Playdate’s second season sucked me back into the little yellow handheld

The seasonal structure is one of the unique aspects of the game game. When the pocket computer was launched for the first time in 2022, the owners had access to an organized selection of 24 games that have been published over time. It was an excellent introduction to the device and its unique characteristics – the crank, the small display, the graphics in black and white – but it was only earlier this year that a second season started. (I should note that this does not mean that there were no new games for Playdate, as a digital store launched in 2023, and there are many titles to lachage in markets like Itch.io.)

Season 2 started in May, and although it is smaller – you get 12 games for $ 39, plus whatever the devil the FMV Blippo ratherHe’s – He also took a very good start. And since then, it has been extended with a variety of games. There is a post-apocalyptic adventure called White-outand an exploration of points and clicks called Shadowgate PDwhich is actually a remake of a game from the 80s. The dozen titles of season 2 are doing a solid job to show the range of possibilities on the game game.

But what struck me the most was the games that make intensity the characteristic of the signature of the pocket computer: its crank. For example, Shuttle is a climbing game where you play like a turnip with your arms. Moving means using the face buttons to grasp things, then move your body with the crank. It was a little annoying at the beginning, probably because I hadn’t played anything before, but finally I was able to enter a solid rhythm to make my way through a perilous ground. It’s really satisfactory moving smoothly in the world by turning a crank.

Taria and Como Offers something similar in a platform game more typical of lateral scrolling. You can move and jump into a world of pixel art, but to navigate in the most perilous areas, you are helped by a kind of drone / grapple hook that is crank. You trigger it and then swing where you should be. You can also use the crank to get up or down. Taria and Como is a relatively slow physics platform with difficult puzzles, and the inclusion of the crank adds a layer of satisfactory tactility to experience.

Maybe my favorite game is probably the strangest. It’s called Long puppyAnd it’s almost like a spiritual successor to Noby Noby Boy (Although not developed by Keita Takahashi, who does her own strange things). The lens is simple: you are a dog who must go get a ball. But it always seems to be in a difficult place to reach, and the only way to get there is to stretch. To stretch longer, you should eat a lot of food. And so each level becomes a race to eat as much as you can so that you can access the ball before a strangely angry ghost dog presents itself.

Of course, you use the crank to grow and shrink, so even if Long puppy is a game on a puppy, you move more like a caterpillar that makes a way through the levels to swallow everything they can quickly. Again, it takes a while to get used to it, but the time limits forced me to become really good for stretching and it was an explosion. In addition, at the end of each level, you use the crank to poop.

Of course, these games would still have been pleasant if I stumbled in the catalog store. But there is something exciting in the big moment that the playing seasons create. Each week, I plan something new, and I never really know what it will be. It could be more channels for a bizarre fictitious television service, or it could be the most difficult (and adorable) fetch game that I have ever played. This regular pace of bizarre and fun makes the playdate much more difficult to forget.