Comment by nstart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nstart | Hacker News Reader

For those mentioning the price, it's worth noting that you receive games for free on the device. That's part of the package

From their homepage:

> Here's the truly unique bit. Playdate isn't just an empty system. Once you set up your Playdate, you'll start to receive two brand new games... every week. For 12 weeks. > >That's 24 free games, in lots of genres. Some are short. Some are long. Will you love them all? Probably not. Will you have a great time trying them? Absolutely.

Still expensive, but also only just. Especially given the hardware crank part which I definitely would want to be high quality seeing how much it's going to be used.

The only question I have though is what type of games will people be making for this before the novelty wears off? It's going to need games which are made from "crank first" perspectives if this device is to actually last.

So! To kick off a conversation here if it's not too late. What games would you make if you were developing for this device?

I'd probably make a couple

1. A skateboard game where the crank is the balance

2. A game where you control a tank/space ship gunner position and the crank is used for both reloading and targeting.

I can't think of any game right now where there would be a story where the crank mechanic is central to it. Curious if anyone else has ideas here.

I had a couple of ideas. I don't think I'm going to actually build them, so anyone's welcome to the ideas.

- A horror game where a crank-operated flashlight is your only source of light. The crank on the PlayDate is how you recharge the flashlight.

- A stealth game where you play as a safe cracker and use the crank as a mock safe dial.

- A "the floor is lava" style platformer where you swing across monkey bars, using the crank to adjust your momentum. I.e. spin it up to start doing 360's on the bar you're currently on and launch yourself farther, or spin it backwards to slow down for shorter jumps.

I think a kind of fencing game would be pretty cool, in which you turn the crank forwards to lunge forwards (maybe you only actually "strike" after a full turn, and the rest of it is just moving forwards) and jump backwards when you crank backwards. Would be especially cool if it were from the first person perspective (of course something very basic in terms of style, like vector tanks or something)

Really regretting cancelling my preorder now, I wanna make that :(

Oh that is very very cool. I think something with the kind of quirky rotoscoped animation like they had in the original prince of Persia games would fit so well on this.

Now that I think about it. A remake of the original prince of Persia would be such a joyful experience with the mechanic you thought of.

Yeh that rotoscoped style could actually work pretty well, might be a bit difficult to do with the 1-bit screen, but I think its certainly doable.

I think in general the most interesting games will be the ones that don't actually use the crank as a crank if you know what I mean. Like analog sticks are used for movement, they arent used to operate an in game equivalent of an analog stick.

Obviously, fishing.

Human power plant + palm gym.

RC car racing using the crank as a steering wheel (like a pistol-style RC control)

Riffing off your skateboard, other balance games like tightrope walking

Something where you're a hamster in a hamster ball

My personal idea is Advance Wars and all the guns in my universe are crank operated, and if you crank well enough when firing, you get a little bonus to your damage.

A guitar hero/just dance style rhythm game

I’ll riff on that (pun intended). The api allows the ability to see the position and change of position of the crank. Moving the crank to the correct position and doing. A rhythm game could very well show moves like rotate forwards twice. Half rotate back. Etc. And you have to perform moves within a certain range of that. That could be a fun one indeed :D

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