Playdate Season Two review: A dozen freshly baked bite-sized treats – and one very strange snack

Irish Independent

3 days ago

But this compact machine with its diminutive monochrome screen and wacky crank-handle control mechanism does more than scratch a retro itch for hipsters. Since its low-key launch in 2022, it has quietly built up a library of more than 250 titles, many quirky, a handful no more than a novelty (the 99 cent joke, for instance) but most are inexpensive (very few cost more than a tenner) and offer hours of entertainment for much less than the price of a pint.
Besides the likes of the PS5 (75 million sales and counting), the number of Playdates in the wild is a bit of a rounding error (probably no more than 70,000) – not helped by its relatively steep price. Though it started out at under €200 in 2022, the inflation squeeze has pushed that figure to almost €280 now, once import fees are factored in.
You feel that a gaming giant such as Nintendo would be selling such a machine at €150 or under thanks to its market power. But the Playdate's US maker is just a smallish software developer out of Oregon with big dreams.
One detail that somewhat justifies the cost is the inclusion of a 'season' of 24 free games delivered to every new owner automatically. This summer, three years on from the Playdate's debut, Season Two has finally arrived – albeit at an extra cost of about €40 and with a count of just 12 titles.
Styles range from point'n'click adventure (three of 'em) to platforming to tower defence but Playdate's unusual crank-based handle usually adds something unorthodox to the mix.
Music rhythm game Otto's Galactic Groove, for instance, mixes original earworm tunes with a beat-matching mechanic requiring adroit rotation of the crank to hit the right notes. In a crowded genre full of colour and spectacle, it suffers a little by comparison due to a lack of gloss yet holds its own for the most part.
The Whiteout offers a very bleak story with its simple point'n'click version of the post-apocalypse. It's no Last of Us but even with limited pixels conveys the dread of a survivor in a ruined civilisation.
As an antidote, the archaeological tranquillity of Dig! Dig! Dino! feels like a relaxing warm bath or a cup of hot cocoa before bed. You're charged with unearthing dinosaur bones at a series of dig sites, the gameplay a simple loop of building your resources and tools to comb through layers of the ground for historical treasures. No pressure, no time penalties, no failures.
Several more also await you and even if some such as Fulcrum Defender (a riff on Asteroids) and Shadowgate PD (a remake of an NES point'n'click) didn't fully grab me, the overall bundle is hard to resist.
That's even before you consider the bizarre bonus that is Blippo+ for which nothing will prepare you. Nothing that is unless you remember the psychedelic ramblings of Max Headroom, a 1980s TV experiment on Channel 4.
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Like the disjointed, glitchy sketches by talking head presenter Headroom, the scenes in Blippo+ defy explanation and are seemingly the work of a group of performance artists from Oregon and California featuring real actors pretending to be shows on a particularly wacky TV station. You can flick from channel to channel with the crank and stop long enough to watch the hyperactive antics.
Blippo+ is continuing to add shows for the next few weeks but there's already plenty to fry your brain, in a good way, even though it's all passive viewing as opposed to anything interactive.
Season Two may have fewer titles than the Playdate's first collection but the hit rate seems higher, with barely a dud note among the fresh dozen and equating to about €3.50 per game.