Making Playdate Games

In 2021 I was lucky enough to secure a playdate console on launch day.

Hype fuelled my decision rather than logic; hype that I'd built up after reading the cover story in edge magazine.

The main gimmicks (i.e. selling points) of the console are:

• The 'crank' - analogue input on the side of the console
• A black and white screen
• How easy it is to 'side-load' games onto it

A brilliant part about setting up a playdate for the first time is the delivery of games. There are 24 games included with every playdate, but these are delivered weekly over a period of 12 weeks.

Panic calls this series of games 'season one'. If you're looking to buy a playdate, I'd recommend keeping the games a secret so you get that 'unwrapping a present' feeling when the games are delivered each week.

However, if you just want to see the games, Panic has a listed them out with screenshots and details.

Game Development

The SDK for coding playdate games is freely available, and includes a simulator which can run on desktop:

As seen above, the simulator does a good job of emulating the playdate - in-development games are fully-functional and there is even an emulated crank to help development of games which use this.

The simulator has a couple of debugging options like a console to see debug logs, and also the ability to transfer the current game to an actual playdate console without doing a full release build.