Got my email! Wish I had grabbed that itch.io bundle, I really wasn't expecting the email until the very end of 2022.
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Introducing Playdate - A $179 black-and-white handheld with a dozen surprise games. Also, it has a crank.
- Thread starter Meg Cherry
- Start date
- Tech
Got my email! Wish I had grabbed that itch.io bundle, I really wasn't expecting the email until the very end of 2022.
Got mine today too. Honestly I'd almost forgotten this exists, so not that excited but hopefully it'll surprise me. Hell, if nothing else it'll hopefully have a good crank gear feel, right?
Yeah you should be responsible and cancel it.
I think I am more to the back half of group 3 lol
wow, this looks ace. I still want a PD so bad but I'm broke 💀Just put out a demo for Slitherlink PD for anyone who'd like a taste of what the game is like:
https://sp-ecialgames.itch.io/slitherlink-pd
Includes three 6x6, two 8x8 and one 10x10 puzzle. The full game has around 14 hours of content (at least that's how long it took me to complete every puzzle!). Hope you enjoy!
Thank you! You can play both the demo and the full game using the free emulator/simulator if you're interested: https://play.date/dev/
For those who have their PD, do you still play it? There are a lot of games being released on itch but I see no discussion of it here and really most gaming sites or forums. Playdate was so popular for awhile but seems to have drifted off after the initial season 1 games came out. I feel like Panic is missing the potential to keep up the momentum, even if they want to wait for more consoles out for season 2, they could at least highlight some good games on itch or do something to keep people interested!
Whitewater every day. The same team is working on a snowboarding game and once that releases I am there.
View: https://twitter.com/giles/status/1473471595037736961
If anything, the one problem with Season 1's games is too many of them are too much game, imo. I'd have been happier with more of them being smaller, session-based games. A Peggle clone would have been bonkers.
Even though people aren't constantly talking about their Playdate, I do think it's okay for a thing to just exist, without it needing to be in a constant state of hype. It's the kind of thing that's omnipresent and unassuming, and especially valuable when taking trips. Pick Pack Pup made recent travel fly by, especially the waiting for flights.
Like, I'd rather pick up and play with the PlayDate than talk about it on a forum, if that makes sense.
"They could at least highlight some good games on itch or do something to keep people interested!"
I don't understand this. The PlayDate Twitter account is constantly highlighting itch games, and the recent Community Bundle was VERY hyped by them.
Like, just yesterday they mentioned this rad as heck thing (Legend of Etad):
View: https://twitter.com/playdate/status/1574485298482139136?s=20&t=iAFicYYiWsPNQL8PYJTEmw
View: https://twitter.com/giles/status/1473471595037736961
If anything, the one problem with Season 1's games is too many of them are too much game, imo. I'd have been happier with more of them being smaller, session-based games. A Peggle clone would have been bonkers.
Even though people aren't constantly talking about their Playdate, I do think it's okay for a thing to just exist, without it needing to be in a constant state of hype. It's the kind of thing that's omnipresent and unassuming, and especially valuable when taking trips. Pick Pack Pup made recent travel fly by, especially the waiting for flights.
Like, I'd rather pick up and play with the PlayDate than talk about it on a forum, if that makes sense.
"They could at least highlight some good games on itch or do something to keep people interested!"
I don't understand this. The PlayDate Twitter account is constantly highlighting itch games, and the recent Community Bundle was VERY hyped by them.
Like, just yesterday they mentioned this rad as heck thing (Legend of Etad):
View: https://twitter.com/playdate/status/1574485298482139136?s=20&t=iAFicYYiWsPNQL8PYJTEmw
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I have a few PD games in my backlog. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) it doesn't offer the types of games that keep people talking. Most of them are very simple score chasers or limited-scope narratives that don't require community involvement. The install base is also pretty small. I have just as much interest in it now as I did when I preordered, but after jotting down a few thoughts about the games I most like there isn't much more to talk about.
I've been thinking about how I'd love if you could adjust the cadence of when it pushes games to your device. Like I'd love to set it to every two weeks or something that would fit my schedule better.
Also it would be cool if you could feed sideloaded games to a folder that would disperse them weekly, similar to how the Season One games worked.
I love it though. It's the system that I think about the most, and having it on my desk makes me pick it up and play a bit each day.
Also it would be cool if you could feed sideloaded games to a folder that would disperse them weekly, similar to how the Season One games worked.
I'm still playing every week, but I've been trying to stick with games I like before moving onto the next ones, which has slowed things down a tad.
I love it though. It's the system that I think about the most, and having it on my desk makes me pick it up and play a bit each day.
The Playdate Squad Discord server is quite busy and in a continuous state of hype.
Don't forget the Playdate on-device store - Catalog - is coming soon.
And Group 3 shipping is imminent.
My games are still selling copies every day.
Playdate Support can do this if you contact them. But I think suggest it as a system feature!
I haven't had mine for that long, but I pick up mine for short sessions regularly. I'm mostly interested in the smaller bite sized titles, and that bundle a while back had some fun games in it.
I keep an eye on the itch.io titles as well, as it's a platform that really benefits from amateur designers experimenting with games that are not necessarily that complex.
I keep an eye on the itch.io titles as well, as it's a platform that really benefits from amateur designers experimenting with games that are not necessarily that complex.
This is looking quite astonishing.
View: https://twitter.com/the3dprintist/status/1576017936330129408
View: https://twitter.com/the3dprintist/status/1576017936330129408
I am probably playing more than an hour of Playdate a day... but that is spread out along a ton of tiny little sessions. I love this thing every bit as much as I thought I would. It is the best pick-up-and-play device I have ever owned.
Checking my email almost every day hoping for an update to this or the Persona 5 record boxset. No idea when I should reasonably expect the Playdate, I think I am halfway back in the group.
Oh my gosh one of those things! That looks cool.
Oh my gosh one of those things! That looks cool.
I just put Slitherlink PD on sale for the next week if anyone was waiting to bite the bullet...
https://sp-ecialgames.itch.io/slitherlink-pd
How'd you come up with the puzzles for this? Just wondering where they sit in terms of difficulty and stuff
Good question! I could write an essay about this - I think it's a really interesting topic.
The game on the surface seems pretty simple so it's good for me to talk about some of it's complexities and how much work went in to it.
If I was sensible, the answer to your question would be that I just copy/pasted some puzzles I found online, but I wanted a bit more flexibility in creating puzzles - for difficulty among other reasons. So I built a puzzle creation tool that is independent of the game itself. It works like this:
Building a puzzle solver:
I started by creating something that would solve puzzles. It attempts to solve a puzzle by emulating how a human might solve a puzzle - by searching for patterns/strategies, starting with the more obvious/easily discoverable strats. For example:
- Look for 0s and putting crosses on each side
- Look for 3s with a cross on one side and put lines on the remaining sides
- Look for 3s with three lines on its side and putting a cross on the remaining side
... and so on.
Every time a line or cross is added to the puzzle the solver/player has new information that can be used to deduce where further lines and crosses could be placed, so the solver will loop back to the start of the strategies list and work through them again. (I should point out that all puzzles can be solved with logic alone.
Once the solver has run through the entire strategies list without adding any more lines or crosses, the puzzle is either solved or not solvable.
Building a random loop:
The next step is to create a random single line loop that is sufficiently "wiggly" (for lack of a better word). This will be the correct path that will be drawn when the puzzle is solved.
I won't talk too much about this since I'm not overly happy with the tool I built for this - it requires a fair bit of hand holding to get a result that I'm happy with.
Basically, once I have selected the size of the grid I'd like the puzzle to be, my tool randomly selects a cell that will start the inside of the loop. After that random cells that are adjacent to the inside of the loop will be checked to see if they will make the loop more "wiggly" or not. If they do, they will be converted to also be part of the loop inside (don't know if I've explained this very well).
Once every cell has been checked the loop is done.
Creating the puzzle:
Once the loop is created every single cell is filled with a number corresponding to how many times the cell is touching the loop we just created. The creation tool then randomly picks a cell and deletes the number from that cell and uses the solver to attempt to solve the puzzle. If the puzzle is not solvable with this number removed then it puts the number back and selects another random number to delete.
If it *is* solvable then it stays deleted and another cell is chosen.
This continues until every number has been checked to see if it is needed to solve the puzzle. Once no more numbers can be deleted the puzzle is created!
Since the numbers are deleted in a random order the puzzle will be different each time, even if the solution is the same.
Deciding difficulty:
Setting a difficulty of a puzzle is actually very simple. I just set the solver to exclusively use the more basic strategies when checking if a puzzle is solvable. So easy puzzles might use the first 12 strategies in the solving script whereas normal difficulty puzzles use the first 19 strategies.
I did try assigning a numerical number to the difficulty of a puzzle based on the difficulty of strategies used by the solver and how many times it had to loop to find the solution, but I found it to be not very accurate at grading difficulty in real terms.
I should point out that you don't need to learn/figure out every single strategy to complete the game since humans will use undo/redo to rule out certain paths of logic which the creation tool never does. I did experiment with using this "brute force" style solving but it resulted in extremely difficult puzzles being created that took hours(!?) to create. Maybe I'll play with it more if I ever start working on a similar project.
So that's it! I might convert this in to some kind of devlog and add pictures to make it a bit more clear. Reading this back actually makes me pretty proud of all the work that I put in to it. It's easy to forget everything that went in to it making the game when you're just playing around with it on actual hardware.
That was a pretty long answer to your question! Hope it makes sense!
That was a brilliant answer, thank you. Would probably have paid you $3.99 just to read that, let alone buy the game!
This has been my biggest gripe with it. I expected things I could do a level or two in 10-15 minutes. There's some of that but those are overly simple IMO. That said, I haven't done any work to explore the games on itch. So, it's on me to do a little research to find games that fit how I want to use the device.
Posts like this make this one of the best threads on this site.
Wholesome thread. Can't wait to get mine hopefully early next year. Group 5 ✊
Just chiming in to say this was a great post.
And in the meantime I'm still waiting on Group 4.
My first side-load! Which was surprisingly easy through the web interface.
This game is perfect, really feels the part and the ball physics is great.
Got mine yesterday and trying to figure out how to play the surfing game. lol
I know it's been discussed before, but I really do think it needs a backlight. I'm curious if someone made a GBA-style front light for it that you can just attach to its face.
I know it's been discussed before, but I really do think it needs a backlight. I'm curious if someone made a GBA-style front light for it that you can just attach to its face.
Technically, this type of display (Sharp Memory LCD) can't have a backlight because it's opaque... whereas most other LCD are not opaque.
Front light or any light including the sun will work :)
Front light or any light including the sun will work :)
It gets easier once you realize the crank position is absolute - if the crank is pointing down, your board will point down (or keep rotating to try and point down). Hit Up on the Dpad just before you exit the lip (top) of the wave, and you'll do a grab and get more points while crankin.
I feel like some of these games need a simple instructions splash screen because I had no idea the d-pad did anything. lol
Saw someone on the subred recommend this:
I'm kind of considering it.
My Group #3 shipment left the US on the 21st and is winging its way to bonny Scotland as I type this. ETA is 27th-31st so only a few more days to wait till I get my hands on the tiny yellow crankfest that is the PlayDate! Super excited :)
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Mine is send back to the sender (so another trip across the ocean) by the local shipping handler, because they can't decipher my address on the sticker... *sigh*
ANNOUNCING: THE 2022 PLAYDATE COMMUNITY AWARDS coming to you LIVE on DECEMBER 8TH via TYM's Twitch Channnel.
Hosted by Tiny Yellow Machine and myself.
18 Awards, Surprise Game Reveals, Special Guests, Community Hero Spotlights and more. VOTE NOW to nominate your favs! https://forms.gle/FyLV2AGmvaUyQEFG6
(The community nomination form closes on Sunday night)
Want to learn more? Check out our page on the wiki to learn about the judging and nomination process here: The 2022 Playdate Community Awards - Playdate Community Wiki
group 3 / 24500's still no word on getting it. :(, even though that order tracker google doc shows unit's in the 26000's already being shipped. RIP
co worker just showed me it today and it definitely looks and feels great in person. kinda sucks no backlight but the screen itself looks really cool its like an HD original game boy
co worker just showed me it today and it definitely looks and feels great in person. kinda sucks no backlight but the screen itself looks really cool its like an HD original game boy
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I don't want to spam this place too much but here are the nominees for the audio and visual awards.