LogFAQs > #979765791

sergiocornaga posted...

So exciting to see a new game top the list! I look forward to playing it. It looks like I'll be waiting another two weeks for Saturday Edition... unless I decide to skip forward in the season.

It's interesting to hear that developers are finding this thread. It's unfortunate that there's so little writing about Playdate games out there, but I've personally always appreciated your candid, snarky tone. There's a real sense that these are your honest and relatively unfiltered reactions, which I find so valuable. And it's certainly not dissuading me from buying any games! I bought HANA Spacetime Fantasy, A Joke That's Worth 0.99 Cents, DYG, and The Keyper, all after reading about them in this thread. Hell, I bought a Playdate partly thanks to reading this thread.

I haven't spent enough time in Playdate communities to speak with any authority, but I get the sense that most places shy away from potentially upsetting criticism in favour of more encouraging positive feedback. I think this can be great! If developer-focused Playdate spaces are welcoming of inexperienced newcomers, strange experiments, and rough edges, it will no doubt improve the breadth and magnitude of the Playdate library. I personally prefer this to be balanced with the sort of criticism found in this thread, and as a game developer I often seek out (constructive) negative feedback in hope of improving my craft, but I understand not everyone feels OK with this.

That said, I love reading glowing reviews of weird stuff too, and I've found that Playdate: The Unofficial Website (run by TheGameLlama) is an excellent source for this. Check out this wildly different review of HANA Spacetime Fantasy! https://www.playdateunofficial.com/the-games/hana-spacetime-fantasy

They also put out a really intriguing 2023 GOTY list (also consisting entirely of games you presumably haven't played, and neither have I): https://www.playdateunofficial.com/articles/2023-playdate-goty

One of them, Initial Daydream, is currently only avaialable on itch.io. I hesitate to bring this up, but... I suspect your count of total games available on Playdate has been excluding everything there? Because it looks like there are at least 817 available there: https://itch.io/games/tag-playdate
Apologies for any can of worms this might open.

Lastly, I finished Mars After Midnight last night. It suits being divided into short sessions very well, so I played it nightly with my mum over the past three weeks. It's definitely one to get, and I look forward to reading your thoughts!

Savor the weekly season releases! It's the most fun part of the console imo. Glad I helped sway you into getting the console and didn't wind up scaring you away. It has probably become my most played console for the past 4-5 months or so. It is just sort of a fun idea, even if a lot of the games here aren't great.

Yeah, I'm definitely not complaining about the discord being somewhat coddling. There are developers crawling all over the place there, and a lot of the more effusive praise is from one developer to another if you check into who is commenting. Which is fine! It just makes it very hard for me to figure out what is good since everything is praised there.

I somehow have not seen that website at all so thanks for linking it. I've also been looking for other "reviews" and I could not find anything. I'm shocked to see that level or praise for HANA, but I do also wonder if I was so annoyed I couldn't appreciate the story. I don't think that's it - I remember finding the plot really bland and uninteresting at the time. But I also remember hating the gameplay and visuals and style so much that maybe it just bled over and lead me into a hate cloud I couldn't see through. I dunno. Glad someone out there liked it.

It makes so much sense it was released in two chunks on itch. I didn't know that and the style change is so jarring it feels like someone stappled some other game onto the back end of it which I guess is kinda sorta what happened.

The most important thing I can say about this game was that I never had any idea where it was going.

Well I 100% agree with that at least.

I do know this is the kind of game that just doesnt get made when you have a lot of people above you telling you what game to make. Its rough, and strange, and doesnt spell out everything for you (but it does explain enough to help you understand what you're doing and where youre going and why). Its one of those games that only an open ecosystem like the Playdate would allow. Highly recommended.

I get what they're saying here and it is also something I find valuable about indie gaming in general. BUT I also think you have to realize that not every bit of company oversight is creativity quashing, focus group restricting nonsense. Sometimes someone above you tells you what to do because they can't appreciate your vision, and sometimes someone above you tells you what to do because covering your entire body in macaroni and cheese and running naked through a playground just isn't a good idea. That lack of oversight can lead to great things, but it can also lead to things that would've been changed or refined for good reason.

That is an interesting GOTY list, too! I mentioned before but I had only been following the community awards, where the nominees were Root Bear, Gun Trials, Reelistic Fishing and also Resonant Tale. Bloom was a 2022 nominee though so that was also on my radar! I'm assuming that's the game that got the big update that they said should could for 2023. Some of these games I have intentionally been saving for a rainy day (Gun Trials in particular) but others like Bloom I just haven't heard all that much about. And Resonant Tale I almost played last year! I was looking for something that fit into the action adventure category here on GameFAQs and there weren't a ton of Playdate games. My two finalists were Resonant Tale and...HANA. Oh, what a terrible decision I made in retrospect. Curse me for picking what I thought was the more interesting game title.

And, yes! I am not counting things you can sideload for a couple of reasons. First, there is at least "some" curation process into what gets put on the catalogue from itch.io. So I have to assume the average quality of that endless sea is somehow worse which isn't something I want to deal with. And, second, every hyped game from itch.io has been brought over the catalogue at some point. I'm assuming the good stuff will make its way over before shop is shut down.

Thanks for the links here though!