Review: Playdate Season 2

A stationary shmup, an ancient aliens archaeology game, a supremely silly point and click adventure, and a game about become an extraordinarily long dog with extraordinarliy big poops, and more…

Overview

It’s 12 games for $39, what’s not to love? Well, some of the games, apparently. I found four of them fantastic, though, so it’s a good deal! Plus I get to try all these other games for a bit, when I probably would’ve never bought them.

Dig Dig Dino!

A chill game with some minor UX problems that hold it back from perfection. I’m never a fan of simply binding “next item” to a button and having that be the only way to cycle through more than like 3 items (one of the few issues I have with Super Metroid), and this game makes it even worse by introducing consumables that change the number of items you’re carrying during each level. Also, the game encourages you to button mash to accumulate resources, but then punishes you by covering the lower third of the screen with a message telling you you’re using the wrong kind of item. A small fix to relocate the alert to the top of the screen when your cusror is near the bottom would’ve alleviated a lot of my problems with the game.

That being said, it’s fun! The idea of uncovering weird dinosaur fossils, ancient aliens, uncovering the story, buying upgrades, and digging for treasure with no time limit is just fun! The story had a really weird ending, but it was so charming. It’s just a good easy game!

Fulcrum Defender

A relaxing shmup by the creators of FTL and Into the Breach. Despite using the crank nonstop for all aiming… I think it works! My aim can be a little “shaky” at times, but once you get in the groove and get some upgrades, it doesn’t realy matter. You play as a turret while enemies come at you from all 360 degrees around you.

You “win” at 10 minutes, but the game keeps going afterward (did Balatro come up with this concept? I love it).

Recently this game was updated with 5 new difficulty modes and tons of new enemy types. It honestly feels like “Fulcrum Defender 2” with these changes, and I’m enjoying it a lot more now.

Long Puppy

A super weird game that makes good use of the crank. Like Katamari, this game is more fun with time limits turned off. You control a dog who gets longer when he eats food. You have to aim your head with the crank and press Up on the d-pad to extend your body forward. You can get into all kinds of wild areas with this traversal mechanic. I haven’t bothered beating the game, but it’s been a lot of fun!

Chance’s Lucky Escape

Maybe the easiest point and click adventure game I’ve played, but the pacing and writing is great. There’s no branching or exploration, so I guess you could call it a cross between a point and click adventure game with a kinetic visual novel. I had a lot of fun with this one. I played it almost nonstop until completion.

Other Games

Wheelsprung

I’m skipping this one since…

The developer used generative AI to create game code and text or dialog.

The Whiteout

A dark apocalyptic point and click adventure game. It seems well made, but I’m not a huge fan of the genre, and I wasn’t in the mood for a story this sad. This is the first Playdate game I’ve seen with a content warning

This game depicts acts of violence, implies a suicide and features mature themes. There are curse words, but a word filter is enabled by default.

Otto’s Galactic Groove

I’ve never played Trombone Champ, but I assume this game is pretty similar. It was fun, but I didn’t feel compelled to keep playing.

Shadowgate PD

A turn based dungeon crawler feels like a perfect fit for the Playdate, but unfortunately this game was too retro for my level of patience. You have to move a mouse cursor around the screen using the d-pad, then navigate a menu of like 10 items to choose which verb you want to use… literally constantly.

It’s just death through UX pain, and given the old school nature there’s no hints, so you’re gonna fumble a lot. I think this game might be fun if you were playing with a mouse, but I don’t have the patience for it in this form factor.

CatchaDiablos

A cute arcade-y action game where you’re constantly rotating. You start by cranking to choose the center of a circle, then you hold a button to plant down on that circle and rotate along its circumference, catching (defeating?) whatever monsters you encircle.

It’s a great idea, but it was really challenging for me to control and got too hard to fast, so I set it down.

Tiny Turnip

A wild platforming game where you control everything by rotating your arms with the crank. You grab and release with the d-pad, making traversal visceral. Honestly this game seems really fun, but I got a little bit tired of futzing with the controls and didn’t play super long. It’s a recurring theme here, but circular motion doesn’t feel anywhere near as intuitive as a d-pad or analog stick… though to be fair it’s kind of unexplored territory in video games.

Black Hole Havoc

A shooting oriented puzzle game in the vein of Puzzle Bobble (Bust-a-Move). Without a color screen, though, they had to come up with a different gimmick. Rather than match-3… you just match two bubbles together… by size. You adjust the size before firing a bubble, and the difference in size of your target is subtracted from your HP. Eyeballing relative sizes of swirling voids is… not fun to me. So I gave it up pretty quickly.

Taria & Como

Another grappling hook based platforming game. The game felt sluggish and awkward to control, though I’ll admit some of the videos I’ve seen look neat. I didn’t play much.

Blippo+

I haven’t tried Blippo+, so I’ll let their marketing copy do the talking. It seems neat, but I don’t care enough to bother.

Blippo+ is an 11-week, live-action, over-the-top television experience. New episodes, programs, and messages arrive every Thursday at 10am PT.

Final Thoughts

I didn’t care for Season 2 as much as Season 1, but I still had fun with it. I hope they continue making Playdate seasons, but maybe a bit shorter.

I’m gonna dust off some of my older Playdate games I didn’t give a fair shake the first time.