The strangest handheld console ever made, and the only one with a crank handle, has started its second season of downloads, from some of the best indie developers in the world.
The handheld gaming market is littered with casualties. Nokia’s ill-fated N-Gage, the Sega Game Gear, and PS Vita all failed to live up to sales expectations despite seeming to fill gaps in the market and coming from giant multinational brands. Even Nintendo, the sector’s inventor and market leader managed to mess things up with their migraine-inducing stereoscopic 3D console, Virtual Boy. It makes you wonder what Microsoft are thinking even getting involved.
It’s into this thoroughly unprepossessing commercial landscape that indie publisher Panic – best known for Untitled Goose Game, Firewatch, and Thank Goodness You’re Here! – had the chutzpah to release their own handheld console, the Playdate. Unlike the list above it entirely ignored the state of the art, aiming instead for a quirkier positioning; a tactic that’s served Nintendo extremely well over the years.
Playdate has a startlingly crisp, monochrome LCD screen and as well as the usual buttons and D-pad, it comes with a small crank handle that pops out of the side of the console. Love has clearly been lavished on its design and manufacture, making it easy to turn, perfectly weighted, and immediately pleasing to use. However, as with some of Nintendo’s whackier innovations, there’s a sense that not all developers know quite what to do with it.
The console’s other unique selling point is supplying a pre-selected roster of games that were originally delivered weekly as a ‘season’. Released along with the console at no extra cost, you got 24 games that arrived over the course of three months, giving you two new titles to look forward to each week – a flashing turquoise LED on top of the Playdate letting you know when a new batch was ready to play.
Season two, which launched at the end of May, works similarly although Playdate owners will need to pay for this one. As before, games auto-download every week and it’s fascinating to see the difference a few years of getting to know Playdate’s (completely free to use) dev kit has made to the quality and content of its games, as well as how they attempt to apply the crank – or don’t.
The season’s flagship, Blippo+ isn’t a game at all, but presents itself as a 1-bit television experience in which you use the handle to tune into a direct broadcast stream, notionally from Planet Blip. It’s a mishmash of 80s America local TV style content, with new programming dropping every Thursday. It’s made by eccentric US dance music trio YACHT, and while Blippo+ is also available in full colour on Steam, its weird brand of retro-futurism works really well on Playdate’s tiny screen.
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Fulcrum Defender is a circular tower defence game that has polygonal attackers flying in from the edge of the screen. You need to swing your sights to face each one using the crank, before unleashing volleys of defensive fire. You have to be careful not to let your gun overheat, while adding power-ups as your antagonists become more numerous and get craftier in using evasive flight paths.
Perhaps the most substantial of the initial tranche is Dig! Dig! Dino! It has you playing as a palaeontologist, digging up ancient dinosaur bones and mysterious artefacts, while slowly upgrading the tools of your trade – which range from bigger shovels to farther reaching radar to detect buried bones. While it barely uses the crank, its mechanics prove highly addictive, the black and white screen proving oddly capable at representing the different stata you burrow through in your search.
Other highlights include Wheelsprung, which has you riding a bouncy, physics-based cartoon trials bike across increasingly complex landscapes, using throttle, brakes, and balance to overcome its obstacles.
Meanwhile, Long Puppy gets you to use the extendable body of a sausage dog to hunt for food. Each treat you eat makes the dog longer, letting you reach more food, as well as each level’s eventual goal: a ball thrown by the dog’s owner. Finally, The Whiteout is a melancholic post-apocalyptic adventure that has you wandering through the remnants of a shattered civilisation.
The range of genres and the creativity of their execution is impressive. It’s also refreshing to see that this second batch of games doesn’t shoehorn in use of the crank. Now, when it’s deployed it’s either central to the game or used for relatively minor functions, like spooling through the frames of a story, and some don’t feel the need to use it at all. It’s a sign that developers are getting to grips with the hardware and the possibilities it offers.
We couldn’t help feeling Playdate’s initial set of games, which could be side-loaded or bought from the console’s built-in app store, weren’t quite as satisfying as we’d hoped, despite the console’s innate desirability and well-engineered hardware. Season two’s opening titles are already promising, and we’ll update with a full review once the season concludes later in July.
Formats: Playdate
Price: $39.99 (only available to buy in US dollars)
Publisher: Panic
Developer: Various
Release Date: 29th May to 22nd July 2025
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