difficulty increase each level feels perfect, and I appreciate that the main game's levels aren't randomly generated so you know they're actually possible. Love the feel of using the crank to control the trapdoors, it feels like just the right amount of cranking. I like that it comes with the soundtrack too!
Highly recommend.
Season One Games
Season One that comes with every Playdate has a great number of standout titles in it, and lots has been written about all of them so I'm just gonna write blurbs for my favorite games from it. Don't read this if you want the games to be a surprise! I won't spoil the contents of the games but some people don't even want the titles or premises spoiled.
This is my second-favorite Season One game, and it's the first game you get! It's one of the very few Playdate games so far that actually blends real gameplay with some sort of narrative, right now your only other options are visual novel with little/no gameplay
or arcade-style game with no narrative
. But the gameplay is really fun and cute, and a short little narrative with lots of amusing things going on. It's short game even if you 100% it, so I recommend giving it a complete playthrough!
A high-score-chasing game with very simple mechanics. It seems like everyone (including me) who plays it cannot get a hang of the mechanics for at least a few games, so don't give up if you can't figure it out in the first couple games. Also, don't even bother with the global leaderboard because I've calculated and they're all pretty much at the absolute hard score cap given the time limits of the game.
Crankin's Time Travel Adventure
It's the poster child Panic uses to advertise the crank controls, and it was designed by the creator of Katamari Damacy which made it very very promising, and yet to me it is the most frustratingly difficult game in recent memory, to the point where I just gave up about halfway through despite coming back to it multiple times. I honestly can't recommend it.
Cute little game with a fun story and characters. Rather heavily branching storyline so well worth multiple playthroughs.
A fun little match game. Also the game is source-available! (not open-source)
https://github.com/NicMagnier/PickPackPup/
Fun little asteroids-like, with a twist. One of my go-to games to kill some time, although like many arcade games it can run really long once you get good at it.
An interesting isometric turn-based thing by Bennett Foddy. Love the artstyle and the gameplay is pretty fun. But, quoting myself:
I really want to like Bennett Foddy's Zipper. The gameplay is fun, the graphics are good, but it has one glaring flaw: you have to restart the entire game if you make one (1) mistake. Even roguelikes generally give you a chance of surviving if you mess up. It also doesn't save your progress if you exit the game so you gotta restart the whole thing then too
https://tilde.zone/@nytpu/109915333115038988
Where Getting Over It (and a similar game not made by [Bennet Foddy] called Jump King) differ is that they still require skill and timing every time you do it; while Zipper is basically a puzzle game, where once you figure out a screen there's no more skill or fun any more. Also while you it is possible fall all the way back to the beginning in Getting Over It, it's not guaranteed any time you make a single mistake anywhere.
https://tilde.zone/@nytpu/109915822290784994
This is certainly my favorite Season One game. It has a very intriguing story with lots of mystery elements and a few completely unexpected twists. It's ultimately a very linear story but ends up feeling nonlinear—and sometimes even like a puzzle game—because you naturally meander trying to figure out the next step in the storyline (which is not bad or tedious even though it sounds like it). Absolutely give this one a playthrough, even though at the start it seems like some boring alien conspiracy theory thing.
A deceptively difficult arcade-style game made by Panic themselves. An interesting twist on old space-set arcade games, I quite enjoyed playing through the levels.
It's Snake, but with a twist. The one singular mechanic absolutely transforms what IMO is a rather boring game (and incredibly common since it's so simple to make) into a completely different style of gameplay. I quite enjoy it.
An interesting RPG that clearly takes inspiration from classic Game Boy RPGs like The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, as the developers themselves state on the Playdate podcast. I'm still working my way through it but I enjoy the gameplay as much or more than I enjoy the classic RPGs it evokes.
Conclusion
I really adore the Playdate and there are an astonishing number of really excellent games made for the console. It's become one of my favorite electronic devices I own. I'd highly recommend getting one although given that the pre-orders from years ago haven't even shipped yet you'll likely have to wait quite a while to get yours if you order now. But Panic does have a sensible refund policy for before the order is shipped so you can always cancel.