P laydate should not be able to do the things it does. It's small enough to fit in my jeans pockets, it's lighter than a deck of cards, and it has a black-and-white screen. It feels like a relic of the 90s, at least until you power it on, and it has a library of exclusive games from top-tier developers, all available for free. The small crank attached to its side is the icing on the yellow cake, adding a layer of sweet innovation to every experience on the system.
Playdate is my favorite handheld device. It is a love letter to games and creativity, and I think it is what the industry needs right now.
Playdate is the brainchild of Panic, the Mac developer and publisher behind Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game. It has 16MB of ram and 4GB of flash storage, a 400 x 240 1-bit display, a built-in mono speaker, and a stereo headphone jack. It wasn't possible to test the function for review, but connecting to the internet was painless.
Playdate has a lot of cute things: Its size, the crank, the audio cues, the way each game is presented as a little gift to unwrap and how the screen looks when you wake it up. There is so much personality packed into Playdate that it is enjoyable to interact with the settings page. It's even better to play games on it.
Most of the free games are taking full advantage of the crank mechanic, made exclusively for the system. Once a Playdate is activated, it will receive two fresh games each week for 12 weeks, for a total of 24 titles in the device's first season. There are plans to sell games on Playdate.
I haven't found a bad game on Playdate yet, but some are more replayable than others. They span genres and lengths, capping out at a few hours, but there is at least one moment of pure delight in each experience. A sidescroller starring a romantic who is just trying to meet his date on time, and his movements are controlled by a crank, steps reversing and accelerated depending on the direction of the rotation, is called Time Travel Adventure. It's a simple concept with a singular input method, but the crank makes it challenging in a way I've never experienced before, and it's addictive.
Spellcorked is my favorite game on Playdate so far because it captures everything the device has to offer. It's a game with a romantic storyline and a cat, and every time I play it, I'm impressed by the detail on the screen. It has dialogue, character icons, an email interface, and environments filled with spiderwebs and nicknacks, but nothing gets lost visually. Each frame is crisp and the actual process involves every input method Playdate offers: pressing buttons while turning the crank to grind ingredients, lining up a blade with the crank and chopping in a back-and-forth motion. Each new mechanic adds an extra layer of magic to the game.
The Playdate crank is not a novelty. It's a fundamental aspect of the system, transforming it from a reworked Gameboy into something completely new, a mobile device with a peculiar and joyful edge. The invitation for developers to think deeper about the way they develop games, to try new things and to innovate on old ideas is similar to the lo-fi restrictions of the hardware. Playdate's first season is already filled with fresh concepts, and I haven't felt this spark of intrigue from a handheld since my fingers brushed the back of the Vita.
I believe the ideas generated by Playdate games will not be trapped in a bubble. Designers testing out weird mechanics on the handheld and then transferring these concepts to traditional consoles, PCs and phones naturally bleed into the wider game development cycle. Developers of all sizes often find inspiration in new input mechanics, as the dualsense eventually transformed into the Vita. The Playdate crank can be a boon for the entire industry. All hail the crank. Amen.
The Playdate has few drawbacks. It's small enough to be discreet, but unique enough to be a conversation starter, it's packed with exclusive games from amazing developers, it costs a reasonable $180 and it has a crank. The screen brightness is not backlit, but instead uses a super-reflective system that requires light in the room to play, and at times the screen appears dull. I have caught myself squinting a few times, particularly in direct light.
It is very small, which works well for my hands, but people with large mitts might have issues with the size. You should be able to handle a Playdate if you can use a Joy-Con. The Playdate mirror app allows you to stream the device's screen to a PC or Mac and play with traditional gamepads. This will help anyone who wants to go live with Playdate games, and should be useful for developers.
It feels like a modern system compared to Playdate, which is a cross between a Game Boy and a business card. The sense of innovation built into the hardware is a part of that. There are plenty of devices out there promising gorgeous graphics and outrageous processing power, but Playdate is a reminder that there is more magic to a good game than bleeding-edge performance. Playdate distills this philosophy into a cute-as-hell package, complete with a crank.
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