Playdate Previews ⇥ arstechnica.com

Andrew Webster, the Verge:

And then there’s the Playdate from Panic. Whereas the aforementioned handhelds are almost uniformly technological upgrades, the Playdate offers something much weirder. It looks kind of like a Game Boy that comes from an alien world. There are familiar elements, like a D-pad and face buttons, but many of its games are controlled by a crank that slots into the side. And those games are only available in black and white, and they’ll eventually be released as part of weekly mystery drops.

It sounds strange and fascinating, and I had the chance to head into the PlayDate’s parallel universe over the last few days with a near-final version of the device. It definitely is weird — but that’s also what makes it exciting.

Sam Machkovech, Ars Technica:

Nothing I’ve played on the Playdate thus far screams “revolutionary” or “must-have.” Two low-powered CPUs, intentionally lo-fi hardware, and a single rotary crank can only combine to deliver so much. These four test titles likely lack the scope or depth that some gamers hope for in a brand-new system’s launch library.

Yet everything I’ve played on the Playdate has been accessible, amusing, and unique, and getting four games at once has distributed the fun factor around in a way that I really appreciate. Two of the games are built with replayability in mind—one as a score chaser, the other as a puzzle-minded platformer with speedrunning potential. The other two titles are more linear but focus less on challenge and more on atmosphere; these show what developers can do within a wimpy system’s limits to deliver their own comfortable, unique games on black-and-white hardware.

Preorders for the Playdate begin one week from today, July 29. I am so excited about the possibilities of this weird little thing.