All 24 of Playdate’s included games, reviewed (2025)

If you're reading this articlebeforeperusing my full Playdate hardware review, stop right now. Click that link, read today's hardware-specific review, and get the context for why this portion has been broken out to its own space.

Okay, cool. You know what you're in for: a full spoiler-rama overview of all 24 Playdate-exclusive games that come as part of the quirky system's $179 price tag. As an additional spoiler, these titles are listed in their unlock order, since Panic mandates that the games appear on owners' devices as part of a two-per-week download process. (The main system review explains why you might not want to know this stuff just yet, and it includes a spoiler-free breakdown of the system's included games.)

The number next to each game name designates its unlock week, not its rating. (Thus, if you want to spoil only the first four weeks of games, stop once you reach the "5"s.) Ars doesn't score game reviews, but since there are so many titles to pick through, I'm opting for a simple set of distinctions: "thumbs-up," "shoulder shrug," and "thumbs-down." These labels apply to both a game's fun factor and its Playdate uniqueness.

These are miniature reviews, owing as much to the number of games as to their general brevity. If you're looking for massive games, Playdate is not for you.But if you're looking for amassive overview of a system's launch library, strap in.

1:Whitewater Wipeout
Made by: Chuhai Labs
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

Playdate's first unlock for new owners makes sense as a splashy "launch" game. Whitewater Wipeout relies on the crank in a way that would be difficult to replicate with a joystick. The game runs smoothly, and it looks good in black and white.

It also sets Playdate's tone. WW is one of many games in Playdate's first season that revolves around a 1980s arcade mentality of quarter-munching, score-chasing action. Every session begins with your character catching a wave, steering a surfboard, and balancing speed, jumps, and mid-air tricks as you steer away from the wave's dangerous crest. This is all seen from a top-down 2D perspective that resembles the classic surfing mode in California Games, only much smoother. Every session inevitably ends with the wave's crest overtaking you, usually within 90 seconds.

The goal, as with other good quarter-munchers, is to score as much as you can before the wave catches up, which you do primarily by spinning the crank during mid-air wave hops. Rotate your real-life crank 720, 1,080, or 1,440 degrees, and your surfer will respond in kind (so long as the surfer has enough air and speed; it doesn't move one-to-one with your crank). You can rotate the crank over 2,000 degrees in real life in the time it takes your surfer to more realistically turn 1,080.

Thankfully, it's easy to decipher the disconnect between those speeds and adjust accordingly, so basic gameplay feels fun and fair. It's not like a frantic Mario Party minigame that might aggravate you for not recognizing your frantic joystick turns. Playdate's crank is precise. Unlike WW's preview build, the game now offers trick tweaks via the D-pad, and these add spice to the basic gameplay. But I'm still sad that Chuhai Labs didn't add an additional mode to exploit the crank-to-surf mechanic. I previously suggested a "surf through rings" approximation of Wave Race 64, which could've been fun.

But in the Playdate first-season universe, content-filled patches are unlikely for this or any other game. That might be your cup of tea, in terms of games landing as "finished" nuggets of fun instead of stuttering out of the gate with missing content, but younger players should brace themselves for older-school content expectations.

1:Casual Birder
Made by:Diego Garcia, Max Coburn
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

In this Pokemon-like RPG, you take photos of birds, solve mysteries, and tap through conversations with off-kilter NPCs. The game's writing reeks of Gen Z attitude, what with its frequent texting shorthand of phrases like "IDK," and that levity matches the game's art style and "find all the birds" whimsy.

To fill out your bird-o-dex, solve simple puzzles to get birds to fly to convenient points on a screen, at which point you'll tap a button to pull out your camera. Playdate's crank works as the camera's "focus," and the game's 2D world will suddenly take on 3D depth in the form of a pixellated blur for nearby or distant objects like signs and trees. Having never seen "focus" as a mechanic in a 2D game before, I have to say, I am impressed at how nimbly these devs implemented the system.

This is a fantastic first-week unlock for Playdate, owing to its chill pace, charming script, and one-more-bird prodding to keep taking photos and solving puzzles.

2: Crankin's Time-Traveling Adventure
Made by: uvula (Keita Takahashi, Ryan Mohler), Matthew Grimm, Shaun Inman
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

Legendary game-maker Keita Takahashi (Katamari Damacy, Noby Noby Boy) has returned with his best game in years, and it's Playdate's most recognizable game thus far. It was the first game demonstrated during a series of 2019 Playdate expo appearances. It looks cute. And it is as close as Playdate gets to a "mascot" game.

Crankin gets his name from his reliance on Playdate's unique control method, as he's frozen in time until you turn the physical crank forward and backward. Each level in CTTA is a day in his life, and every day, he wakes up realizing he's late for a date. His side-scrolling, run-and-jump path to each date is set in stone, and you wind the crank to move him forward and backward along that path. Stop cranking and he remains frozen, even when he bows to sniff a flower or jumps to grab a pull-up bar—while everything else around him moves in real time. If any moving creature touches him, he returns to the starting point.

Winning each level, then, requires understanding how Crankin will react to static, harmless objects like tea tables and stairs, then going forward and backward in time so that he can "jump" or "duck" to avoid the harmful creatures coming his way. Is a butterfly moving toward you at head height? Crank backward to the point where Crankin had previously stopped to sniff a flower. Is something coming from behind? Crank forward to make sure your hero runs ahead of that danger.

This is the most linear, puzzle-focused game ever made by Takahashi, and the method of surviving and advancing through levels is rarely more intense than "rotate until you find Crankin's perfect animation spot to pause." But that's okay: CTTA does time manipulation in a different way than I've seen since Braid, and most levels are easy to appreciate as standalone puzzles. A few exceptions will push your crank-turning tolerance, however, so be prepared to securely brace your handheld system when, say, a sounder of swine starts chasing your hero at ridiculous speeds. Overall, at least, the game's insane difficulty spikes have been smoothed since its pre-release testing period—while challenge seekers can try to speedrun the game to accumulate "stars."

Moving Crankin forward and backward through time is easier to perfectly control with a rigid crank than with either a joystick or analog triggers. The system's limited processing power is enough to render this game's cute black-and-white characters, all coded with a mix of hand-drawn animation frames and sprite manipulation (thus looking smooth and artful, not like an old Flash game). And the high-contrast screen makes it easy to discern animations that range from adorable to hilarious. Like other Takahashi classics, CTTA's emphasis on humor is boosted hugely by a wacky sound design department, complete with Simlish jibber-jabber and judiciously placed fart noises.

2: Boogie Loops
Made by: May-Li Khoe, Andy Matuschak
Fun factor: Thumbs-down
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-down

Boogie Loops is a music sequencer for the young set, and its limited sound bank and lack of real-time modulation controls make it hard to recommend as a serious sound toy. Use the D-pad and A button to select and change drum and melody sounds on individual loops, then sequence those loops to make something resembling a longer, ever-changing song.

Though Playdate includes both a gyroscope and a crank, Boogie Loops doesn't take advantage of either for trippy, real-time sound-effect options. I'd honestly love to see a DJ or electronic musician take Playdate onto a concert stage and apply turntable-like effects to its sounds via the crank, but Panic representatives made it clear that this is a simple, button-only music app.

As one of Playdate's earliest unlocks, Boogie Loops may benefit from players sticking with it in a form of Stockholm syndrome. Think about being a 1990s kid and only having Mario Paint as a way to express your musical creativity; Boogie Loops will likely charm younger players in a similar way (and they'll arguably do a better job tolerating the app's lack of instructions).

3: Lost Your Marbles
Made by: Sweet Baby Inc. and Friends
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

Compared to Playdate's crank-heavy games, LYM is more selective about when and how it makes you crank. This is largely a visual novel, interrupted by amusing sequences where you rotate the world to choose from dialogue options.

This game's off-kilter story centers on a wacky invention's misfire. While its wacky-scientist creator intended to make an automated decision-making robot, designed to help average people make smarter, quicker decisions, the invention turned out buggy. When it afflicted an unwitting passer-by, it limited her choices to stupid and awkward ones. Not helping matters, this person is trying to find her lost dog.

Her search now requires you to activate this broken invention and drive her silly, inconsequential choices. The invention, which appears whenever someone asks the main character a question, is a cross between a pinball table and a pachinko machine, seen from a 2D perspective. When prompted, you rotate the entire machine with the Playdate's crank to direct a bouncing ball inside. Make that ball slam into a "dialogue orb" three times, and your character will say that orb's phrase out loud as a response.

Each time you use the machine, its pinball-like bounce pads, walls, and hidden nooks are arranged differently, and its funniest and weirdest dialogue orbs are usually the trickiest ones to guide your ball into. As a result, the game's "challenge" comes from how exploratory you want to be within each rotation-heavy mini-puzzle; the results affect the dialogue slightly but not enough to feel too challenging for younger players. I like how this mechanic scales for however carefully or haphazardly you want to play this game, making it a delight to hand to players of any skill range.

Since my initial hands-on with this game, I've grown fonder of its "Playdate difference." Due to its pace and forgiving nature, a pair of L and R analog triggers would arguably work just fine, but the direct feedback of a rigid crank helps younger players and gaming novices neatly dive into the wacky pachinko sequences. This game's hand-drawn characters are delightfully expressive on the clear, high-contrast screen, as well.

3: Pick Pack Pup
Made by:Nic Magnier, Arthur Hamer, Logan Gabriel
Fun factor: Shoulder shrug
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-down

This match-three puzzler does little to differentiate itself from the likes of Bejeweled or Candy Crush. I like its mix of difficulty options, which include an easily approachable story mode (a cute puppy protagonist has to get a job, then offers social commentary about the drudgery of working at an Amazon-like fulfillment center), a pair of hairier challenge modes, and a breezy "chill" mode. But it's otherwise one of the collection's lowlights, even if it offers match-three action without any smartphone-like timers or purchases attached.

Nothing about this game exploits Playdate's functionality in the slightest, though I appreciate this game's devs not unnecessarily shoehorning crank gimmicks where they're not needed.

4: Hyper Meteor
Made by: Vertex Pop
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

This game is loudly inspired by the Atari classic Asteroids, as it puts players in control of a triangle-shaped spaceship in the middle of an asteroid field. The difference here, as you might guess, is Playdate's crank. Your Hyper Meteor ship is always in motion, and you must use the crank to steer your perpetually moving ship. What's more, it destroys approaching asteroids not with lasers but by bumping into them... but only if it collides with their white sides. Touch any black part of an asteroid, and you lose a life.

That's about it, beyond some smart remixes of how increasingly complex asteroid fields appear the further you get in a session.And that's all Hyper Meteor really needs to be. The crank feels perfect for this kind of top-down spaceship-piloting action, and Vertex Pop's design decision to replace lasers with collisions adds impressive tension to a dated arcade-action formula.

4: Zipper
Made by: Bennett Foddy
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

You are a samurai. You want revenge. And you were trained to render judgment incredibly quickly.

In this turn-based adventure, every time your character moves in a straight line over a grid-lined floor, any enemies in the room will move the same number of squares after you do. You can instantly dash from one side of a room to the other, and you'll slice any foes directly to your left or right as you move forward, along with anyone directly in front of you at the end of your dash. But if anyone is left alive after your movement, they will move just as many squares to try to kill you, and they're not limited to straight lines. Moving only one or two steps at a time, meanwhile, will create problems in the long run, as you lose a single point of health after every movement, no matter how long or short it is. Sneaking too slowly in early rooms will lead to your hero dying too early.

In a clever touch, you can use the D-pad to set up your likely movement, then wind the crank. Doing this will show ghost images of any remaining foes moving as if you had confirmed your action, and you'll see who could get into position to deliver a killing blow and end your session. The further you advance through Zipper's compound, the trickier the enemy placement, floor obstacles, and increasingly annoying enemy attacks become. If you die-and-retry (and, trust me, you will), the compound's geometry remains the same, but some puzzle-based elements will shuffle.

I give this game a Playdate-specific thumbs-up because of how striking its art looks on the black-and-white screen. Zipper creator Bennett Foddy has delivered perhaps the most visually arresting ode to famed director Akira Kurosawa I've ever seen in a 2D video game, thanks in part to Playdate's screen restrictions. It might play fine on a standard TV screen, but it definitely looks cooler on Playdate's.

5: Flipper Lifter
Made by: Serenity Forge
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

This is one of the most delightful arcade score-chasers I've ever played, and it lands as a unique mash-up of '80s classics Elevator Action and Mappy. You're an elevator operator in command of a single elevator car, and you score points by picking up squawking penguins and delivering them to their requested floors. Playdate's crank runs your elevator car up and down the floors of whatever place the penguins are hanging out (a hotel, an underground mine shaft, a mountain), and that means you have to near-exactly crank the elevator car to each door's opening before penguins can get in and out.

In my earliest tests, I felt frustrated about the game's exact-cranking requirement; why can't I just tap a D-pad to move the elevator? Then I realized that the game's flow state revolves around matching real-life crank action with virtual elevator shafts, then mastering the system for faster penguin pick-ups and drop-offs. Now I can't imagine this game on a D-pad. It wouldn't feel the same.

In great news, Flipper Lifter's devs at Serenity Forge built five elevator environments in all, each with unique challenge tweaks. The first level mostly works as a tutorial, so it doesn't have a ton of replay value, but the other four environments feel decidedly different. I've enjoyed alternating between each as I revisit the game for high-score attempts.

5: Echoic Memory
Made by: Samantha Kalman, Everest Pipkin, Carol Mertz, Rachelle Viola
Fun factor: Shoulder shrug
Playdate uniqueness: Shoulder shrug

Think of this as an electronic-music version of the board game Simon. Each of its puzzles asks you to listen to an audio snippet, then pick through an array of boomboxes and find the right matching audio in one of them. At first, this is a simple one-to-one audio-matching exercise, but after a few successes, the boomboxes' audio is modulated in ways that slice out crucial frequencies. You'll use Playdate's crank at this point to "tune" the boombox audio and better determine the right match.

I could see younger players getting a kick out of Echoic Memory's unique "match the proper audio" angle, but for me, matching audio was too easy in most of the puzzles—and the crank-to-tune system didn't feel satisfying.This gameplay is paired with a sci-fi gimmick of boomboxes doubling as corrupted Amazon Echo-like digital assistants who've grown sentient. By the game's end, this turns into a compelling story, but the writing is a bit too precious for its own good at first—weird for weirdness' sake, instead of adding compelling world-building.

6: Demon Quest 85
Made by: Alex Ashby, Lawrence Bishop, Duncan Fyfe, Belinda Leung, Jared Emerson-Johnson
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Shoulder shrug

Every step in Demon Quest 85's story is gated behind figuring out a puzzle's solution in a 1980s point-and-click adventure way. Your goal is to use a mysterious book given to you by your brother to summon demons, and each time you summon one, you have to bring the right combination of things to the séance: a type of food, a song on the stereo, and three of your high school classmates (selected from a larger "yearbook" of 15 people). Pick through clues to figure out which combination of items and people (each with their own backstories) makes the most logical sense, then get annoyed when the game's logic is a bit too opaque and try again with a different combination.

I give this a thumbs-up because I like picking through opaque puzzle hints to unlock funny writing and stories—I'm a LucasArts purist through and through—and when you solve DQ85's puzzles, the results are hilarious and memorable. But if rigid puzzle requirements aren't your bag, DQ85 won't change your mind.

6: Omaze
Made by: Gregory Kogos
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

This puzzle-action game is Playdate's only "rotation platformer," and as the first of its genre, it's a tricky one to explain. Hear me out: You're a tiny ball, and you rotate around the circumference of bigger circles to move around. Each level is a maze of these circles touching each other, and you have to get your ball from a start point to a finish. Figuring outhowto move around, between, and through these circles is Omaze's whole point. (Get it? Every level is an "O-maze," or a maze made of big circles.)

Sometimes, your ball's movement will rotate elements inside the circle you're in. Or it might rotate other circles' elements. Or it will open and close doors, forcing you to move from circle to circle in such a way that your rotation shifts the entire on-screen selection of circles. Or maybe some circles have little enemies or guards inside of them, and you have to get your head around whether to quickly rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise to evade them.

While this game is a pain to explain, it's a pleasure to sink into, owing to its utter uniqueness and its frequent shifts between puzzle types as different arrangements of circles appear. And it's a serious flex of Playdate's crank.

7: Executive Golf DX
Made by: davemakes
Fun factor: Thumbs-down
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-down

When I think of "side-scrolling golf," I think of Desert Golfing, which remains one of my favorite indie touchscreen gems thanks to its satisfying swipe-to-swing mechanic.I had hopes that Playdate's Executive Golf DX might deliver similar fun. Only, not so much. There's no "crank to swing" system in place, and core gameplay is frustrating.

Players smack a golf ball around a multi-story office environment, and they must aim through floorboards and between desks, chairs, cabinets, and other detritus to get the ball from one elevator to the next. This seems cute on paper, but in practice, there's no getting around the game's lack of paths to competency. Too many immovable objects get in the way of the shooting paths, and the classic "tap to set power, tap again to set aim" meter doesn't correspond with on-screen content. How far does "full" power go? And what's the point of setting the ball's English if it's impossible to tell what it will or will not bounce off of on its way to your hopeful next path?

I'm not sure that a crank-to-swing option would ease my issues with the game's crowded side-scrolling courses. I typically burn through no less than four strokes to dig out of a crowded spot between a desk and a nearby chair, with only a one or two pixel gap to possibly get my ball the heck out and back into a normal shooting path—only toagainget stuck in another tricky hole. If the game was set up likeminigolf, with more easily tracked putting trajectories, I might feel different, but EGDX's mix of gravity, clutter, and unclear swinging power frequently leave me frustrated.

Here's to hoping someone else tries again with Playdate golf and uses the crank. Even a Desert Golfing clone would do the trick.

7: Questy Chess Role-Playing Chess Simulator
Made by: Dadako
Fun factor: Shoulder shrug
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-down

Move a variety of chess pieces around fixed levels, abiding by typical chess rules for both movement and "attacks." Then keep tabs on a health meter and an inventory of items (switch chess piece types, heal, attack, and so on) in order to survive and beat this chess-themed, turn-based RPG.

Too often, completing Questy Chess levels requires following a rigid series of steps instead of relishing any creative chess-strategy freedom. As the game is currently built, levels must be restarted if players switch to a piece that is unable to move, even though the game otherwise freely allows chesspiece swaps for the sake of puzzle-solving strategies. Its drab art and lack of interesting Playdate integration don't help matters, either. I found some of its chess-as-RPG trappings to be cute and unique, but this game could use another content pass to feel smoother and more fun.

8: Star Sled
Made by:Greg Maletic, Jesus Diaz, Aaron Bel
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

As the system's second Asteroids-like, Star Sled pales in comparison to the accessible, clean-looking action of week 4's Hyper Meteor. In this one, fly around wide-open space, then trigger a "lasso" to ensnare and pick up desired objects while avoiding collisions with debris or enemies.

I might have enjoyed this game more if it had landed on Playdate before Hyper Meteor did, since its twist on Asteroids is unique enough, but as far as replay value is concerned, I keep going back to the earlier option in the collection, not this one. Perhaps that's because Star Sled revolves around short-and-difficult rotation-steering challenges, as opposed to the more open-ended arcade nature of Hyper Meteor. Yet, at its best, Star Sled feels like a lost relic from Nintendo's experimental bit.Trip game series, which might be enough of a sales pitch for certain readers. [Update, 4/20: Thanks to a day-one system update, Star Sled no longer suffers from the frame rate slowdown issues I previously reported.]

8: Saturday Edition
Made by:Chuck Jordan, Jared Emerson-Johnson
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-down

This moody adventure game skips the crank and works like a classic Game Boy game. It also simplifiesthe classic point-and-click paradigm by removing a mouse cursor and the genre's typical variety of "verbs." Instead, your character walks around in slow, side-scrolling fashion while talking to people, examining nearby objects, and using a menu to combine things you've previously picked up.

Your character may or may not have recently died, an idea that is blurred by a shifting timeline and the lead character's not-so-clear grip on reality, and your brief-yet-touching journey revolves around making sense of an existential dilemma. That all plays out in lo-fi pixellated graphics.

One reason I am fond of Saturday Edition is that it stands in stark contrast to the giddy, cartoony fare that dominates Playdate's first season. This is by no means an M-for-mature take on mild puzzle solving. Rather, any kids who get their hands on a Playdate might think they've stumbled upon a grown-up secret hidden among the sillier games and catch the classic-adventuring bug. And getting a full week between this and the next week of game unlocks will help owners focus on its tight, surprising throwback to what games can do within Game Boy-like technology limits.

9: Snak
Made by: Zach Gage,Neven Mrgan
Fun factor: Shoulder shrug
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-down

Imagine the classic Nokia candy bar phone game Snake with a jump button, and you've got Snak. The jump button lets players jump over their body before crashing into it and dying, which might sound like it makes the classic game too easy, but its lead dev Zach Gage adds one spicy wrinkle to even the challenge out. Apples appear on the game field, but these apples can move, and if they touch your snake's body before you eat them, they start crawling on your back. (Do the apples have worms in them? It's unclear on Playdate's small screen.)

The only way to survive once apples start creeping up your snake's body is to jump over your body at the exact point where an apple has clasped on. Do this with proper timing, and you'll bite the apple off as you land on the other side. If an apple crawls far enough to touch your snake's head, then it's game over.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy playing Snak, and any kid who's too young to have ever played the lo-fi original will probably have a fine time here. But this game's combination of simple art, slow refresh rate, and lack of crank-specific quirks make it feel like Playdate season 1 padding.

9: Sasquatchers
Made by:Chuck Jordan, Jared Emerson-Johnson
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

This game's simplest sales pitch is "Advance Wars meets Pokemon Snap." I'm still reeling from the fact that someone combined these two genres, and the resultsare the absolute chocolate-and-peanut-butter combo to put Playdate's library over the top. The game revolves around tactical, turn-based motion in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, only instead of getting into fights, you're trying to attract and take photos of cryptozoological beasts. Your currency isn't battling but rather framing perfect photos—which are taken in a clever, pseudo-3D perspective using the crank—that garner the most "likes" on the game's virtual social media site.

No, wait, don't run away. As someone who detests social media clout chasing, I found that this mechanic opens up the game's tactical muscles to something unique and clever. I'm always looking for fun games that prove challenging and engaging without any killing required, and Sasquatchers does that with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and cool, hand-drawn art design. What's more, the further you get in the game, the more you have to adjust your crew to favor abilities like attracting beasts or opening up field vision, and this tactical spice keeps the game engaging from start to finish.

10: Inventory Hero
Made by:James Moore, Neven Mrgan, Jesus Diaz, Aaron Bell
Fun factor: Thumbs-down
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-down

This idle game asks you to do nothing more than manage the inventory of an auto-battling JRPG hero. While a character automatically engages in turn-based, Final Fantasy-like battles against fantastical beasts, your job is to simply keep tabs on which items your hero picks up during each fight, then either use them, hold onto them, or discard them as appropriate.

There could have been some fun here, but Inventory Hero feels like it needed at least one more pre-production pass as far as its core loop is concerned. Its difficulty is tuned to be far too simplistic, making success in the game all but guaranteed. Players have very few creative decisions to make while choosing what to do with items, and the few exceptions don't make up for frequent downtime periods.

Since it's one of Playdate's later games, I hope Inventory Hero receives a fully blowncontent patch between now and 10 weeks, but, again, Panic reps have indicated that the games we're reviewing are pretty much set in stone.

10: Spellcorked
Made by:Jada Gibbs, Nick Splendorr, Ryan Splendorr, Tony Ghostbrite, A Shell in the Pit (Em Halberstadt), Ryan Kingdom
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

The world of Spellcorked revolves around spells and magic, but the world's witches mostly conduct business via an Etsy-like marketplace. Hence, your email inbox is littered with orders for various magical concoctions, which you prepare by picking out items, then using the crank to smash, slice, or otherwise manipulate them before melting and stirring them into potions.

Much of Spellcorked's fun comes from experimenting with new ingredients and figuring out how your crank-based witchcraft affects each. Sadly, that means the fun runs out once you go through the linear motions of customer orders and learn each recipe, but its charming writing and variety of potions make it a memorable lark while it lasts.

11. Battleship Godios
Made by: TPM.CO SOFT WORKS
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Shoulder shrug

The sole shoot-'em-up ("shmup") in Playdate's first season, Battleship Godios gives off R-Type vibes, yet it comes with a twist I've rarely seen in the genre.Your ship has limited ammunition in the form of bouncy balls. To continue shooting with them, you must position your spacecraft so that you catch the balls when they bounce back in your direction.

Every level is short and focused only on a few enemies, typically in the form of mini-bosses whose vulnerabilities must be figured out and blasted repeatedly. Thanks to how this plays out, it's not hard to move the ship for the sake of retrieving spent, bouncy ammo, or to quit and retry with better information about where to move and blast next time.

The only Playdate-specific feature in this one comes in the form of cranking to rewind time whenever you lose a life, at which point you can either rewind briefly to reposition and blast your foe, or rewind further to a point where you get all of your ammunition back. It's a solid fit for the game's mechanic, at least, but I've since gotten hungry for another Playdate shmup that more intensely leverages the crank—maybe to aim a flamethrower or something. In the meantime, Battleship Godios is fun enough, even if it's scant on content.

11. Forrest Byrnes: Up In Smoke
Made by: Nels Anderson, Christina "castpixel" Neofotistou, A Shell in the Pit (Em Halberstadt), Jared Emerson-Johnson
Fun factor: Shoulder shrug
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-down

Of all the possible games I might have guessed would come to Playdate, this one was nowhere near my bingo card: a roguelike side-scroller that turns the fictional fire-safety mascot from Firewatch into a protagonist, as designed by Firewatch co-creator Nels Anderson. If you're unfamiliar with Firewatch, you may look at this as an uneventful platformer, but knowing how Firewatch plays out, its implications about that game's timeline make its "rescue children from an advancing forest fire" a bit darker. (Firewatch and Playdate's creators at Panic go way back, since Panic published the original game on PC.)

Either way, there's not much to this game. Collect puzzle pieces, Firewatch icons, and trapped kids while running to the right in a mix of pre-made level pieces, slapped together in a roguelike way. The titular character can jump, smack stuff with a shovel, and shovel-bounce (a la Shovel Knight), and in a few instances, Playdate's crank pulls up select objects from wells you encounter. All the while, an advancing fire constantly burns in a left-to-right direction, making backtracking impossible.

However, there's no penalty for skipping collectables, making the risks to catch the tougher ones seem pointless. I wish this platformer had a meatier hook, instead of feeling like an average Mario clone, but it's an inoffensive timewaster. (If you know what "Forrest 64" is, you know what you're in for.)

12. b360
Made by:Dan Messing, Neven Mrgan, Steven Frank, Jesus Diaz, Aaron Bel
Fun factor: Shoulder shrug
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

The arcade classics Arkanoid and Breakout asked their players to move a paddle left and right to reflect bouncy balls before they escaped through the bottom of the screen. b360 is similar, but it leans heavily into Playdate's crank by making the paddle rotate around the entire screen. Whenever the game's bouncy ball is about to escape from the top, bottom, left, or right side, crank in that direction to move your paddle around a circular radius, then try to aim your bounces so that the ball hits and destroys blocks in the field.

Some players may have a better time playing this than me, especially since Playdate's crank is a perfectly responsive control option for urgent paddle movement. But I found the paddle is far too thin to let me get the hang of the control system in its earliest levels since I'm not used to the "reflect off the top or sides" system that this adds to the older Arkanoid model. Worse, it's a lot harder with a full 360 degrees of rotation to aim at the final one or two blocks in a level. When a level drags on for too long, a power-up may emerge to make your paddle temporarily sticky for better aim, but I found that wasn't useful enough for my own b360 failures.

12. Ratcheteer
Made by:Shaun Inman, Matthew Grimm, Charlie Davis
Fun factor: Thumbs-up
Playdate uniqueness: Thumbs-up

Playdate concludes its first season with arguably its meatiest game, a top-down action-adventure that revolves around darkness and light. The first item that your hero picks up from a treasure chest is a lantern, and you'll use Playdate's crank to turn it on while exploring a largely underground map, where rooms often range from dimly lit to entirely pitch-black.

You navigate the game a full room at a time, classic Legend of Zelda style, and the Zelda vibes only get stronger from there. You know the drill: progress through a mix of "overworld" and "dungeon" zones while whacking enemies with a swor—ahem, sorry, a wrench, and pick up new items to unlock previously blocked areas on the map.

Where this game diverges from the Zelda norm is its clever application of items to progress through the world.As an example, different creatures in the game react differently to the lantern's light. Thus, you'll need to alternate between shining light in their eyes, shining the light elsewhere on a screen, or turning your light off to get stubborn monsters to do what you want. Other weapons and items get crank-specific perks, as well, and I'll leave these unspoiled for those who are lucky enough to sink their teeth into Ratcheteer's short-but-sweet campaign.