Hand-Cranked Gaming Device

 Despite a year filled with new gaming technology, The Panic Playdate has strangely remained with me.

My favourite technology of 2022 has been the Panic Playdate. It's a long way off. I always bring the same collection of items wherever I go: a laptop, possibly an iPad, a phone, possibly a Switch, possibly a Kindle. That bundle now includes The Playdate. When I go anywhere, I can put it in my pocket. I mess around with the crank and engage in quick games.

The Playdate is a weird mini handheld game console. It's like a mutant Game Boy, an alternate reality Game & Watch. It's an indie thing, a fringe type of prototype-feeling device. The Playdate doesn't play everyday games: just ones in an included season of indie exclusives, plus a bunch of random games made by developers on sites like itch.io.

I reviewed the Playdate back in the spring -- and yeah, I'm still having fun with it.

I was always into things like the Game Boy or the Nintendo Game & Watch when I was a kid. I carried little puzzles and magic tricks and fidgety things to school. I like AirPods for their nice little magnetic flip-case. The Panic Playdate's design alone is appealing. I was sidelined for a month or so this year recovering from surgery, and it stayed by my side, a little buddy I played the indie game Bloom on. I sunk into the story, the simulated text messages from friends in the game, the gardening of a little plot of land with flowers.

I'm usually hopping in and out of VR headsets. The Playdate often felt like the flip side of something that big and fully immersive, and yet it's immersive in its own small, inviting way. Everything about the Playdate's design feels like part of the experience. In a sense, every game made for it feels like a piece of its crank-enabled charm.

Some of the included games on the Playdate's advent-calendar-like Season One are little joys I revisit all the time: Whitewater Wipeout's surfing-high-score challenge, Omaze's kinetic puzzles, the elevator arcade gaming of Flipper Lifter, Pick Pack Pup's match-3 puzzle story, the Asteroids and Tempest-like gaming in b360, Star Sled and Hyper Meteor. The types of games I loved those little handheld Game & Watches for are here in multitudes.

It's not all perfect. The Playdate isn't even available to buy right now, even if you wanted to: it's backordered until 2023. It's not a multiplayer device. I don't use it all the time. The screen is small and it isn't backlit. The battery life is inconsistent. And yet, I remain interested in its games. I keep browsing for new indie efforts on Itch. It's become a little box of mystery. I absolutely adore the whole thing.