Playdate Season 2 is off to a great start
Last week, Panic rolled out season 2 of games for its Playdate game handheld. I use my Playdate in bursts and then go a while without playing it, but I’m back in now that there are two new games being released every week for six weeks:
If you’ve pre-ordered the new season already, just grab your Playdate, head to Settings > Games, and download the two new titles. Check them out, and see what your Playdate-owning friends think about them. And if you haven’t pre-ordered Season Two yet, no problem—just buy it now and jump right in. You won’t miss anything.
The season is $39—that’s for twelve different games, plus some surprises, delivered delightfully. It felt like a no-brainer to me. I’ve been playing the first week’s games all week, and they’re great. Dig Dig Dino is a clicky no-stress game where you dig up weird dinosaur bones and find gems and stuff. Fulcrum Defender is a space shoot-em-up where you sit at the center of screen and use the Playdate’s crank to rotate around and shoot at enemies while trying to stay alive for 10 minutes, and despite all that it’s actually kind of relaxing? And two new games, The Whiteout and Wheelsprung, just showed up.
I should also mention that there are now hundreds of games available for the Playdate, between Panic’s own Catalog store and stuff you can just get on the web and sideload. Lately I’ve been really enjoying the $5 HOMERUN, in which the mechanic of using the Playdate’s unique crank input to swing a baseball bat just keeps iterating in funny and clever ways as a narrative story unfolds in the background. It’s just so fun and clever.
After years of the Playdate itself being incredibly backordered, Panic has apparently made enough because they’re in stock now for $229. It’s adorable hardware (but unfortunately not backlit, so you’ll need to play in a well-lit space) and the number of different games that have been released for it means there’s probably a load of them that you might enjoy. (My all-time favorite remains Season 1’s Hyper Meteor.)