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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
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.
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-...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Deleted Comment
Although if your product's target market is rich nerds that's a great strategy.
Not that they are the worse offender, it is a global problem that touch both indie and big corps.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
I can see how HN loves this thing
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.
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.
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.
Dead Comment
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.
Honestly, its just a worse analog stick. The upside is that the games will be easy enough to play with common controllers.
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.