Panic Playdate Review | Hacker News Reader

Panic Playdate Review

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I bought one, and of course it hasn’t arrived yet (though I think it will in Q3).

The best parts for me are the following:

1. It’s indie.

2. It’s accessible.

3. It’s got a completely different engagement model.

I have a 7yo who I bought it for (really) and with the web drag-and-draw IDE, I can’t think of a better way to get him involved in the exploration of technology. Maybe it can be fun and provide an outlet for deep exploration. I sure as hell am not going to sit down with him and explain the principles of enterprise architecture.

For engagement models / indie-ism, we have a Switch and just got a PS5. They’re neat. I guess. But they’re also kinda stale and boring (outside a few winner games). Kinda like watching Disney these days with the Avengers series. Diminishing returns on every title and no real way to engage beyond consumption.

I’m really hoping this is good for him (and good for me as a reset against my day to day as an engineer indoctrinated in the Bay Area ways of growth). To that end, the other comments I’m seeing don’t seem to understand the appeal that has attracted me.

If your 7y/o is into the switch, you might give Nintendo's Game Builder Garage[0] a shot; it's a pretty fun engaging node-based visual programming environment for building games on the switch.

My 7y/o has really enjoyed it, and she talks to me a lot about the stuff she's building.

[0]: https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/game-builder-garage-...

And it matches pretty closely to visual programming, like Unreal Engine Blueprints or building shaders in 3D modeling software or Unity, for example (saw a lot of node types that almost mapped 1-to-1 to some in Blueprints, for example).

But it gives each type of node a fun and unique personality that kind of matches its function, and has a very 20+ hour long (and entertaining) tutorial series, where the elements chat back and forth to each other as they handhold you through the process of making simple but playable games in multiple genres. Put a smile on my face multiple times, and I'm an experienced developer that just tried it for a lark.

Appreciate the tip! Will check it out!

and Dreams for the ps5! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw0tW5FNEWQ

And also Labo. It has a visual programming environment.

I had the same hopes for my kids with PICO-8, but it didn't really pan out— the things they were excited to do (make a platformer!!) all require a ton of boilerplate around movement, gravity, collisions, sprite animation, and so on. The high profile projects on the platform are all super polished and based on endless hacks and tricks that push the boundaries of the system, and it can be hard to get away from those expectations.

GameMaker has gotten pretty professionalized at this point, but back in the day I think it was a good entry point, with decent non-code workflows to get the basics going and a smooth on-ramp to adding behaviour code as needed.

I don't know what fills the hole that used to be platforms like ZZT and MegaZeux, though. Maybe it's Minecraft and Roblox that are the modern outlets for that kind of creativity.

Pico-8 isn't super accessible as a game making platform, although it is a very accessible programming introduction platform.

HN tends to over use "boilerplate" as Pico-8 has zero boilerplate and is super minimal. Your post is no exception. Core gameplay code is not boilerplate and Pico-8 is not a game engine in that sense.

Playdate has Pulp, which does include built in collision, dialog systems etc and is inspired by Bitsy. Pulp has it's own (optional) scripting language and is specifically designed as an accessible game making tool. Even the Playdate Lua and C SDKs have more gameplay functionality than pico-8 though, including a simple game object model, collisions, animation, etc

I think he meant that Pico-8 is so stripped down you have to spend a lot time writing lower level game engine stuff before you get to the fun, moving things around, stuff. Not boilerplate in that you are repeating code within your Pico-8 game, but that you have to rewrite basic functions that come built in to typical game frameworks.

Exactly. And it's not that PICO-8 is bad for it; in fact PICO-8 is marvelously flexible since it imposes so little on you in terms of structure, so the games are a lot more variable than, say, something like rpgmaker, where the results can end up feeling a bit samey (until you have something really exceptional on the art and writing side, like Rakuen).

But yeah, as far an introductory programming platform, it's much better of think of PICO-8 as an upgrade from QBasic than an upgrade from ZZT.

I would always start with Scratch

https://scratch.mit.edu/

It has build-in collision detection etc. but to me turle graphics is the way to properly understand programming. Most other environments help with getting people interested in tech (and perhaps game development), but visual configuring event handlers is not programming. When I taught programming I often got people from other courses with an visual environment. They knew how to build forms and save data, but they could not programm: (to me) Think about a problem, make the problem into smaller problems until you can write code for them. Many were happy when we did switch to turle graphics and said "We should have started with that".

Scratch helps transition from the event handler configuration (which is fine if you want to write games, many environments don't make you write code) to coding (write code in a programming language) via turtle graphics.

My daughter uses a couple of block-programming browsers environments. One is Frozen-themed where you direct the characters to draw by skating as directed. Modern turtle graphics.

Or Snap!

https://snap.berkeley.edu/

> 1. It’s indie.

Shamelessly, this is what I'm excited about most. There's some big little names attached to the project, and I'm excited how the limitations will stretch their creativity.

The limitations also make it accessible to many more people too. A few months ago me and two friends got together and spent a weekend making a little game in that format. (the sdk wasn't out yet but we just used love configured for its resolution and 1bit color).

None of us had ever made a game or even a serious attempt at one before but we had a playable proof of concept of a mechanic we could iterate on by the end of the first day. Similar thing with the art. Making truly great pixel art under those constraints is very hard, but making good enough to play with is much more in reach than it is with high fidelity engines.

This looks like something I'll have an absolute blast with for a few hours and then keep away in a drawer and never touch again.

Although if your product's target market is rich nerds that's a great strategy.

I think the slow drip of games will prevent this initially, as you’ll pick it up again every week or two to play whatever new titles drop in, even if only for an hour or two. I think by the end of the “season” there’ll be a decent number of other whacky little titles from other developers that will be worth checking out for short bursts of play as well. I’m personally still excited to receive mine, some of the limitations will push creativity from developers and hopefully lead to some fun, unique little experiences you wouldn’t find anywhere else.

The slow drip of games is a feature, not a bug?

The games are all done already, the press can play them. And the slow drip starts when you take it out of the box instead of being on a global schedule - it's an intentional design decision to give you a reason to pick it up periodically instead of just playing all the games once or twice over the course of a week and then putting it in a drawer somewhere.

I would even dare say that all those small gadget are an environmental nightmare and unethical. I know those who build them are passionated people but when you enter something in the market you should have moral rights to not build things whose more than 80% of the items end up in a drawer or bin before at least 2 decades of use.

Not that they are the worse offender, it is a global problem that touch both indie and big corps.

> I would even dare say that all those small gadget are an environmental nightmare and unethical.

What if a kid who plays with this today ends up being the next XYZ who makes something positive for the world? Im so tired of these dismissive, and while im here lemme say "performative" comments relegating everything to trash. Yes we know there is a "stuff" problem, but this is so far down on the list of concerns I cant even begin to imagine you're saying this seriously.

If you are truly worried about there being more "stuff" your concerns should start with non rechargeable batteries, which are still produced in record numbers, and rarely recycled.

>What if a kid who plays with this today ends up being the next XYZ who makes something positive for the world?

That is so irrelevant. And regardless of the positive things said kid would bring that would not erase the waste ALL other devices have created.

>If you are truly worried about there being more "stuff" your concerns should start with non rechargeable batteries, which are still produced in record numbers, and rarely recycled.

These concerns aren't mutually exclusives.

Compared to some forms of entertainment, $180 for a few hours isn't that bad. A flight in a small plane would run you way more than that.

See my point about rich nerds. If you are okay with spending a couple hundred bucks on something which you may throw away after a few hours – great, it's a fun quirky device made just for you. 99.9% of the planet does not fall into that demographic, however.

>99.9% of the planet does not fall into that demographic, however.

to be pedantic, 0.1% of the planet is 8 million. There aren't a lot of non-essential products selling 7.92 billion of anything so this is an unreasonable bar.

(and yes, I have no regrets being pedantic to a comment that comes down to "remember that you are a niche").

Yeah, it's definitely a thing for a particular group.

Then again, I suspect many raspberry pis meet the same fate; bought and played with for a few hours and then left to collect dust in a drawer somewhere.

If anything, flying is more akin to torture than entertainment...

I think the parent was referring to a private plane that you pilot. 180 would about cover the expense of fuel for the hour.

Yup, even if you never want to get a license you could spend $180 or so on an introductory flight or two for fun.

WARNING: you will get addicted and end up spending $15-20k on a license.

Same for me, although I'm the worst when it comes to that. I've done roughly the same thing with flagship gaming consoles and even an expensive custom-built (my me) gaming desktop.

I agree. I was skeptical of this from the start but now hearing that it doesn't have a backlight? No way. I will be shocked if even 25% of the people that buy this are still using it a year later.

That’s generous, I would probably play for up to an hour, or less.

I played with a prototype Playdate at Xoxo in 2019 and I was just delighted by it. It was already a gadget I knew I’d buy, because I love Panic and gadgets, but the time I spent with it was really fun.

But I’m the target market I think, which is someone with lots of disposable income who wasn’t looking for it to be anything more than it is. I think if you go in with the expectation that it is indie and quirky and NOT a mass-market product, it’s easier to position to people.

I don’t have mine yet (I’m hoping it’ll ship next week), but as long as it does what I saw three years ago, I think I’ll be really pleased.

Again, I don’t think this has broad appeal. But I also don’t think it has to. It’s for the people it is for and I think that will be enough.

Yeah, I think it's perfectly reasonable for someone to look at it and go "$180 for that? It's not worth it for me". It's very specifically-targeted.

It does look cute, though, and if their SDK takes off I could see it being a really nice intro-to-programing tool entirely independent of Panic's own game-seasons thing. (I bought one. I won't be getting it for another 1-2 months, alas.)

Apparently you can't order one today even if you wanted to, so at the very least it does seem like Panic captured its expected market.

I don't think this is for me, but given some of the developers' interests being peaked over this I am interested of what comes out of this.

So basically only good if you source your joy from spending large amounts on consumer products that give little lasting enjoyment.

I can see how HN loves this thing

Such a pointless comment.

What else is there to do while we're here?

The biggest takeaway that I get from these comments is that HN users seem to either dislike fun hardware or just don't understand what the use case is.

The Playdate is a novel, low-powered, handheld console intended for experiemental indie game design and has been marketed as such.

Comparisons to a Nintendo Switch or a Steam Deck seem very pointless since these consoles are very much not targeting the same end users. It would be like complaining that you shouldn't buy a Raspberry Pi since a Mac Mini is better for your average user.

I agree that the price is a bit steep, but that is to be expected when you are not producing at a volume.

Also what people keep failing to see in the price tag is it includes 24 games. And the games look pretty decent actually. Nothing on the same level as Mario or Kirby or Tetris in there, of course, but many that I'd like to try and would probably purchase separately anyway knowing me.

For example, over the past two months of owning a Quest 2 I've bought about 40 games for it, to get a good feel for what the current state of VR gaming is like, and spent many hundreds of dollars to do so.

None of the other consoles this gets compared to are offering even a single game with purchase of the hardware, let alone 24. There are other consoles that do, but those are mostly retro mini-consoles that include a bunch of old games that have been resold over and over again.

I think that's an editorialized takeaway. I'd say that some HN users recognize that trying to make something look nice or look fun might not make up for big potential usability problems and questionable pricing. (i.e. a price that will make many people question whether they should buy it. Not necessarily a "bad" price or an "unreasonable" price.) And many others are very emotionally invested in this, and will gladly attack those HN users instead of respectful disagreement.

or, why are you excited about the release of this new Wong Kar Wai movie, when there’s a new Avengers flick and the ticket is only a dollar more

I have one - well, at least for the moment. Played it in the super bright Bay Area sunlight today and had zero issues with legibility.

This will really sink or swim dependent on how well those initial games deliver. If there’s no true stinkers in the initial run, I suspect we’ll see a strong long term development effort buoyed by ongoing consumer interest. It is a pretty neat little device and I know personally that I’m always a more creative developer when I have some legitimate, and significant, limitations on my resources.

I ordered one of these almost solely because I thought it'd be really fun to develop for.

Most positive reviews about this thing sounds like the emperor's new cloths.

Let's just pretent there is no nintendo switch lite, costing $20 more, and readily available.

Or things like Miyoo Mini, cost like $50, and at least have a backlighted screen.

that’s not the point though, no one buying it is expecting it to be the switch (i hope) - it’s a boutique gadget made by a bunch of software developers, practically an art piece

It's designed by Teenage Engineering, they're top dogs in the niche world of boutique synths. As a collector's piece, whether its modern design or consoles, this is something you would want on your shelf.

Sure, like those hermes apple watch gen 1.

>No game system has had a built-in crank before

Honestly, its just a worse analog stick. The upside is that the games will be easy enough to play with common controllers.

It's not though. A crank has an intrinsic position and it doesn't auto-return to 0 (because it doesn't have a 0). And it gives precise rotational control, while analogue sticks only give directional control.

The emulator can just hold on to the crank positional state and analog sticks should be precise enough that rotation can be controlled by sweeping through directions at full magnitude.

You could possibly even ignore the crank state entirely and assume any new direction is the new crank angle. Most likely games will handle low sample rates anyway.

Lots of games have you control a virtual crank by rotating a stick. Might not be as satisfying as the crank (if the crank is even satisfying to begin with) but I don't think it would be unplayable.

Those are software solutions. You can't physically feel them. The tactility, precision, and control of a crank can't be matched by something that doesn't spin on one axis.

Also it's more fun...

The crank isn't on trial here. I'm just glad the games can be ported.

>The tactility, precision, and control of a crank can't be matched by something that doesn't spin on one axis.

Have you gotten a chance to try it?

I ordered mine at the beginning of August 2021. Still waiting for it to show up :-)

I ordered as soon as I could when pre-orders went up. Unfortunately I was out and about and didn’t have a good cell signal so it took longer than I would have liked. I’m in Group 2, hopefully near the start.

I can’t wait. Looks like a blast and I’d love to try my hand at developing for it.

Something similar happened to me, I was so sad :( (I think I may have been over the pacific?)

They sent out an email recently that said what wave you were in and a list of when the waves were expected to ship. I ordered mine at the very end of July '21, practically the first day iirc, and I'm wave 2 which is supposed to be this quarter.

How do you know Wave 2 is this quarter?

It's in the email they sent to me. It's probably mentioned elsewhere:

The Current Estimates Your Playdate Is In: Group #2 Group #1 ~1 to 10,000 Late 2021 → Now Early 2022

Group #2 ~10,000 to 20,000 Late 2021 → Now Early 2022

Group #3 ~20,000 to 30,000 Still 2022 (Second Half)

Group #4 ~30,000 to 40,000 Still 2022 (Second Half)

Group #5 ~40,000 to 50,000 Still 2022 (Late Second Half)

Kind of process of elimination if you make a distinction between early 2022 and second half, at this point early 2022 means by end of Q2.

It's on the website, linked from the account/order page.

Basically, first 10000 are shipping now, next 10k will follow and that will exhaust their 20k first batch they are getting from the factory. The rest will follow later. And your order number is your spot in the delivery queue. Mine is in 15000s, so not long now :)

Mid 16000s for me glad to finally be getting my hands on it soon. Seems like a fun idea.

All I've seen was this tweet thread: https://twitter.com/playdate/status/1516099269979262976

Basically, they started shipping the Group One systems on Monday and say that they think they'll all be out within the next month. Presumably Group Two will ship after that, meaning they'll be shipping late May -- but they haven't actually announced that, just said there's news coming soon.

They said they should be done with group 1 within the next month and group 2 will start immediately after.

https://help.play.date/orders/when-will-units-actually-start...

It says Early 2022 for Group 2, while Group 3 says Second Half of 2022.

I started building a Playdate game about a month ago and the bare bones SDK is fantastic, it was a long time ago I had to think about individual pixels. I'm really having fun programming for a solo project, it's really something else.

I'm still not totally sure how Lua handles memory but I assume it's optimized AF. I'm sure I'll run into issues at some point with 8MB of memory but it's fun seeing how much "memory intensive" stuff you can get away with.

I really like Playdate as an art piece but I think that's the wrong way to approach open video games. Hackers are better off hijacking existing systems because they are just much more accessible and objectively _better_. For example, Steam Deck is mere double the price of Playdate and it's a full, powerful and open linux computer - I can't wait to see what people will come up with for that!

Limitation can be a huge creative tool, as seen in the fantasy consoles like the Pico-8. Often the most transcendent and memorable experiences I have had playing games of recent vintage fell quite short of utilizing the maximum capability of their platform.

I don’t think Steam Deck really brings that much to the table on its own as a platform outside of being a portable PC.

Indeed, limitation is one of the most used creativity tools. Like how authors try to write a short story without he letter “e”.

The problem with these sorts of technical limits is that their self imposition turns the exercise into being about overcoming them rather than making a good game. And in turn the recognition of the work is more about the technical achievement than how good the end result is. Games is a really funny one where the whole creative culture has been so soaked in pushing technical limits that now we exist in a period of abundance where limits practically don’t exist so we have to reinvent them. There’s definitely creativity there but it’s somewhat tangential to making games. In the same way many great demosceners ended up working in games but on the technical side of things. I’d argue limits that produce creativity in the games themselves need to be far more conceptual.

Celeste.

Is a great game but doesn’t challenge my point. The other successful game that transcended Pico-8, Slipways is also great but again isn’t really challenging the point. Also note my point isn’t a slight on Pico-8 itself or enjoying working with technical limitations.

If you want to play around with development for limited/retro-style platforms, there's plenty of choices of existing retro computer and console.

And even if you develop using emulators, seeing your code run on real retro hardware is more satisfying than running it on a 'fantasy console' on PC.

> seeing your code run on real retro hardware is more satisfying than running it on a 'fantasy console' on PC.

That’s a matter of pure (and, frankly, arbitrarily smug) opinion and one I don’t share. I lived through when retro hardware was just hardware and I’m done with it and all the clutter and dust and brown.

> I can't wait to see what people will come up with for that!

Why would it be any different from the indie games already on Steam and the same bunch of emulated systems we've all played to death?

Steam Deck although seemingly decent hardware is ultimately boring, it's never going to have an ecosystem of games built specifically around it and will only ever be used for playing existing PC games on the go, never have it's own ecosystem of titles and exclusives like Switch and Playdate do.

I'd disagree with you here. Steamdeck is a linux handheld with steam controller on steroids. It has full joystick layout, two touchpads, touchscreen, 4 backbuttons, gyro, usbc inputs, bluetooth - that's already more innovation that playdate's crank that got people so hyped.

It's a brilliant hackers playground and I can't wait to get my hands on it!

I just can't see it leading to anything more than just ports of the same emulators of the same 90s consoles we've all played to death.

I can just go the rest of my life happily without playing the same SNES, Genesis, PSX, Gamecube, etc roms again. I did it all first time around and each time it comes around again it loses more of it's soul.

On the list since the very first announcement, and yet I STILL cant order one in Lithuania (an EU country, no less). :(

Im just waiting for one in the 2nd hand market now. Anyone want to sell one?

What happened to the dock? Doesnt seem to be any movement on that AFAIK?

I regularly play my Atari Lynx that I got for Christmas '89. Playdate looks like it would scratch that itch for really simple mobile friendly pixel art games with no added nonsense.

with no added nonsense.

Except the crank?

I don't have any need for one of these. But this review makes me want one, it looks like a lot of fun. Anybody here have one yet? How does your experience compare?

Today was the first day any non reviewers have been receiving them. Mine should be here within the next day or two.

A 2.7" Memory LCD is the largest I can get anymore... thank you Playdate engineers for keeping this part manufacturable!

So this writer took an gorgeously-designed and adorable little machine, and haphazardly stuffed it in an old white sock as a travel case? Grody and a bit sacrilegious. At least get a sock of comparable craftsmanship, like Darn Toughs.

It's just a plastic toy for manchildren, get over it.

Real men don’t play, obviously .

Don't know about "real", more like "grown up".

I would rather buy another Analogue Pocket over one of these.

That's what I did, but I suspect for a lot of the target market, they will get both, and there's a reasonable chance of a lot of people buying a Steam Deck, too.

It's a good year for portable gaming.

I’m getting all 3 :/

Pocket has arrived so far. It’s nice but I think if a jailbreak for firmware opens up homebrew games beyond GB Studio that’ll be nice.

Same! I’ve got the Pocket and I’m group 1 on Playdate and Q2 on Steam Deck, so we’ll see which one I get first.

And yeah, I need a jailbreak for the Pocket. And Kryzz had to flee his homeland so getting flash carts is a PITA right now and most of my OG carts are with my parents :/

It seems like Playdate reviews fall broadly into two categories: people that got it for free or stand to make money off it via their readers/viewers really like it. People who paid their own money for it and don't have a large audience think it's mediocre and mostly not worth the $180.

I’ve watched reviews about it and the biggest problem is the lack of having a backlit screen . Only having 12 games is another issue (but anyone can develop the device ) but not having a backlit screen in 2021 is a huge problem because people play with handheld devices when it’s dark sometimes .

It comes with 24 games (this was announced before preorders opened -- it was previously 12).

They've also been recently promoting some third-party games you can sideload: https://twitter.com/playdate/status/1516864373473480705

Sounds like it might appeal to what people think they'd like. Kind of like basic phones or Linux phones sound fun in principle and many people might declare they'd want one, but they might not be willing to spend money on one. Similar here, it appeals to the fantasy of a low tech game console which doesn't buy into the latest fads and doesn't shove microtransactions your way like a smartphone would.

I mean, there's a third, the video game nerd who can afford a $180 toy. The fact that you get 24 games from well known indie developers makes it an easier pill to swallow.

I might get a second revision of this. It's neat, but it needs a backlight.

$180??? That's highway robbery. I hadn't heard about it until I read this article and I was guessing it cost around $40

Stop.

Think about how much you would want to be paid to work on this.

Ballpark how many units you think it will sell.

Divide how much you would want to be paid by the number of units you think it will sell.

That would be the minimum cost simply to cover your own part.

There are two ways to make a return on a product:

* Sell absurd numbers with a small profit (race to the bottom)

* Sell small numbers at a price point actually includes the cost of running a business

Panic is an old and established business. They recognize that developing commercial software (and now hardware???) is something that people should be paid for.

One of the most depressing things of the modern era of software dev is how the various “app stores” have turbo charged race-to-the-bottom and spyware/free economics.

The race to the bottom is depressing and shows no signs of changing. Hell, I was at an event more than a decade ago where one of the panels discussed monetization of games. They discussed how there's no cost to distribution which means that there's no floor to the price. And even back then they'd basically resigned themselves to the fact that freemium was the only way to compete.

Personally, I pay for lots of applications. I understand that people need to be compensated for their work and I don't want them to switch to shady tactics to get that money.

I can see the misery that devs targeting the various app stores are stuck with. If you charge an actually reasonable amount of money for an app, or worse: a game, you will get review bombed for "charging too much" or "being greedy". Meanwhile PC games that are no more challenging get to charge >=$60 for the high end, but a still reasonable $20 for indy.

Then, even if you do get momentum at a reasonable price, that app stores seem to, if anything, promote rip offs and clones that are just racing to the floor.

> Think about how much you would want to be paid to work on this.

How is that relevant at all? I'd love to be paid $1M / year for what I do, but that's not how my wages are determined. That argument is DOA.

"Cool"

What determines wages is the level of skill required for the job. And if you're some punk keyboard warrior that doesn't have any skills of value, then I'm sorry. It must really suck not to be valued.

But for the skilled people involved in making products like this, that skill has value. So those people are able to look at what they've done, and say "I believe my work is worth $X".

They then do the above math to work out how much they need to charge per unit, to get that level of compensation. People get entire degrees in this for some reason, but it's really not that hard:

* You make more money per unit if you charge more * You sell more units if you charge less * There is a theoretical max point on the curve of units sold * price

People who have the skills to develop their own products try to guess the maximum on that curve, and if it is less than what they want to live on they have to adjust their goals or kill the product.

The approach you're proposing is to simply charge a small margin on raw materials and manufacturing time is predicated on the time of the person/people designing the product being worthless.

I don't think that, not about me, not about the developers working on playdate, not about developers working on other products. Even products I don't like.

Yes there will always be minimum-wage/mindless labour. Software and hardware design aren't that.

> What determines wages is the level of skill required for the job.

No, it's not. What determines wages is how much your skill is needed vs. the availability of people with similar skills willing to take on that job. It's supply and demand in the labor market.

You don't need to econosplain to me how pricing works in a free market...

Clearly I do, as you’re busy ancapping yourself to product development being free while saying a product is overpriced when it literally sold out at said price.

You are right in the strict sense of demand being a necessity for a skill to have value. I was assuming context would imply a skill with demand. I understand it’s possible to have skills that don’t have demand.

That's pretty insulting to the people that spend the better part of the last decade making this happen

How is a free market insulting? I find it insulting to suggest I can't have an opinion that disagrees with the people who conceived the product.

It's insulting to call a product you haven't ever seen or used "Highway Robbery"

The demographics they're aiming for are conspicuous frivolous tech spenders. People with more money than they need, who would pay for the privilege of owning a product as much as the product itself. It would be sensible to wait for non-early-adopter user reviews before buying this!

Just 24 indie games from well-known indie devs would need to cost more than that

*edit adding the review link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGdP59hhiDg *

This thing, I'll never forget John Gruber saying "The story is about Playdate, the most amazing and exciting product announcement, for me, since the original iPhone." I don't know if I could roll my eyes harder without getting a headache. Is this thing some sort of techie inside joke?

Then reviewers get their hands on them. Metal Jesus on YouTube recently got to test one and it confirmed everything I needed to know. It's expensive. The screen isn't backlit so you've got OG gameboy issues. And it's a complete chore to hold. He was complaining about hand cramps after a little bit of play time. And the screen resolution is so low that some of the gameplay is hindered.

But it has a hand crank: https://i.imgur.com/wBmESKj.jpg

This is the John Gruber article you're talking about (from May 2019):

https://daringfireball.net/2019/05/playdate

I just read the article expecting (based on your tone) to see Gruber making grand predictions about the Playdate being a massive success or having a massive impact. But no, it's very clear in the article that he's just personally excited about it. He doesn't make any grandiose predictions or even really attempt to persuade other people that they should be similarly excited about it. Clearly he just thinks it's neat for a small software company to develop their own affordable consumer electronics hardware. He's even explicit about thinking the product will likely be playing in a relatively small market: "Panic is almost cheating in a way because they’re tiny. The Playdate platform isn’t competing with the state of the art." I don't see any reason to roll your eyes about this one.

Here is a great image (from the Ars Technica review) showing how utterly bullshit the comparisons with the original Gameboy screen are: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/IMG_1...

Since you mentioned reviewers getting their hands on Playdates: doubtless they're out there, but ("Metal Jesus", whatever that is, notwithstanding) I don't think I've seen a single net negative review from any source I previously considered anywhere close to reputable. Everyone is, of course, entitled to their opinion—but as someone who presumably hasn't actually used a Playdate yourself, I don't think you're making much effort to keep yours objective.

>"Metal Jesus", whatever that is, notwithstanding

I don't quite have a dog in the race of Playdate, but I do want to note that MetalJesusRocks is in fact a legitmate and longstanding video game reviewer, over a decade old by now. He's not qiute a pre-Google YT era reviewer, but he's close.

I don't have any particular attachment to him nor his opinion, but I have watched a few of his reviews over the years. Particularly a few Vita game reviews (he's given more focus to portable/handheld games that other reviewers). His name definitely betrays his presentation (asusmedly because the channel, in actual pre-Google days, had some music coverage).

I think the flood of hot-take Steam Deck reviews has given me handheld console clickbait fatigue. I saw the title and thumbnail for this video on my YT feed, and immediately blacklisted the channel. Maybe it's a fine review; I definitely understand why YT creators do this (money) but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I tend to find that it correlates with lower quality content.

Yeah, that is unfortunate. But as full time creators they basically have to follow the trends, because it's not just about others getting ahead; Google actively punishes and hides your content for not doing so, even to people already subscribed to you (because YT had to make subscriptions 2 tier by default).

But I'm sure I'm speaking to the choir in terms of Google's scary control over the internet and lack of alternatives in several fields.

Agreed. He is a real, known, video game YouTuber. I think he focuses more on retro than present day.

The video review linked by the GP does state that the screen has better quality than the DMG (Game Boy) one, showing even a comparison image similar to the one you posted from Ars Technica. The Playdate screen has nevertheless visibility issues under low light conditions due to the lack of backlight, just like the early Game Boy consoles.

Of course, and backlit screens have issues with visibility under high light conditions due to the backlight. I live most of my life in well lit environments, and sleep most of the time when it is dark.

It's trivially obvious that an unlit screen will be unusable in the dark. However, the original Game Boy's screen was practically unusable in the light, too.

Maybe the comparison just rubs me the wrong way because I actually had one and played games on it, and I remember how fucking terrible it was. Even the Pocket was a quantum leap in usability. It just isn't useful to compare the original's screen with anything resembling a modern reflective LCD, except to illustrate just how far the technology has come.

eInk displays aren't supposed to need backlights; LCDs need them because they just wash out if you light them from above, but eInk doesn't have that problem.

Playdate is some kind of "memory LCD" that's more like eInk, but I don't know how much like it.

Memory LCD is nothing like eInk except being lower power. It's an LCD screen but each pixel has a bit of memory with its state so it doesn't need to refresh if it hasn't changed. It still has all the optical properties of LCD. This is still a reflective LCD. It's better than the 30 year old one in the Game Boy but it's still a reflective LCD.

The thing that I think some folks miss about the Playdate is that it’s not just a device meant to play a catalog of high budget polished games. It’s not necessarily for the masses.

It’s also a platform and developer ecosystem explicitly made to get new/interested devs involved in game development with documented support for side loading.

I preordered early on, and haven’t gotten mine yet, but I bought in to the idea because I love to tinker and have always wanted to dabble with game dev. I like the possibility that there will be many others like me, trying similar things on the same exact hardware, opening up opportunities for community and collaboration.

I have yet to see if my excitement is warranted, but I thought it was worth mentioning that some people are not as focused on the end product as they are on the community, ecosystem and tinkering opportunities it enables.

I've been playing around with the Playdate SDK, and it's pretty darn simple for the most part (the documentation could be better, but it mostly gets the job done). I have a working version of my Pico-8 game that I ported in a couple of days (the core gameplay loop at least), including crank functionality.

The code is basically just Lua with some extra Playdate specific bits. This tutorial helped me get up and running:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ufxinp7No

The hardest bit for me so far has been how to make graphics look halfway decent in 1-bit, especially when I'm not much of an artist. Still haven't figured that bit out. I'm just drawing polygons and text on the screen right now programatically. Works okay for the core gameplay, but I'm struggling more with menus.

> The code is basically just Lua with some extra Playdate specific bits.

Now I'm interested in this device. I absolutely love working with Lua and I'd do anything to help that language spread.

trying similar things on the same exact hardware, opening up opportunities for community and collaboration.

The Gameboy homebrew community would provide that for you, with the added benefit of a much larger potential userbase.

Playdate games can be played online through the browser, I think.

The Playdate has WAY more CPU power, WAY more RAM, WiFi, storage, and drastically better sound. Plus a crank!

No need mor mapper chips or other complications.

I like that they kept limitations like having a black and white screen (not greyscale ala GB), and a smaller resolution. so there are still creative constraints. But a lot of the software constraints no longer exist so it’s more approachable.

As someone who's been really wanting to make a Gameboy port of one of my games and also played with PlayDate dev, PlayDate has been much easier to get up and running with it. Gameboy has been difficult enough (although it has gotten a lot easier with the gb dev kit, it's still not easy) I haven't gotten very far with it yet.

I think that's great, but how accessible is that community? How high is the barrier to entry? Genuinely interested because I'll probably spend some time dabbling there.

I don't think this needs to be an either/or conversation though.

I like the comparison to the iPhone, because for all it's done, the iPhone has effectively likely annihilated a generation worth of fun gadgetry. Nearly literally every available cell phone is an iPhone clone.

> the iPhone has effectively likely annihilated a generation worth of fun gadgetry

This just doesn’t ring true. It’s a golden age of fun gadgetry. It’s easier than ever before to combine off the shelf components (e.g. ESP8266) with a myriad of sensors and other devices. Can you expand on what you mean and what you’re referring yo?

You seem to be implying that the Playdate will annihilate a generation of gaming gadgetry? I also don’t understand this when there’s a rich ecosystem of gadgetry all focused on various forms of gaming. Granted, most of those are focused on emulation, but the hardware is capable of more.

It's easier than ever to experiment with off the shelf components if you're interested in that stuff for its own sake or you have very specific niche goals, but smartphones have annihilated the need for a generation worth of fun gadgetry. You don't need an MP3 player, a pager, a camcorder, a handheld video game console, a PDA, a voice recorder, a walkie talkie, a GPS device, a remote control, a calculator, etc. because your smartphone can do all of those things (and you're already carrying your smartphone anyway!). I think that's what people mean when people say "the iPhone annihilated a generation worth of fun gadgetry."

I didn't mean "the Playdate will do the same thing" but I stand by the thing you quoted; I was more interested in OPs excitement, as in: There's nothing exciting in gadgets anymore because of the iPhone, now there is.

Yes, it's easier than ever, but you'll also have fewer reasons than ever to actually do it, as most usecases for gadgets are already perfectly served by an off-the-shelf smartphone.

"Perfectly?"

Oh, HELL no.

On a smaller level, quality suffers when you only have a brick and a touchscreen, too many activities are improved by better tactile controls.

Also, quite a bit of those experiences are clunky due to intrusive software, notifications, etc. E.g. Personally I absolutely hate trying to listen to music on a cellphone, I don't want interruptions and I want to easily adjust song/volume without looking.

Perhaps the biggest point: You can do NOTHING on a cellphone without being surveilled while doing it.

Regarding adjusting song/volume without looking, you can obviously adjust the volume with the volume buttons, but if you have an Android you can also change tracks with a long-press of the volume buttons, even when the screen is locked. I use a sideloaded app that uses an ADB-only permission that makes this possible (see link). I'm not sure why this isn't a native feature.

https://github.com/Incineroar/skipTrackLongPressVolume

In all fairness, it's not like the handheld gadgetry from non-Nintendo in the 2000's/90's were some hidden gems. Sony had some quality systems (the Xperia Play not withstanding), but then there was "okay" stuff like the Neo Geo or the Sega Nomad that were neat but not very competitive. And then you get to the depressing tech like the Atari Lynx or the N-gage and understand exactly why a decent Smartphone can pretty much eclipse the market.

The Steam Deck does give me hope of the next form of this market, however. The portable "gaming" PC. I've been invested in this market since the GPD Win and I hope Valve's iteration ushers a new age of handheld competition. Still won't compete with the Switch, but I'm fine being in a "niche" and catered to

In terms of gaming, you've decided to highlight all the competitors to the champion: Nintendo. You want fun portable gaming, there's no other player.

But I think OP was thinking more in terms of other things the iPhone destroyed, like camcorders, cameras, PDAs, GPS navigation systems, etc.

You need light to see it yes, but that screen is nowhere near OG gameboy issues

The screen isn’t a normal LCD but a Sharp Memory device - https://www.adafruit.com/product/4694

Is that the same technology as RLCD, or is it a different type of display?

Pretty much. Memory LCD adds a bit of memory to each pixel so it doesn't need to refresh if it hasn't changed. Otherwise the same.

Thanks! I found a whitepaper describing the tech: https://www.sharpmemorylcd.com/resources/Polarizer-free_Refl...

In terms of display properties it's in a pretty sweet spot between eink (electrophoretic displays) and conventional RLCD. Slightly lower contrast than conventional RLCD but much better reflectance (roughly on par with eink).

Yeah. Not sure if the parent commenter had an original Gameboy as a kid, because if they did they wouldn't throw that comparison around so inflationarily...

I had an original gameboy. So it's not exactly the same type of torture, but in 2022 not having backlighting is kind of a joke.

It's a weird niche device with weird niche games, I'm not planning to buy one but I'm happy to see people doing something interesting instead of all chasing the same mass market. There's a certain retro appeal to the "shades of gray like a gameboy" screen without the part where it's impossible to see in 90% of lighting conditions.

It's not even shades of grey, it's black and white only (on or off). This means it's very high contrast and the white pixels are very reflective.

They tout the system as having "a very special black and white screen – not backlit, but super reflective – that looks way more amazing than you're probably imagining".

If it is the kind of display I am imagining (which I think is different from the one they claim I probably am), then that display will probably look much better than an equivalent backlit displays.

It's just not usable in low lighting conditions, which is a tradeoff I can imagine them accepting, and customers as well. Though unlike an original Gameboy, and more like a common book, a crappy bedside lamp will likely suffice.

At first I thought that you could charge the batteries through the hand crank. Does anyone know if it would be throetically possible to fit something like that into such a small enclosure? I actually have an electronic game toy from when I was a teen that has a hand crank. If anyone wants to see a pic of it let me know.

Yes, it's possible. The components needed are very small. However I think it would risk people damaging their device (or their fingers) by trying to crank-charge the batteries too zealously.

I think that was one of their original ideas.

On top of your reason I think the problem was when they looked into it it was incredibly impractical to actually charge the device that way. You just couldn’t generate enough electricity with such a small crank.

I mean if you had the crank for 10 minutes and it would only charge the little battery in that thing 1%, would it be worth it? That’s the impression I got.

This is what I thought it would be for, I have a small radio with a similar crank and it should be possible to power it that way. The designers probably considered it and I wonder why they didn’t do it.

Pretty sure the gearing and/or flywheel spinning required to actually reasonably charge a device like this would make using it as a gaming input mostly useless. If you've tried any of those hand crank devices, they take quite a bit of force to get going.

A radio compared to an ARM chip with a display for gaming are not in the same hemisphere of power needs. You simply cannot power a system like that through a crank.

It clocks in at 2.74 Wh (740 mAh @ 3.7V).

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Playdate+Teardown/143811

Assume 75% usable charge that’s about 2Wh. Ads say 8 hour active time so you’d need to make 0.25 W to power it.

Say the crank is about 0.1m and you turn it at once per second, 6 radians per second, your force needs to be roughly half a newton when accounting for losses. Half a Newton is about the weight of two AA batteries. So it’s perfectly achievable to keep it running, but we’d have to really think about how much you can output with a hand crank. You wouldn’t want to crank it and try to play at the same time, so you’d be cranking to charge and then play.

I found here many crank chargers useful for charging phones and some with as high as 20W output. The ones that are small and cheap can do 1A, 4W, but that would be plenty. 15 minutes of cranking would give 4 hours of play time.

https://housegrail.com/best-hand-crank-generators/

> 15 minutes of cranking would give 4 hours of play time.

Ok that doesn't sound fun at all.

But here are the bigger problems:

> https://housegrail.com/best-hand-crank-generators/

Those things are fucking huge -- you are comparing some junk ass Ali Express device to proposing actually integrating in the product. Could you find a cheaply and readily available mass produced motor/dynamo that would fit in this 9mm thick form factor and still produce enough power? And at the end of the day the only reason that a device like this is possible for them is they can basically build around easily sourceable, highly integrated parts - The only thing really custom on this is the shell/mechanicals - and that probably blew the majority of their design budget. Spending 10s of thousands for a custom micro dynamo for a dumb feature doesn't seem like well placed priorities. Also, you would have to integrate this without interfering or degrading the primary function of the crank.

And the thing is, it’s made by Panic. A company, that aside from like one piece of software, is absolute garbage at supporting anything they sell.

I wouldn’t own another Panic product if they paid me.

Ok apart from Prompt, what did they ever do for us?

Firewatch.

Ok, Prompt and Firewatch.

And Untitled Goose Game.

Ok, apart from Prompt, Firewatch, and Untitled Goose Game.

…

> Firewatch, and Untitled Goose Game

Both were only published by Panic, not developed. They had barely anything to do with how the games were made.

oh lol. They “published” those games for other companies. Panic did the best job ever by staying the heck out of the way.

Panic sucks.

Which software have they supported poorly? I’ve had nothing but good experiences with them. And even when they’ve had to retire an app, they’re usually super transparent about the reasoning.

Lost me at "no backlit display". Thanks, but no thanks.

I haven't seen it in person, but if it's the kind of display I think it is, it will look absolutely amazing and be better than most other equivalent backlit displays (and you don't need a good light source to make it readable).

A book isn't backlit either, but that's not a problem, is it? The type of display used in the Playdate (Sharp memory LCD) is highly reflective and has very high contrast.

Well, the lack of backlit books did spawn an industry of reading lights

I'd be primarily interested in the crank mechanic, but it looks like getting enough of a grip on the other side to stabilize it would be a pain, and cranking will probably result in accidentally throwing the whole thing down.

Yup: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGdP59hhiDg&t=11m53s

Gee, who would have thunk it? The 3DS had this problem even with no crank.

I predict this might show strengths more as a wearable badge, though the crank definitely wouldn't work well in that case.

To me, a critical quality of a handheld and portable gaming device is durability. In this light, a handcrank, with a fairly long shaft and a 90 degree handle, seems to be an incredibly stupid idea. It's just begging to get snagged on something and broken off. I wouldn't give this thing to my kids: they'd destroy it in a week. There are so many alternatives to a handcrank which aren't desperately fragile.

> seems to be an incredibly stupid idea

It's on a floppy hinge, it's metal, and it folds in when you're not using it. Here's it in use: https://youtu.be/ZGdP59hhiDg?t=125

Here's a teardown showing what looks like a very reasonable mechanical strain relief: https://youtu.be/J5G02ru0GyM?t=110

> There are so many alternatives to a handcrank which aren't desperately fragile.

~~It's not just for charging.~~ (edit: Not for charging! Obvious with that teardown!) It doubles as an input for the games.

> I wouldn't give this thing to my kids: they'd destroy it in a week.

This sounds like it may not be related to the device.

I don't think it's for charging at all? It's an innovative rotational game input device, not a generator.

Just wanted to correct that the crank doesn't charge the device. It's just input.

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