Last Post: 7:59:43am, 04/03/2024
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 spanided 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!