Playdate is a tiny, portable video game console from Panic with an incredible non-backlit screen. And it has a crank for some reason.
I got mine in May, a mere 5ish months late. Given the pandemic, the shipping mess, the electronics shortage, and a batch of bad batteries, I don't blame them.
Ultimately, I like it. For $179 (+$20 for a cover, which I recommend), I got my money's worth. (As of June 2023, it's now $199+$20 for a cover.) It wasn't an incredible deal, but if another season of games happens at a much lower price (since I don't need a device), that could push it comfortably into "great purchase."
The star of the Playdate is the screen. It's a high resolution, high contrast, black-and-white LCD display that is gorgeous in bright light. It works well is typical indoor lighting, but below that can be hard to see. That I've got older eyes probably isn't helping. It's also very small, about the size of the original Game Boy. I've found it fine in good lighting, but again it's a problem in dimmer light.
(The screen is literally why the Playdate exists. Panic discovered this very unusual display and decided to build a game console around it.)
It's also got a crank. Not for charging, but as an analog input control. It feels good, although it's limited to a single axis of movement. Games use it to varying levels of success. Sometimes it's the perfect match, sometimes it's so-so, and some of the initial games simply forego supporting it.
Buttons... the buttons are fine, but there just aren't enough. I don't need a Steam Deck with 20 buttons, but the Playdate needs more. You've got a 4-way directional pad that would look at home on an NES or Gameboy. It's got A and B. It has a home button that is mostly reserved for the operating system, but developers can use the pause screen that pops up to show non-interactive state, and can add up to 3 menu items. Finally it has a power button. That's it. Two more buttons would have been a big help. Several of the games are clearly straining under the limit.
The processor is very modest, a single-core, 168 Mhz ARM processor. It's far more powerful than, say, the CPU in a Nintendo DS. But in comparison, my phone has 8 cores, all capable of at least 1,800 Mhz. It's got plenty of power for 2d games and with coaxing can do some impressive pseudo-3d. (Yes, it can run Doom.)
The up side of the unusual display and low power CPU is a long battery life that charges surprisingly quickly, about 20 minutes from empty. Panic relies on the low power usage to make Playdate always on, displaying a clock when not active. The impressive part is that it can get up to about 15 days of life in idle showing the clock, but I sometimes don't use it for that long and return to find it drained.
The built-in speaker is monoaural, but surprisingly loud and very clear. It does stereo out the standard 3.5mm audio jack. It does not have Bluetooth audio support.
I think the case is a good addition, it makes the Playdate a bit grippier and provides a bit of protection. One disappointment is that the Playdate doesn't auto-off when the cover is closed. I'm used to that thanks to my iPad, so I close the case without turning the Playdate off and uselessly spend battery life.
Overall, it's a solid base for the types of games they wanted to ship. I just wish it had two more buttons.
Playdate comes with a "season" of games. For 12 weeks, every week you get two games. I found that spacing the games out did encourage me to give games more than one attempt. A few games grew on me that I might otherwise have given up on.
Part of the idea is for the games to be a surprise, and to that end I'm putting the per-game reviews at a different page so you can avoid them if you care. This section will talk in general terms.
To summarize the games in one word: clever. There are clever twists on classic games. There are clever new ideas. There are well executed versions of classic genres, with clever additions.
It's a mix of relatively small but repeatable games, medium sized games that typically rely on procedural generation, and a few bigger games. There is a single genuinely big game.
In early 2023 Panic added Catalog, their app store. As of June 2023, there are more than 20 additional games. Like the original season of games, they're well curated and largely clever original games or interesting twists on existing games. In an phone app store they would be a bit pricey for what you're getting, typically about $5, but I suppose given the much smaller Playdate market, a premium is to be expected.
Finally, there are dozens of additional games for sale elsewhere; many on itch.io.
Playdate welcomes third party development, and people can sell games for Playdate without needing Panic's involvement. A bunch are available at itch.io. You can upload games via USB (the Playdate acts as an external hard drive) or using their website. I successfully purchased a game from itch.io on my phone and loaded it onto my Playdate entirely wirelessly.
If you're interested in developing a game, the development tools are free and work on MacOS, Windows, and Linux. It includes a pretty good simulator, so you can develop a game without even needing a Playdate. It's a pretty good set of development tools. The simulator has some tools for debugging memory usage, and it will interface with a real Playdate for debugging. The only thing I consider a mistake is that the emulator has little to no throttling, so games will likely run much faster than on the real Playdate. Playdate's documentation is also great.
Playdate supports development in Lua and C. I have... feelings about Lua, but I yield that it's nice to have a reasonably modern scripting language available, it makes development faster. The libraries implement a range of computationally expensive tasks in native C that the Lua can use. This includes stuff like pathfinding and image compositing. You can also ship Lua code with a C library so you can speed up core parts of your program. Or you can just use Lua as a loader and write your entire program in C.
It's a cute little system. If a novel, easily pocketed system with 24 interesting games appeals, it's a good buy.