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Game #34 Complete! PLAYTIME Weird Alarm Clocks

Throw This Quote On The Back Of The Box: "What time is it? (indiscernible gurgling) time!"

Final Thoughts: The good news for anyone enjoying this is that I'm pot committed now. I can't back off this project after wasting $5 on PLAYTIME Weird Alarm Clocks. This is the ultimate sunk cost fallacy. "Hey I could move on to other projects but then the guy who stole $5 from me for a series of clocks wins." No fucking chance. That asshole is using my five dollars right now to buy torture implements to turn a racoon carcass into a functional clock and I'm personally responsible for that. I can't let that racoon to have died for nothing. I'm finishing this now.

The Playdate has some things that it classifies as apps, so it is worth noting this isnt really trying to be a game. So Im not docking points for that, just as a heads up. Im docking points for everything else. This is something that at least has the decency to advertise what it is exactly in its title. This is a collection of weird alarm clocks and I honestly can't imagine a more depressing collection. Imagine walking into a room and finding an alarm clock collection. You would think you just wandered into a serial killer's house.

Each clock has instructions on how to use it, which is already a bad sign. Here is a line from the description of one of these clocks: Low-state clocks are my experiment in communicating time using far fewer states while still being useful and easy to read. Easy to read. Ok, so the goal here is being useful and easy to read. Now, I am going to post paragraph four of nine of the how the hell to even read this clock instructions from one of these clocks. First off, there are nine paragraphs in the instructions of this easy to use clock. If youre trying to make an easy to use anything, and you get to your ninth paragraph explaining how to use it, just set whatever you were working on doing on fire and start over. There are calculus text books that explain how to do things in less than nine paragraphs and I cant even tell if the easy to use disclaimer up front is supposed to be a hilarious sarcastic joke or not.

The single inner light is used to tell the hour, as is the inner hand of any clock. It indicates the parity of the nearest hour mark: off for even, on for odd. Now you know the time is 10 to odd for example, or half past even. By default the nearest hour is shown. So at 10 to 9 (8:50), the hour light will be on for odd, indicating 9 the closest to where the hour hand would be on an analog clock not off (even) for 8.

Help I'm too stupid to use this clock. I started reading this and realized I was too dumb to tell time. That hasn't happened to me since the first grade. The description of how to use your clock reads like it was written by someone in the midst of a schizophrenic breakdown. This is the kind of note you usually find scrawled in blood in a horror game before someone with a clock sewn to their face emerges from the darkness.

Heres another direct line from a third clock that I did not alter in any way: Knowing the hour parity combined with the circadian oscillator in your hypothalamus is enough to tell you the exact hour. Hey, weird clock app creator, when you started writing the phrase circadian oscillator in your hypothalamus did you get this profound sense of shame as you realized that all those kids that beat you up in high school after they caught you licking a clock were right to hate you? I'm pretty sure that between all the various rambling instructions on how to read these nonsense clocks that this game has the most writing of any Playdate title.

I wish I could tell you the dumbest thing about this. Ive narrowed it down to two but I cant pick. Its Sophies Choice but both of my choices wandered off into the middle of a street and got hit by a bus before I could make my choice. One of the finalists is the fact they took a clock and made it worse. Most of the clocks here are significantly harder to read than a normal clock. There's one where you look at the body of a weird mutated animal thing and each various body part gives you information about the time. What kind of Druid bullshit is this? Imagine looking at a clock and having to consult your notes to see what a fish body means. If you ask someone what time it is and they start muttering about the number of horns on a stag head, you need to run. You're moments away from being turned into an alarm clock yourself.

The other thing is that the resting screen of a Playdate is already a clock. Thats the default option for a Playdate, and it costs zero dollars. When you put your game into rest mode, the thing it shows is a normal, easy to read clock and thats free. It's a clock. IT IS A CLOCK. Already. Youre paying five dollars for a worse version of the thing the system comes with. They made a thing the Playdate didn't need and then made it worse. A lot of these clocks can't even give you the exact time, and they're designed in such a way to tell you what time it is within a five minute window. "Hey do you want to know the time but only sort of?"

There is also an alarm functionality, but, again, why? Who needs or wants to use their Playdate as an alarm clock? Who looked at the Playdate and thought to themselves wow I want to buy this $200 console to use as my alarm clock? Every single person in the entire world has a phone, right now, in their pocket. That phone comes with an alarm clock that is louder and more effective to use than the alarm clock that comes with this $5 app. It is a thing that no one asks for and no one needs and fills a niche that doesnt exist. Clocks are on every digital device, ever, and no one has purchased an alarm clock since 2003.

I genuinely dont get the why. Im confused. Im confused. Why was this made? I thinkI think this mightve been made by a Batman villain. That sounds crazy but it makes the most sense. Like it was made by someone called The Clock Master or Dr. Ticktock or something, and they commit exclusively clock related crimes. GADZOOKS BATMAN ITS DR. TICKTOCK Ho ho ho BATMAN now that Ive flooded Gotham with these idiotic clocks, no one will ever be on time for a meeting again! HYUH HYUH HYUH!!! It feels almost like Im playing an AR game but without the AR game actually attached to it. Like Im looking at this and Im stressing out because I can't find the hidden code that will give me the coordinates of the missing children.

Theres also something borderline devious about calling this PLAYTIME. I get that the full name is PLAYTIME Weird Alarm Clocks but that PLAYTIME up front is almost evil. You cant call your weird alarm clock emporium playtime. Its like telling your kids youre bringing them to AMUSEMENT PARK and they get all excited and then you pull up and its called AMUSEMENT PARK Dentistry and Pet Eradicator. Theres nothing playtime about alarm clocks! You cant use that work to describe this. We have laws to prevent this level of consumer misinformation.