Delight.
There’s just not enough delight in the world. Take a minute and wheel over to the Playdate web site and check out Panic’s new shiny. It’s delightful.
From the site:
We love video games.
We love the places they take us and the feelings they give us. We’ve grown up with them. It sounds silly, but they really mean a lot to us.
And:
We reached out to some top game designers, like Keita Takahashi and Zach Gage and Bennett Foddy and Shaun Inman.
We showed them Playdate and asked, “Want to make a game for it?”. Then we lost our minds when they said “Yeah!”
This is something special. Like watching the birth of Nintendo. It’s a grand, delightful experiment.
For $149, you get the Playdate hardware, crank and all (scroll down to the crank picture and click to turn on the sound to get a sense of what that’s all about), and a game a week for 12 weeks. Presumably, there will be follow-on subscription pricing for the game-a-week after that. And who knows, if this works, follow-on hardware.
If you’ve never experienced Panic’s game prowess, check out Firewatch. It’s on my shortlist of favorite indie games. Full of delight. And, if I’m not mistaken, there’s a Playdate in the game itself. A time-traveling Easter egg?
And if you don’t know Teenage Engineering (the hardware side of this collaboration), check out their synthesizers. Full of delight.
And if you are on still on the fence about Playdate, check out John Gruber’s take. He gets it.
Can’t wait.
It’s actually a new game every week, not month.
I’m seeing tons of scorn directed at this in comment sections, which I don’t get. This looks like a lot of fun. Maybe it’s because I’m not a serious gamer? Anyway, I’m looking forward to it.
I’m not much of a gamer. The games I do play are usually simple, easy to control games that I can jump in and out of when the feeling strikes. This thing might just fit that bill perfectly. The whole retro appearance looks fun and Teenage Engineering makes some super cool devices, so this thing has the potential to be a hit.
I think the principal concern is $150 is a little too high to be pocket change for a casual gamer, and that the threshold might make folks who are otherwise interested not jump.
I’m curious how many units Panic needs to sell to break even. Certainly, the Apple community won’t be fazed by the price.
I think you got it just right. Who wants to hang with a “serious” gamer.
I think you got it just right. Who wants to hang with a “serious” gamer.
If you need more delightfully weird and clunky Swedish design in your life, Teenage Engineering’s collab with IKEA is alleged to finally hit stores in July. And some of the announced pieces should conveniently be available in Playdate yellow.