#475 - Moved. Playdate.

Light at the end of the tunnel? Is that you?

WE MOVED

That image describes much of my past many… well… months. Not always hauling things from place to place, but handling logistics and cleaning and all the stuff. BUT!

Our stuff is in a new house! We started sleeping in the new house. And as of yesterday we have internet here. We are really thrilled to be here. There’s so many great things about this place (this house and this location more generally). Just walking around the house is incredibly satisfying right now. We are learning new things about it and the area every day, and every day feels like an adventure.

We didn’t want to leave Lawrence - but if you have to leave Lawrence, you could pick worse spots to go - that’s for sure.

I am energized and excited to make this house and our lives in it as awesome as possible.

Cousin

My boys have a new cousin! He is cute. I’m excited for my siblings-in-law on their journey down this crazy thing called parenthood. Looking forward to meeting the little dude he grows into.

Colorado

We took a family¹ vacation to Colorado. What a lovely, lovely place. I was expecting the trip to be good, and it surpassed those expectations. Great times were had by all. No notes.

Playdate Review

If you’re a normal person, you’ve probably never heard of the playdate.

Playdate is a tiny², low-fidelity³, yellow⁴, portable gaming console. It’s awesome. It’s not going to play any game you’ve heard of - and that’s the point. It’s unique. It essentially replaces the experience you’d have downloading games to your phone - but the games are better. There’s no ads, microtransactions, or anything other than the maximum amount of personality and charm and art and fun that the developer could cram in given the constraints they were working within.

Playdate - fun!

The console is called “playdate” because of its novel “season” construct. The console comes with a season of games that are delivered, 2 at a time, every week. The idea is that becomes the playdate for those games. When season 2 happened recently, everyone in the world who had a playdate it was picking up their device to find the exact same game dropped for them all on the same day. So everyone is playing the same thing and figuring it out.

Also: I’m not financially connected to the Playdate or any company associated with it in any way. I just think it’s neat.

Making Games

My most recent Aaron’s Puzzles was essentially a low-fidelity puzzle game. One of the big original draws for me for the Playdate was how well-suited it is for creating solo-developer games. They have great documentation & tooling and the games themselves are of an approachable level of scope. I really hope to make one someday. While I’m not actively working on anything with it - perhaps once the move is over, grad school is over, and a litany of other priorities get out of the way I might try to publish something.

Top 5: Favorite Playdate Games (across both Seasons)

5. Tiny Turnip

A Metroidvania about a climbing turnip. What more could you want? The mechanics are fun and the game, like nearly all the Playdate games, doesn’t overstay its welcome.

4. Dig Dig Dino

A crankless game about digging up fossils with your little dog helper, where you uncover a fun little story along the way.

3. Casual Birder

A Pokemon-esque game (sans battles) about birdwatching. There’s a reason this is the first game they give you in Season 1. It’s quite charming.

2. Whitewater Wipeout

A crazy simple surfing game where you try to jump and do as many 360s as possible for as long as possible. Super simple concept. Consistently a great way to spend 2 minutes.

1. Hyper Meteor

Essentially this is just a variation of the old computer game “Asteroids”, where instead of shooting the floating asteroids you ram them with your ship in their weak spots.

Quote:

With my skills I can open bags.

- my 4 year old

Patience is easier with ice cream in your hand.

- my 6 year old dropping serious wisdom

Footnotes

1. like, whole family ↩

2. seriously. It’s essentially identical in size (and color) to a typical pad of post-it notes. ↩

3. Seriously. It’s got a black & white, non-backlit screen, 2 buttons, a D-pad and a crank. ↩

4. You can actually have any color you want, so long as it’s yellow. Frankly I love this choice. ↩