Topic: Playdate Games

Playdate is slowly building up a catalog of great games and this may be a good place to talk about some of them. I think the best games for Playdate take advantage of its small form factor, not intended for 2 hour gaming sessions, but playing it throughout the day for 10-20 minutes at a time.

Bloom was a visual novel/relationship sim/business sim with a real-time clock and time delay between events that would give you reason to check in every now and then with no consequence for waiting too long.

Voidblazers is a narrative-based vertical SHMUP that I ended up playing through 5 times so I could unlock all the items and thereby unlocking all the dialog. The ship upgrades are collected early, the rest of the items are things that prompt the loveable characters to talk interact and talk. It’s not too difficult and has assist options if you just can’t get past something. Also, the entire soundtrack is full of bangers!

Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll, a chill exploration-focused metroidvania. Reminds me a bit of the Momodora series but without the combat. It does suffer slowdown which made some of the obstacles impossible to beat if your RAM hadn’t been cleared. A recent update improved that so there’s less slowdown.

Next 2 games in the queue are Initial Daydream and The Heist of the Argonaut Limited.