Otto’s Galactic Groove!! (Playdate): COMPLETED!

This is one of the Playdate games that is in the Playdate Season 2 pack. It’s a rhythm game where notes scroll across the screen and you press a button when they hit the Pong-like bat on the right, and you have to move the bat up and down with the Playdate’s crank. It works well, although does remind me of how Trombone Champ’s mechanics work. The music is good, and each “planet” you visit in the game – the …

Dig Dig Dino! (Playdate): COMPLETED!

Season Two of the Playdate games have started arriving, and the first one I worked through is this lovely little archaeology title, where you dig down and find bones and… well, you do that a lot. It reminds me a lot of SteamWorld Dig, although it isn’t a platformer and has (almost) no combat, but progression is similar. The deeper you dig, the more energy it takes to dig, so you buy upgrades (with money earned from things you’ve dug …

Mars After Midnight (Playdate): COMPLETED!

Lucas Pope, the developer of this game, has a reputation for making weird experimental games. But they’re also good. I’ll admit, however, that apart from some time on Papers, Please (I lost my save I think, following a reinstall or something) and the demo of Return of the Obra Dinn (which I fully intended to get the full version of but for some reason never did), I’ve not really experienced them. Until now! Hyped as a possible killer-app for the …

Sketch, Share, Solve (Playdate): COMPLETED!

What is this? A Playdate game? That I purchased? With actual money? Is that even legal? It seems so! Sketch, Share, Solve is a Picross game, and a $3 Picross game at that. It also has mostly the same (correct) controls as the Jupiter-written 3DS and Switch Picross games, which is good as that’s the only way to play them as far as I’m concerned. As it’s on the Playdate, it’s all in black and white and the size of …

Reel Steal (Playdate): COMPLETED!

I may have been neglecting my Playdate of late. Mainly because it’s hard to see the screen when it isn’t sunny. However, Panic released a big update this week with a new on-device store and a couple more free games, so I had a look. And then ended up completing this. It’s a fishing game (hence “Reel”) where you ride a hook down into a building, winching up and down with the crank, whilst avoiding magnets, lasers and drones. You …

Casual Birder (Playdate): COMPLETED!

Yes, I have a Playdate! Finally! And yes, this is the first game I’ve completed on it! Casual Birder is a little like that Bit Orchard or Toem in a way. It’s a sort of adventure game set in a town obsessed with taking photos of birds. The aim is to take part in a bird photography competition, but of course things are made difficult in a number of ways. For starters, some of the birds are a bit shy, …