Playing lots of freely downloadable Playdate games

Now that I know how to load a PDX in the Playdate Simulator and Sideload it onto my Playdate...

...I want to play a bunch of games, and maybe peek under the hood of some of them!

Browsing the itch.io Playdate catalog

itch.io is a platform where game developers can sell their games.

It is the recommended platform to sell games by Playdate...at least until Playdate creates its own store or marketplace.

Searching for playdate shows all games with that tag...many of which are actually Playdate games:

• I count 61 results
• Some require payment: I'll skip those for now
• Some are sound, music or font packages: I'll skip those, too

That leaves 21 games to download!

My itch.io catalog

• Block Blitz
• Coin Germs
• Plop It
• Keeper
• Rescues
• snkr
• Snakes
• Simple Snake
• 2048
• OneBit Demon Attack
• Fishing Simulator
• OneBit Arena
• OneBit Jetpack
• Grimoire
• Shrimp Boom
• OneBit Berzerk
• OneBit Frogger
• Rachel's Playdate Game Pack
• You Cannot Go Back
• Loopsy
• OneBit Pacman

Block Blitz

Notable features:

• Player movement animations
• Horizontal claw movement that target's current player's position
• Descent of block, ultimately onto the highest item in the column
• Movement limited by a difference in height greater than 1 block
• Win state triggered by climbing up to one of a few platforms

Not very fun to play.

May be cool to inspect source code to see how all the movements are programmed.

Coin Germz

Notable features:

• Player animations when moving and when still
• Collecting coins was inconsistent: sometimes a jump was required, other times not
• Any movement off a ladder moves the player all the way down to a tile on top of the nearest platform
• Timer countdown updated by the millisecond

Surprise error:

• After getting hit by a germ, the game crashed
• The Simulator's console automatically opened
• Above the error were several logs reflecting the state of the game

This was cool to see since it is essentially a list of the variables being tracked and events that were triggered!

Plop it

Notable features:

• Would make a great exercise in learning/practicing input-based event listeners
• Cool animations between menu screens
• Button placement on screen is random

Not very fun to play.

But makes for a great series of exercises on my journey to get better at building games with PulpScript and Lua.

Keeper

Notable features:

• Another tutorial-esque game
• Collision detection
• Object movement speed changes based on items collected

A simple game that I'd love to re-create as a way of learning to work with objects.

Rescues

Notable features:

• Interesting arc that the falling object follows
• I was bored until the addition of more falling objects at the same time
• Then I was flustered!
• More use of collision detection

Simple artwork and gameplay.

Makes me want to re-create it!

snkr

Notable features:

• Sole use of the crank to move the snake
• Cute sound effects
• Cool explosion animation when a ball is eaten
• Interesting how the snake's head can rotate 180 degrees so quickly that it collides with its own body

That was tough to play on the Simulator.

It makes me want to load it on my Playdate.

Snakes

Notable features:

• Interesting hybrid of Snake and a maze
• Really hard to see where the room exit is, especially given the torch artwork
• Cool how the snakes face the direction of movement
• Nice ambient soundtrack

I enjoyed the levels I played.

I look forward too exploring all that I can do to objects based on player movement.

Simple Snake

Notable features:

• True to it's name: feels like original snake
• Snkr is much more fun, sadly

Thinking programmatically, it's cool how a collision causes a new square to be added at the opposite end of the snake.

2048

Notable features:

• Really polished animations and transitions
• Seemingly perfect re-creation of the game
• Controls felt very smooth even when I mashed buttons

There's a lot of nuance that I'd love to study here.

OneBit Demon Attack

Notable features:

• Again, really polished animations
• The simulated moving ground is a fantastic illusion
• The enemy entrance animation is a nice touch
• As is the slight ship rotation when moving
• And the projectile explosions

This game has the highest production levels thus far.

It's easy and fun to play, and a simple concept.

Definitely inspiring.

Fishing Simulator

Notable features:

• Almost sole use of the crank
• Random placement of the bubbles
• Horizontal movement of different fish sprites
• Down and up game loop is nifty

Another simple game with a lot of depth. Get it?!

OneBit Arena

Notable features:

• Cool player animations
• 8-way movement and attacking
• Cool how enemies follow the player's position
• Fun death skull bounce animation

This is another game on the short list of games that I could see myself playing a lot.

I hope to design and program a game as fun and addicting, at least for myself and maybe my son.

OneBit Jetpack

Learning to play:

• The goal was very confusing at first
• I knew I could move, especially up
• I then learned I could shoot
• Then that I could pick up objects spread among the room
• Eventually that I needed to pick up re-appearing objects, six total
• Lastly I discovered that moving off one edge of the screen moved my player to the same vertical spot on the opposite edge of the screen

Notable features:

• Simple gameplay: move and shoot
• Interesting collection gameplay mechanic
• Cool use of power-ups
• Helpful screen wrapping mechanic

I had more fun figuring out how to play than I did once I knew what to do.

Now that I know what to do, I'm not very interested in trying to do it.

Grimoire

My thoughts:

• This is the first game in my personal catalog that feels like it should be in a Season of games
• It is a novel twist on Minesweeper involving number sums
• The artwork is lovely
• The music is subtle enough to keep me intrigued but not be annoying
• And the puzzle is wonderfully head-scratching

It took me several minutes, but I beat it!

What a gem of a game!

Shrimp Boom

Notable features:

• Fantastic artwork: backgrounds, enemy fish, etc.
• Familiar gameplay mechanics: full 2D range of movement, weapon upgrades, enemies disappear upon collision with player or player's projectiles

Aside from the artwork, there's nothing that memorable about this game, sadly.

OneBit Berzerk

My thoughts:

• Impressive mechanics: large rooms, enemies follow player, random room layout each game start
• Annoying gameplay: walls kill you, no gun that I know of, sometimes colliding with enemies kills you and other times not

This may be my least favorite of the OneBit games thus far.

OneBit Frogger

Notable features:

• An outstanding clone of the original
• Though, I was confused at first by the middle white bar and the all-black water: I thought I couldn't touch the white bar and that the all-black part was safe. Silly me.
• Thankfully, the five ending spots have large target boxes - otherwise it would require incredible timing to land on them successfully

Rachel's Playdate Game Pack

Woah, there are eight mini-games in this thing!

Toilet Paper Cat

Notable features:

• Sole use of the crank
• To unroll a whole thing of toilet paper

Silly but a fun gameplay exercise for application of the crank.

Bass Ball

Notable features:

• Use the crank to adjust the projectile's angle
• It flies off-screen, then back down
• Must collide with a fish before colliding with the bottom of the screen
• Fun fish movement animation when they grab the bait

Nothing particularly memorable about this game.

I Hate Skeletons

Notable features:

• Turning the crank pans the camera left and right
• Pressing up punches skeletons - albeit inconsistently

This has a cool, unexpected application for the crank!

It kind of felt like DOOM, where the player doesn't move.

We Have Lasers

Notable features:

• Brick sprites update as lasers collide with them

Nothing remarkable here, sadly.

High Five King

Notable features:

• Use of the crank to raise the player's arm
• Must time the high-five right to win
• Maybe later levels reduce the amount of time in the window?

Another fun use of the crank to raise and lower a 'weapon' and act as the main gameplay mechanic.

Motor Horse

Notable features:

• Use of the crank to move the player up and down
• Feels like a Flappy bird clone

I wish the player could launch projectiles, though not sure why other than that it would be nice.

Deskapades

Notable features:

• Pick up and put down coffee
• Collide with game objects to acquire them
• Put down coffee within direct line of sight of enemy to cause that enemy to move toward the coffee - thereby removing themself as an obstacle in the room

This feels like a novel gameplay mechanic.

I don't know why but I'm sad there's no use of the crank.

Pupreciation

Notable features:

• Tinder, for dogs
• Sole use of crank to swipe left or right

Sadly, quite boring.

You Cannot Go Back

Notable features:

• Landscape mode!!
• One room at a time
• Movement is only left-to-right
• Each room has between 1 and 3 exits
• Some rooms have traps or instant death triggers upon collision

But many rooms have too much contrast that makes it hard to discern which route is best to take:

I played long enough to see the same room types repeat, which annoyed me.

Otherwise, this game just confused me.

In cool news, I am now aware of this capability for games:

Loopsy

Notable features:

• Incredible menu system - the content, the moving backgrounds, etc.
• Interesting puzzle game based on creating closed-line shapes
• Great use of contrast to discern placed objects from current objects
• Use of the crank or buttons to rotate an object
• Rather difficult for me to beat

I was most impressed with this game's menu system.

I may play it more in hopes of beating it, too.

OneBit Pacman

Notable features:

• A strong clone, given the constraint of the small screen
• Movement feels fast, but that's probably because the game feels zoomed in
• I was confused about the state of the ghosts - I got it backwards and died a lot when colliding at the wrong time
• There's a helpful gauge on the right-hand side to indicate how long a power-up has left

Cool clone. But not much more of interest.

So many games! So many possibilities!

• I just played 30-60 seconds of 21 games
• And witnessed a ton of ways that the crank can be leveraged as a gameplay mechanic
• And feel inspired after seeing all sorts of capabilities that Playdate's APIs offer developers to create fun, interactive games

What next?

• Do I load one of the JSON files that came with a few of these games into Pulp and attempt to understand how it all works?
• Do I read up on PulpScript and attempt to start programming a simple game...maybe a knock-off of one of these games?
• Do I start from scratch in a new Pulp and attempt to build a game there?

Or do I do something else...that I'll think of between publishing this article and starting the next one?

The suspense is killing me!