Playdate

[shinymcshine]

I really do love the breadth of the hobby, where it encompasses things like Playdate, and (as featured monthly in Retro gamer) people still making new content for computers & consoles of yesteryear, on one end, then people getting hyped for PS5 Pro (well, I'm sure some are) and it's enhanced cutting edge visuals etc on the other.

[DANGERMAN]

I'll have to give chicken mode a try. I've managed to get past the 1st boss on normal but that's it 

[Maryokutai]

It's really substantially easier, I got to the last boss on my first try which would never have happened on the default setting.

 

@shinymcshine yeah, and I think it's also reassuring to see that at the end of the day, no matter how shitty the big houses handle things, that it's still a creative medium and some people will always find joy in making something and find a way to make it accessible to an audience, with or without a publisher.

[spatular]

I still sort of hate this due to the charging situation. But did buy my first game on it, the train one, zero zero, only had a quick go but does seem like a good clone of densha de go, not many routes but to be expected for a fiver.

 

https://play.date/games/zero-zero/

[Maryokutai]

I have that on my wishlist. Not quite my genre but it looks really nice.

 

So far I haven't had any battery issues with it, but I did notice that downloading and installing games drains it fast. Very noticeable when I come home on Mondays after the two 'free' games got added. That said it does bother me a bit that you can't just turn it off, I don't like hardware being permanently active.

[Maryokutai]

Saw the other day that there's quite a few games on sale at the moment. Just a heads up if you happen to have some stuff on your wishlist, might want to check if they're discounted. 

[Maryokutai]

I picked up three games on the sale: 10-Day Champion, MDMA and Dolphin Splash.

 

10-Day Champion is a mini-RPG in which you have ten days to get ready for a tournament. Preparing for it means fighting enemies, working to earn money, using XP and money to acquire skills and equipment etc. Everything is presented via background images and text, but battles are a bit more visualised and through its nice soundtrack it does evoke a certain atmosphere. There's no save states, so if you die towards the latter part you have to start all over again, which feels a bit deflating considering you have to rebuild your character from scratch again. I think it's because of this last part that I won't stick with it for too long, but I do want to see it through with at least one of the characters.

 

 

Mega Dystopia Micro Architect (MDMA) I think came out relatively early in the system's lifespan. It looks like a city builder, but it's actually closer to something like Carcassone. You have a deck with blueprints of certain building types that you then can freely place on a grid. Buildings either increase or decrease your point total depending on what you put them next to and at certain point thresholds you can pick a modifier like increasing the grid size or adding more blueprints to your current deck. Every time you play you receive some points you can then spend to start off with a larger grid, more blueprints etc. to make longer plays possible. While this is technically a roguelike feature, the game itself doesn't really feel like one and has more in common with classic highscore puzzle games like Tetris. Really enjoying this one, nice soundtrack here, too.

 

 

Dolphin Splash! I've only just tried out, but it's a 2D arcade game in which you control a dolphin with the crank. Wiggling it makes you go a bit faster, but otherwise it's rather straightforward and each level seems to mix things up a bit (collect all the thingies, beat the time limit etc.). It's pretty cute and probably the first time since Ecco that I've seen a Dolphin being the hero of a game. I've not yet entirely gotten used to the controls, but the first impression is pretty good. Some nice parallax scrolling going on in the background, too.

 

[Maryokutai]

So I did end up beating 10-Day Champion with the mage character and I played around a bit with the other two I have unlocked. I think it's a cool game, but I wish it had a permanent save feature, even if it meant risking running into a dead end, skillset-wise.

 

Anyway, I recently got a new game, called Trackminia. Considering UbiSoft doesn't have any money anymore they're probably safe from any lawsuits. I actually never really played Trackmania, so I can't comment on how similar they are, but the developer does cite the series as a big influence. In this one you drive around flat courses with different backgrounds and try to drift masterfully through corners to beat target times (it's only time trials, there are no races with multiple cars - what you see in the gif are ghosts). There's quite a steep learning curve to handling the drift, which feels like a more loose version of Ridge Racer gameplay, but after a while you'll get a handle on things. I'm at a point now where I can sort of challenge the Silver times, but Gold is still very much out of reach, even on the very first course. Visually I find it quite impressive (it looks better natively than here in the gif, the dithering isn't as pronounced without a backlit screen) and there's even a track builder in there. I know @spatular doesn't exactly love the Playdate but this might be one you'd enjoy.

 

[mfnick]

Love the look of that! 

[spatular]

Yeah that does look cool, thanks for the heads up!

[Maryokutai]

Don't know if you guys saw but there's a huge sale going on at the moment in the shop: https://play.date/games/tags/catalog-anniversary-sale-2025/

 

Trying not to spend too much so I only picked up one game, Castle Tintagel, a homage to classic Castlevania games featuring characters from the Arthurian saga. Looks nice enough, only played it for a few minutes so far though.

 

[DANGERMAN]

Late replying but that does look good 

[Maryokutai]

They just gave a couple more details about Season 2: https://play.date/games/seasons/two/

Or here in video form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4faUwfDw5o

 

In the video they show off four games in a bit more detail, the first two I found most interesting as they're made by the people behind Into the Breach and Argo respectively. The former is some kind of mix between tower defense and shoot'em up, not unlike Orbo but more complex in its systems. I didn't like Into the Breach very much but this looked quite nice. The second one is a puzzle game where you play as a Dingo archaeologist. Quite the departure from Argo's serious themes but very cute art style.

 

The season starts at the end of May and consists of 12 games for 40 bucks. Which is where certain questions arise, because while the first Season was a nice bundled-in package, it's a different scenario when you ask people to pay for games they might not end up enjoying. It's not about the price – 40 for 12 games is absolutely fair – but what if I only want half of them? I get why they're doing it, as it adds to the quirkiness of the system and I'm buying it because I overall just like what they're doing, but it's something I might mention the next time they send a survey. Maybe have the season at a discount but allow single purchases in the future, or something like that – to reward early 'cat in the bag' adopters but give everyone else the opportunity to pick and choose.

 

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Also, regarding the game above, I still haven't really played it. The reason for that being that a day after posting I was weak again and bought Spilled Mushrooms on sale, which, and I'm not exaggerating, is such an excellent game that I haven't touched anything on the system since. It's a puzzle game with cards, basically, where you are confronted with three different landscapes with certain numerical values (= number of mushrooms) that the cards you're holding in your hand then have to collect (= animals holding baskets). Animals act in turns depending on a second stat number and have unique effects. It's a bit difficult to explain in words and it looks weird on screenshots, but it's quite easy to grasp and has a lot of depth and tons of content (= unlockable landscapes and animals, which influence the randomised matches).

 

[Maryokutai]

Just a quick heads up, they recently pushed out an update that paves the way for multiplayer features (kind of cool). But unfortunately it also makes the system super unstable and for some reason drains the battery extremely quickly (mine's now empty after 24h in standby). So maybe hold off installing it for the moment.