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Playdate thread for enthusing about cranks in. THE HARDWARE A collaboration between Panic, publisher of Firewatch, Untitled Goose Game and the upcoming Nour, and Teenage Engineering - of gorgeous and terrifying expensive synths fame - the Playdate is a handheld console with a 1-bit black and white screen. Also, it's tiny and it has a crank.  Seriously this thing is adorable. It clocks in at about half the size of like, most modern mobile phones. The screen is a 2.7" 400 x 240 Sharp Memory LCD. There's no backlight, but there's an extremely reflective surface behind the screen that does a pretty great job of keeping the screen visible as long as you have some ambient light in your environment. It has a blistering 180MHz CPU, 16MB of memory, and 4GB of flash storage. Unfortunately, due to the realities of producing any sort of electronic device since the pandemic started, if you place an order now you're placing a pre-order for a Playdate to ship in 2023, production capacity for 2022 having already completely filled. It retails for $179 for the Playdate alone, or $199 for the Playdate and a cute magnetic protective cover.  Yes, it's a lot of money - it's an extremely niche device. I think for most people if you read about the Playdate and see some footage of it in action you will know whether or not you want to spend that kind of money on it. Note that the price also includes the 24 games in Season One. THE GAMES - SEASON ONE  Playdate comes with a season of 24 games made by a number of developers that are collaborating with Panic. When you first turn on your Playdate, you'll install the first two games of the season - Whitewater Wipeout and Casual Birder. From when you first active your Playdate, each following week the next two games in the season roster will be delivered to your device. For those who are not thrilled with the idea of waiting for games, there doesn't seem to be a way to accelerate or skip this process at present, but you can easily sideload a range of third party games - more about that below. Here are the revealed games for Season 1 - I've not unlocked all of these myself yet so some of these snippets are from the Playdate site's section for Season 1 - https://play.date/games/
Want more games? Check out the rapidly expanding collection of games for the Playdate on itch.io, many of which are free to play or pay what you want. Sideloading games is ridiculously easy. Log in to your account on the Playdate website, go to the account page and select 'sideload'. Drag and drop the .pdx file (or the zipped .pdx file, you don't even need to unzip it!) to the page and it will be added to your Playdate account. On your device, go to Settings > Games and your Playdate will fetch it from the 'net and install it. Playdate's game-making toolkit Pulp and its full development SDK were released ahead of the hardware, meaning a number of games and apps have already been developed or are otherwise in development despite the recent release of the device. Some notable games available on itch.io that I have heard buzz about (not necessarily endorsing these or saying they're good, just I've seen some generally positive buzz about them): Bloom by RNG Party Games https://rngpartygames.itch.io/bloom  A real-time narrative driven social sim about starting up a flower shop. A blend of visual novel that unfolds over real time through in-game texts combined with a light flower-growing sim. Notable for being the first commercial Playdate game, the asking price is :tenbux: A Joke That's Worth $0.99 by kamibox https://kamibox.itch.io/a-joke-thats-worth-099  A tiny person with a bouncy butt tells a very long joke. Control the crank of the Playdate to make him not fall so he can finish telling you his very long joke. Asking price is, naturally, $0.99. Super Corporate Tax Evader by 96m96m https://96m96m.itch.io/super-corporate-tax-evader-playdate  Your company has been subpoenaed by a tax lawyer- shred all your incriminated documents as quick as you can but make sure you put the crank away to stash your shredder when the lawyer pops in to check on you. Pay what you want. Bird and Beans by madvogel https://madvogel.itch.io/bird-and-beans-for-playdate  A port/remake of the DSiWare title of the same name. You play as a small bird named Pyoro trying to eat seeds from the sky before they destroy the platform you're standing on. This one is free and might be one to grab quickly lest it fall afoul of copyright issues. More to come as I dig deeper into some of these! MAKE YOUR OWN STUFF - PULP AND THE PLAYDATE SDK There's a dedicated section for dev related stuff to be found at https://play.date/dev/ If you want to make stuff for the Playdate there are two approaches. Pulp is a web-based drag and drop game editor for the Playdate that has built in pixel art editing, chiptune making, and some simple scripting built in. It's tailored towards producing top-down adventure games, but from a look at the dev forums some folks seem to have managed to make it go pretty wildly away from that base.  If you know what you're doing, you can also grab the Playdate SDK package. Programs can be written in either Lua, C, or a mixture of both and the SDK also has a Simulator for local development and testing without having to continually move your code across to your Playdate. It's worth noting that if you do make a game for the Playdate there are no licensing fees and no restriction on how or where you can sell your game. DOES IT RUN DOOM THOUGH? https://twitter.com/playdate/status/1293636196917055488
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May 24, 2022 09:22
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Reserved for game recommendations etc.
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May 24, 2022 09:22
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I have been going back & forth on getting the Playdate for a while but TBH having to pay a full deposit for the thing when the ship date is so far out I don't know if I'll even be alive by the time it gets here is kind of a hard sell for me At least with the Steam Deck I only had to pay the $5 up front The games look super cute though, the aesthetic is really pleasant especially in motion
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May 24, 2022 09:59
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I ended up in group 3 because I waffled on purchasing mine so see you, idk, around Christmas?
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May 24, 2022 13:51
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I've had mine for over a month now and am somewhat conflicted. The hardware itself is really solid. It feels so nice to hold with no flex or creaking and the buttons are nice and clicky. The screen is very crisp and does an amazing job of catching light but still kind of baffling they didn't include edge lighting for playing in suboptimal lighting. The battery life is absolutely as advertised, I can put it down and come back days later with almost no drain. The cover is also high quality with a leathery texture and no sharp edges, and it attaches entirely magnetically so removing it is easy. The biggest flaw I've noticed is that the crank hinge overextends to the point it's possible to rub the body when going ham in certain games. And a minor flaw is that you can see the back of the indicator LED when it's on through the screen. The games however are letting me down. So many have been either text-heavy story adventures or 2 minute loop arcade score attacks, neither of which are my favorite. So far the average crank utilization has been unimpressive which is inexcusable for being the defining feature of the system. I can understand the argument for accessibility in not requiring it but was expecting more innovation like that Doom chaingun clip. Remember when you had to close the Nintendo DS screen to advance in some games? That's the kind of unique mechanic I want to see implemented with the crank, something you just can't do on any other system. I've got 5 weeks of games now so I'll spoiler my thoughts on them. Casual Birder: Had a good time with this one. Using the crank as a manual camera focus mechanic was neat and some of the pictures are decently hard to figure out and/or capture. I'm still missing a few (18, 21, 26) but haven't been compelled to figure them out. Whitewater Wipeout: I only played this for a few minutes because it's very much a "what you see is what you get" score attack. Props for the crank mechanic and online leaderboard but not at all interesting to me. Scores also submit from hardware with your account number instead of user name as there's no way to customize it outside the SDK? Time Travel Adventure: Probably the most hyped game by pre-release marketing and thus the most disappointing. The core of it is good and I had fun for a handful of levels as it's more of an execution puzzler than an action game. Then the pigs come in and you have to manhandle the crank to an absurd RPM, so much so that Panic patched the game a few days later because people were rightfully afraid they'd break the device. I got all the way to level 20 before actively giving up on the game in disgust because it becomes so reliant on unreadable branching staircases and offscreen hazards that the only way to win is by memorizing everything. Boogie Loops: It's just a music sequencer? With dancing characters?? There is zero game here and it doesn't use the crank at all even as an option. I wonder how this made the cut for seasonal games and worry that it means they had trouble putting together a set of 24. Lost Your Marbles: I have to give this one more attention as the basic gameplay is okay but to get there you have to read through so much text I wasn't in the mood for. Pick Pack Pup: So far this has been the standout game as it's a solid match-3 that requires the player to mix up their strategy in each level. The crank is only used as an optional input for advancing the interstage comics so I wonder if there isn't more they could have done. Flipper Lifter: You control a series of elevators and have to ferry penguins around. It's alright I guess? Makes good use of the crank and the stages were evolving in interesting ways, but the amount of points you have to earn to advance far exceeds how fun it is. Echoic Memory: Really like this one too! It's basically memory but with synth audio clips and the crank changes the modulation. The story might be going places but much like Lost Your Marbles I need to put in more time. DemonQuest 85: This threw me off as I was expecting a roguelike from the title screen but I have no clue what it actually is. Only unlocked yesterday and it seemed very frontloaded with exposition so it's on the backburner. Omaze: This one can be fun in small doses. Another action puzzle game where you have to navigate a series of circular chambers by cranking around the perimeter and avoiding obstacles. It does however make the worst control design sin imaginable on this device: requiring use of the crank at the same time as the A/B buttons. Why wouldn't they bind the inputs to the dpad?! It makes no sense and is horrible to play! It's such a shame about the timing of release with the whole covid electronics supply chain. If this were able to get into more hands it might actually take off but as is most people are treating it as vaporware and nobody wants to buy in. Discussion is scant and the weird seasonal release schedule only stifles it further.
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May 24, 2022 23:17
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I've been enjoying the games quite a bit but they very much are not for everyone. I'm not sure what the decision was to make a music sequencer as one of the starting applications.
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May 25, 2022 18:53
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Wait there’s a sequencer? That’s extremely my poo poo, does it interface with other stuff?
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May 25, 2022 19:24
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Rolo posted:Wait there’s a sequencer? That’s extremely my poo poo, does it interface with other stuff? Nope, no midi in or out, no parameters to change sounds outside of the presets, and really no way to set tempo except fast or less fast. I know people are coding trackers for the playdate though, so there should be some better music options in the future: https://twitter.com/jcoliadis/status/1523887400673583104?s=20&t=siv_2ItJIaZG6Z2L31tp9Q
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May 26, 2022 05:27
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Swilo posted:I've had mine for over a month now and am somewhat conflicted. This has more or less been my reaction to it so far as well, great hardware, but the games have largely been a let down. Honestly, i've spent the most time with some of the community made games like Playtris and Invasion. I'm hoping it gets enough community support that people keep making stuff for it, and we maybe get a better season 2 of games.
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May 31, 2022 18:15
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Yesterday was Monday which means new game day for everybody! Still haven't gone back to put more time into some of the previous games because Rogue Legacy 2 is eating all my free time but here's my brief experience with what I've gotten this week: Zipper: This is Bennett Foddy's game and it shows. It's fun enough to play as an action puzzle title but brutally hard and comes with no explanation whatsoever. Very unlikely I will play it more than the 5 minutes I already did because if you make a single mistake you start the entire game over from scratch, no lives or continues or saves, which means every attempt at the harder screens requires replaying all the previous ones. Why do this in 2022? Even in the 80s most games had worked out this is a bad model and as far as I've seen there is no commentary going on. Hyper Meteor: It's Asteroids but with a cranky twist. Instead of shooting bullets you ram into targets, but only on one side or you die yourself. Crank to aim, dpad to speed boost or launch a screen-clearing bomb, controls very well overall. Another score attack with an online leaderboard.
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May 31, 2022 22:38
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Swilo posted:Yesterday was Monday which means new game day for everybody! Still haven't gone back to put more time into some of the previous games because Rogue Legacy 2 is eating all my free time but here's my brief experience with what I've gotten this week: I would like Zipper WAY more if it had a save mechanic. So far this actually seems like one of the most well constructed games, but wish it was more forgiving. Hyper Meteor is fun, but I find the ‘only on one side’ mechanic is frustrating. Like most Playdate games I put them down after a few minutes each :-(
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Jun 1, 2022 02:18
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Sketch, Share, Solve is picross. This was the first thing I spent a lot of time with which felt a bit dumb as I've played picross on probably a dozen different devices by now. But it's a decent version with room to create and share puzzles. That said, I don't know that they ever get over-complicated. Super Corporate Tax Evader is amusing and probably a good 'demo' game if people are curious to check out the device. All you do is crank to shred documents, but you need to pay attention to the goofy conversation going on behind the door to make sure you don't get caught. It's a quick score-attack game that uses stowing the crank away as a mechanic. --- I want to love Bloom but it feels very meh to me. It feels like a lot of half-assed great ideas. I would go into it thinking about it purely as a visual novel, and people seem to praise the story. I'm not crazy about it myself, but I'm sticking with it and open to being impressed by the end. - the game has night/day cycles but they're meaningless beyond aesthetics - the conversations really annoy me ... like you have to wait a bit for each response, and the stuff going on has nothing to do with real time, despite purporting to. Like you're saying "sleep well" when it's 7:00 AM and the plot/conversations go on no matter what time of day it is. It actually kind of feels like a major bug. But further, you always get two options to respond with, but they're never appreciably different -- as far as I can tell, no choice you make matters at all. The story is also kind of nonsensical compared to the gardening section. - the gardening is also dumb and gated by either time or conversation progress. There's no strategy to it ... just buy the most expensive seeds available to you, come back later and harvest. It feels like pure busy-work. At least rain means you don't need to bother watering all 24 tiles you unlock. This literally finally got me into playing Stardew Valley (and enjoying it). The art and music are lovely?
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Jun 5, 2022 20:31
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I think I will be getting one around Christmas. Even if it doesn't really do well, at least it'll be a decent gimmick. Something to gently caress around with.
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Jun 5, 2022 23:21
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It's Monday again! Executive Golf DX: A bog standard golf ball platforming game  Took about half an hour to clear.Questy Chess: A somewhat interesting idea with flawed execution. You play as a chess pawn (which can eventually be swapped out for other pieces) and have to traverse a top-down grid-based level to avoid obstacles and battle enemies. But it's entirely possible and sometimes required to make a move that forces you into unseen danger that was just off screen. It also crashes every few minutes and requires rebooting the device.
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Jun 7, 2022 04:26
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Finished the Bloom plot yesterday. Huge meh. Enjoying Omaze in week 5, and DemonQuest 85 looks fun.
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Jun 15, 2022 16:41
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They finally addressed that glaring flaw in the leaderboards by allowing regular users to set a proper account name instead of only showing your account number https://twitter.com/playdate/status/1537920914020438019 This week's games were alright Star Sled: You fly a spaceship around and are tailing a rope you use to ensnare targets or avoid ensaring obstacles. Much more enjoyable than Hyper Meteor because it is less hectic and actually builds upon mechanics over the course of the game. Really tight crank controls but they might have overtuned it because I constantly find myself oversteering into obstacles. And yet again another game makes the bizarre decision to require pressing A/B while cranking instead of binding those controls to the dpad. Saturday Edition: A point and click adventure game. Not really my thing. Does not seem to use the crank. I wonder if we'll ever have a true "killer app" for this thing or if it will just languish in mediocrity until it is forgotten 
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Jun 18, 2022 00:33
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I got my “hey we’re prolly gonna ship this in the next few weeks” email. Forgot I ordered one 
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Sep 21, 2022 18:43
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Which group are you in? I'm in group 5 and I'm starting to doubt the "late 2022 early 2023" estimate.
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Sep 21, 2022 18:48
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3. They wanted me to confirm my address by October something meaning it’s not that close yet. Which sucks cause I had it safely tucked away in the “forgotten” folder of my brain.
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Sep 21, 2022 21:14
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Lol gently caress. If they're just now thinking about shipping to group 3 then late 2023 for group 5 sounds like the optimistic guess. Hope you get yours soon.
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Sep 21, 2022 21:33
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I also got my group 3 announcement. Does it seem like this system just fell off like a rock? Huge hype at announcement and initial release and now no one talks about it, seems the case for all gaming sites. I feel like Panic has not done a good job and using the momentum from that initial hype and just kind of left it out to release and die after the first group of people finished their season. There's a lot of community support on itch and new games, you'd think Panic would try to give them some exposure or whatever, it seems like group 2 came and went and barely anyone talked about it. It was always a niche product to begin with so maybe it's the logical outcome, but it seems like there's a lot of wasted potential.
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Sep 26, 2022 09:31
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Oh god it’s my Cybiko all over again!
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Sep 26, 2022 18:18
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Original_Z posted:I also got my group 3 announcement. Yep, seems like it to me. Maybe there’ll be a slight bump as each batch gets delivered, but it’s not gonna be huge. I think they really lost momentum by not being able to ship all of them at once. I understand how difficult that would be though. It seems like they try to do as much possible themselves and keep their company small. I was surprised to find out their code editor (Nova) only has one full time developer, for example. In this case it seems like it kind of squelched the hype for this. Hopefully they at least broke even on it, who knows what the long term prospects are for it as a platform. Edit: also, they forgot to make most of the games FUN. So many of them just felt like a slog, which was a total bummer. frogbs fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 08:27
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Getting pretty close to cancelling my preorder and reinvesting that $220 in, like... a pair of nail clippers. Something useful. Have any of you Datehavers found your device has staying power?
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Nov 6, 2022 09:45
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Bogart posted:Getting pretty close to cancelling my preorder and reinvesting that $220 in, like... a pair of nail clippers. Something useful. Have any of you Datehavers found your device has staying power? I keep forgetting my preorder exists and the less I hear about the system in general the more I’m thinking about turning it into a Retroid Pocket 3+…
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Nov 6, 2022 15:23
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Bogart posted:Getting pretty close to cancelling my preorder and reinvesting that $220 in, like... a pair of nail clippers. Something useful. Have any of you Datehavers found your device has staying power? I haven't touched mine since the final week of season one games. Panic sent out a survey to owners regarding satisfaction and how much you'd be willing to pay for a hypothetical season two but I haven't seen any communication since then. It probably is the smart choice to bail on it at this point as who knows how long you'll be waiting and all the enthusiasm seems to be gone from both the community and the company. There are a lot of third party titles available via itch but they're overwhelmingly minigame/prototype/score attack/text adventure/port. The meatiest title I've played is the final week's Ratcheteer which was a rather good 2D Zelda but definitely not a system mover.
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Nov 6, 2022 19:24
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I was looking through the itch page and while it's nice people are playing around with the SDK, if I want to play those games, the SDK is free and runs 'em. And most of the games do look like throwaways, sadly.Rolo posted:I keep forgetting my preorder exists and the less I hear about the system in general the more I’m thinking about turning it into a Retroid Pocket 3+… Yeah, we're thinking the same exact thing. I'll cancel. It's a real shame. This coulda been something. Bogart fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 19:39
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It’s my Cybiko all over again!
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Nov 6, 2022 20:17
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Of the season one games, the one that got the most play time from me BY FAR was Pick Pack Pup, which is a solid little puzzle game. I also liked Zipper from Bennet Foddy, but lack of save points made me put it down after a bit. Outside of the that, the tetris clone that was on itch.io also got a ton of play time from me, although I think it's since been taken down :-( Edit: Looks like the tetris clone is now know as Blockdate and is available on Github: https://github.com/ThaCuber/BlockDate Second edit: Surprisingly, the Playdate discord seems to be pretty active (1,000+ members online). Another example of Discord hiding a ton of content from the rest of the internet. For example, there's a thread about a game called 'Tiny Train Simulator' that looks pretty awesome, not sure if this kind of stuff is getting posted anywhere else. https://discord.gg/zFKagQ2 frogbs fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Nov 6, 2022 |
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Nov 6, 2022 21:03
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I still pick mine up, but I'm mostly annoyed that Bloom hasn't received any update after one being teased like half a year ago. I have lots I enjoy on it, but the thing is I just don't have much time for gaming these days. Since COVID, I've basically sworn off transit, where I would have used it the most. (I just bike 99% of the time now, rain, shine or snow.) So I appreciate it as a unique toy to fool around with for a few minutes here or there. I've played tonnes of picross on it though. This is really impressive so far, but I haven't played enough to know how deep it gets: https://gareth.itch.io/etad
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Nov 6, 2022 22:46
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Yeahhh I went ahead and cancelled today. I would have loved this when I ordered it 16 month ago but the wind is no longer in my sails and I've already given Teenage Engineering thousands of dollars since. Also in that time handheld gaming things have exploded and 200 bucks gets you a whole heck of a lot now.
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Nov 7, 2022 22:56
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So Playdate has an update with a connected storefront. Some of the game pricing seems...ambitious, but I guess it's good to have more games to play. You can also access it on a web browser at https://play.date/games/catalog/
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Mar 8, 2023 01:18
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Also holy hell Bloom actually got a content update.
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Mar 8, 2023 20:49
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Original_Z posted:So Playdate has an update with a connected storefront. Some of the game pricing seems...ambitious, but I guess it's good to have more games to play. Yea... prices are bad. Inching ever closer to offloading mine for a profit
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Mar 29, 2023 18:39
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I feel like I want to love my PD, but the cranking mechanism feels really janky. Like there are games here I’d love to play but I feel like the cranking just feels unnatural and uncomfortable and that I’d otherwise like the game if it just offered plain dpad-a/b controls. I think when I say uncomfortable and unnatural I mean, as in burdensome. Holding the device and cranking is awkward, or having move my fingers from A/B to grip the crank and back. Even when the crank makes sense in the context of gameplay, it just feels like I’d rather have a knob or something to turn than a big crank. I guess absent the crank you could say I’d just be happier with one of the hundred other mini retro systems, but there’s still something about the PD and its games I find charming. Just.. hard to play.
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Apr 4, 2023 03:09
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Not meaty games or anything, but really enjoying Carve Jr. which is by the same people as the original Whitewater game ... reminds me a lot of the downhill on Ski or Die from way back when. I find it a lot more fun and intuitive than Whitewater though. As well Grand Tour Legends looks amazing wobbly butt lol and actually uses the crank in a great way for gameplay. 
teethgrinder fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Apr 18, 2023 |
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Apr 18, 2023 19:29
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Swilo posted:It's Monday again! It feels really unfairly difficult at moments, but soon enough you get a feel for it and figure out how to get out of the traps. What makes it not bog standard is that it's procedurally generated each play. Can really kill the time on my commute anyway as I focus on it. Also nice that it doesn't require the crank.
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May 7, 2023 18:30
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Finally got mine in the mail a couple days ago, after ordering in April of last year, yeesh. Pretty happy with it though. The screen is lovely, looks like if a Gameboy cost ten thousand dollars. Off the bat I'm having a lot of fun with Skew and Gun Trails. Seems like bite-sized arcade action is the sweet spot for this thing. Anyone playing anything good lately?
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Aug 23, 2023 20:26
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The noir adventure game from S1 was my favorite. I loved the atmosphere.
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Aug 24, 2023 17:23
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Welp mine appears to have mysteriously died. Blank screen, just shows a bright white status light. Using the reset button under the crank just turns the light out as long as it's held down. When I let go of the button, the light briefly turns orange before white again. Google suggests it's a hard crash but it's surprisingly hard to find much about people having trouble with a white light. I had just travelled with it and didn't leave it on an empty charge. Contacted support and I'll see what they say.
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Sep 13, 2023 01:25
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