The Playdate is a Tiny Game Console that Makes Gaming Fun Again

Reading Time: 18 minutes.

Buy a Playdate. That’s it. That’s the Review.

Oh, you’re still here? Fine, I’ll admit, I didn’t actually think I had the power to send people directly over to a website to buy a little gaming handheld on a title alone, but, you know, it would have been cool for you to humor me.

This is a Playdate blog now.

You see, a few weeks ago, I finally decided to take a swing on that funny little gaming handheld, the Playdate. I remember when it came out. It was from a company that has created or published some fantastic software and a few incredible games in the past, like Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game, both of which I recommend even to non-gamers. The Playdate has a cute design, made by Teenage Engineering, a unique gameplay style, and was full of innovative indie games. But the screen isn’t backlit, it’s reflective. I was worried about buying it because what if I couldn’t play it without a Worm Light or other such accessory? I needed two Worm Lights for the Game Boy Advance! What would I need for this?

Eventually I read more reviews that calmed my nerves about the screen and I realized I wanted to get back into game development on my own time, at my own speed. The Playdate seemed perfect for that. I was mostly excited to develop games for it. I took the plunge and bought a Playdate. When it arrived, I was more excited about making games again than I was about playing them. But then I played the games on the Playdate.

Suddenly, all the little things that stood out as issues with the Playdate, like the black and white screen or the size, became its greatest strength. I fell in love with a gadget in a way that I haven’t loved a gadget since my first Game Boy. Never have I experienced a gaming system so fun, versatile, compact, and packed with joy. The Playdate is joy in a box, and you should buy one.

And if that doesn’t have you convinced, I’ll just have to actually write the rest of this review. It’s okay, I like gushing about the Playdate.

Oh, and Panic did not pay me for this praise. This is 100% natural organic opinions. Farm to table fresh! I bought this, I played games, I bought games, and I even started working on games, all on my own. All opinions my own.

Specs

• Width, without crank: 75.15mm
• Width, with crank: 81.46mm
• Height: 78.05mm
• Thickness: 8.92mm
• Weight: 85g

Basically, it’s about as wide as an iPhone 15, half as tall as it, and much lighter than it. It’s the perfect pocket companion. I wish my phone was this size, although, I suppose my work phone is close to that size.

Controls 9/10

There are buttons. On the face, you get a D-pad, a B button, and an A button. There’s also a menu button on the top right, above the front-facing speaker. On the top, there’s a lock button.

And that’s about it for the controls!

I kid, the real star of the show is the crank. On the side of the Playdate, there’s a crank. It’s not for charging the device, though that would be neat. It’s just for controlling games and interfaces. Think of it like a sideways-mounted joystick. However, it’s a completely unique kind of input type. The only time you see a crank on a game console is usually for a fishing game. However, I haven’t played a single “realistic” fishing game. Not one! It’s as though everyone thought the idea was obvious and decided not to make it. There’s “Reel-istic Fishing,” but it’s anything but realistic fishing!

How Does it Work?

Think of a joystick. You put force on it to push it in a direction and the game registers that direction as input. The crank isn’t that different. It’s just sideways.

The mechanics are different. Looking at the crank head-on, you can’t go from left to right without pointing up first, for example. This changes how you use it. Yes, it’s used for directional input in games. You can rotate your character or point them in a particular direction based on the crank. However, the crank isn’t just a 1:1 thing either. It can measure how fast you change directions and which way you’re rotating it. Attaching a sensor to a crank that can detect the direction the crank is pointing and the amount it’s changing over time gives developers and players a lot of potential to play with.

In one game, it rotates your character around to guide them on their jetpack in 3D space. In another, it points a laser. Real in fish and Robinhood-esque thieves in another. Scroll through books, control the direction of a surfer, pet a virtual pet. It’s more tactile than a joystick, and, more importantly, it’s fresh. People are using it differently, and they’re coming up with unique uses for it. In one game, you use it to slide up into your hat so you can float over obstacles. Who thinks of this stuff?

People have gotten creative, and the crank is incredibly tactile. You’re going to have to use it to really “get” it. It’s more versatile than you’d think, and the creativity around it has been incredible. I love a few games that don’t even use the crank, but it’s always a joy to go ahead and use it.

I should warn you though. Some games, like Touch Egg, require spinning it as fast as you can. Play that too much, and you’ll likely damage your crank. Maybe going hard as you can on a plastic game console isn’t the best idea?

Besides, you’re not breaking my score of 310, so don’t even try. Seriously, don’t, that’s not a challenge. I’m an idiot and likely damaged my Playdate. Just, be cool, okay? You’re going to want to spend years with the Playdate, why break it in the first week?

The Screen 8/10

The Game Boy needed a backlight. I still have my Game Boy Advance on-hand (I think my parents have my Game Boy Color). I was a little late to the Game Boy scene, but I loved that thing. I love handheld gaming. The ability to just sit down, fire up a game, and play it while listening to music or watching TV is the best. Sure, I still like my console games. A few of them have eaten up large chunks of my life (looking at you, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077). But curling up on the couch or playing games in bed will always have a special place in my heart.

Even though I have my Game Boy Advance in my apartment, I’d rather use my Epilogue from Analogue to play my Game Boy games. It runs them on my nice, well-lit computer screen. I have the OG hardware in good shape, and I still chose to use my computer. The screen is just that bad.

So let me tell you, even though I can mirror my Playdate to my computer, I mostly just play it on my Playdate.

Maybe that was a long roundabout way of telling you this, but my anxieties about the screen were definitely blown out of proportion. I can play this even in my usually dim-lit rooms. I prefer to use more light, but it’s not necessary. The screen gets more contrast in bright light, but you’ll find you can still play in dim lights. I even played a bit using a salt lamp! Besides, bright light isn’t as hard to come by now as it was when I was a kid. My space has reading lamps in every room, overlooking every cozy reading spot. Maybe it was because of some kind of Game Boy-related trauma. More likely it’s because I just like to read. The trains I take are well-lit, it’s bright outside, and I have never been in a space where I wanted to play a game, but couldn’t.

I have noticed that, in dark bars, it’s not very useful. However, I could point it towards a light and it would be bright enough to play. But, usually when I’m in a bar, I have other things in mind, like the company I’m with.

How’s It So Different?

The Game Boy screen was an LCD panel buried below a layer of plastic. It needed near-direct light, and intense light at that, to see anything. It needed a backlight, and did not have reflective backing to make external light more efficient The Playdate also has a LCD screen. However, it has a reflective backing, meaning any white pixels show up bright. Black pixels retain some darkness, but the contrast does have a sort of sweet spot. Lots of light and middling light is still nice.

Playdate went out of their way to make sure the screen is sharp, energy efficient, and crisp. The resolution is a respectable 173 PPI, and the contrast is great. If they made a backlight version, I likely would have bought that instead. However, now that I’ve played with the non-backlit Playdate, I’m not sure the loss of battery life would be worth it. With my experience, I may just stick with the normal non-backlit Playdate. These screens are great.

Battery Life and Charging

In my testing, there’s about 8 hours of screen on-game playing time in this battery. That matches Panic’s claims, as well as the observations of other users. What type of game you’re playing could make a difference, but I jump around a lot, from action games to music games, puzzles and mini monsters. There’s a lot of variety on the Playdate, and I’ve been experiencing it all. I even started reading books on it!

One strange aspect, however, has been the battery life reporting. This will tell me I’m below 10% battery, and must charge soon. However, hours of playing games later, and it hasn’t died. I’m beginning to think it could sip power to the end of time any time I’ve tried to wear the battery down to 0% for a battery test. 10% of 8 hours should be around 48 minutes, however I’ve played games for hours, literal hours, waiting for that “10%” battery to drop to 0%.

Charging from a dead battery takes around an hour. While you could charge with just about any USB charging plug or port on your computer, Panic recommends no more than 5V, 2A, or 10W. A 10W charger used to be what powered the iPad, but now with fast charging, 15W is considered average. Still, the battery size is so small you won’t notice it taking too long. You can get up to 15% in just 5 minutes or less, and that’s enough to play a game for at least an hour. In 15 minutes, you can get close to 50%. That’s basically fast charging with lower power consumption. If you forgot to charge your Playdate before going out, you can tell your friends you’ll be 10 minutes late, charge it up, and have enough juice to get there and back, if you’re not driving, of course.

The Games 10/10

The games make the console. The Switch may not be as powerful as the Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5, but it still has plenty of delightful games, some exclusive to the system, that make it a fun console. The Playdate is definitely not a powerful console. However, for driving a 1-bit screen, it’s enough for even 3D games. The standard D-Pad, A, and B buttons make for the kind of games you expect, while the crank can add a fun twist on old classics. In other games, the crank takes center stage.

The Playdate gives developers room to be creative, and they certainly have done just that.

Joy as an Art

The gaming industry is rife with problems. Layoffs, sexual harassment, toxic workplaces, and crunch time show workers have no power in a system that abuses them for profit. But that doesn’t seem to be the case for the Playdate. Here, developers are in charge of what they’re making, and the change in what they produce is dramatic. The community is friendly and welcoming, and often volunteers to work on or even test each other’s projects to make something great. The gaming industry is sick, and the Playdate feels like the cure.

Many of these games come from small teams. A single person building a project themselves, a group of community members who decided to work together, or just some friends with an idea. Watching the credits roll at the end of a Playdate game won’t take more than a few seconds. Some games are autobiographical in nature, being extremely personal renditions of aspects of their lives, like reading a diary written through the abstraction layer of a game.

Some games are old-school arcade style fun. Others add a twist that could only be done with the Playdate. Some reflect more modern games, like Game Boy versions of home console games. Some are action driven, requiring precise inputs. While others are stories waiting to be told.

I have sort of fallen out of love with gaming as I got older. It’s not that I aged out of the joy of gaming, it’s just games largely became not for me. Online shooting galleries with slurs and misogyny in your ear just doesn’t interest me. I still get lost in more story-driven single player games. Life is Strange, Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, Cyberpunk, Baldur’s Gate 3, and many others have pulled me back to games. Some of the innovative and fun games that have grabbed my attention have even been made by Panic, like Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game. It’s strange to think that the same company that produced the spooky and mysterious Firewatch also released the irreverent Untitled Goose Game, but when you realize they did both, it makes the Playdate make sense. Of course it’s all about creativity in gaming. This team clearly loves gaming, and wants it to be both an art form and source of joy.

Every one of these games makes me remember why I love gaming, even the less-polished ones! They’re unique and remind me of those early days when, as a kid, video games seemed like magic. Little worlds I could escape in. The Playdate makes if feel like you’re really wandering around in someone’s imagination. The creativity that goes into these games is marvelous. I feel like a kid again, sitting in my basement, trying to figure out where the hidden blocks are in 4-2 to jump to world 8-1 in Super Mario Bros. Games should be full of wonder, and the Playdate certainly makes that possible.

Playdate Game Seasons

Besides the wonderful games you can find in the Playdate catalog or Itch.io, there are also 24 games that come included in the price of your Playdate! These are sent to users in an interesting way. Each week, for 12 weeks, your Playdate will download two games in the middle of the night. You can skip to the end, downloading all games at once, but I haven’t tried this. I like waking up on a Saturday morning to find my new cool games ready to go.

The games aren’t randomized. You can look up what you’ll get every week, but many people like to have the surprise, so I won’t list them. I’ll just link them. The first two you’ll have when you get your Playdate on day one. First, there’s Whitewater Wipeout, a classic style game about scoring points with surfing. It shows a creative way of using the crank to control your surfer. It’s tough at first, but you’ll catch on. It’s still one of my favorites for a quick play. The other is casual Birder, an RPG about taking photos of birds in a sort of Pokémon parody that has a life and sense of humor all of its own. Here, the crank is used to focus your camera! After that, games range from innovative time travel puzzles to a mini loops app and much more. I’m currently on my fifth week and loving the two games that came out with this release. I’m even still playing the games from the previous week, one of which I haven’t “finished” yet. Many of these games focus on replay value, and I’m sure these will be no different.

Another reason to like the weekly schedule is the time you spend on each game. For example, I didn’t like Whitewater Wipeout very much when I first played it. It felt too finicky, too hard to control. And yet, now I love it, and am at a respectable position in the global high score lists. I had the time to give it a second chance, and ended up loving it.

I took a peek at future games and cannot wait to get to some of them. There are some truly unique games in this list, and getting them included with the price of the Playdate feels like a fun gift. The Playdate alone feels worth the price, but the free games certainly sweeten the deal.

Some of them, I finished and felt like I was done with them for a while. Fortunately, you can offload the game and retain the game save data, in case you ever want to go back to play again. I’m sure I’ll do that with the more story-driven games.

Make Your Own!

Part of the reason I finally bought a Playdate was because I had been feeling like my work was stale. I was thinking back to what initially got me into software: making games. When I looked into what it would take to make a Playdate game, I was surprised. I could learn all of this pretty quickly! It had some familiar ideas, and supported more languages than I realized.

You can write games for the Playdate in Lua, as many developers choose to do. However, if your game is more complex, you may need the efficiency of C, and that’s available to you as well. You can even make games with Swift, and there’s been some support for other programming languages too! Finally, if you’re just getting started in game development, and want to make something simple, you can make a game in Pulpscript. Pulp is a development environment Panic made for the Playdate. You can find the entire system in your browser. Just hop on and start making games. Plenty of games have been made in Pulp, some of them receiving recognition from the larger community. With the Playdate, it seems the community is more interested in making fun, original games, rather than just making games for bragging points. In some of the developer communities I’ve been in, they might scoff at making a game with tools as simple as Pulp. But not this one. Here, people just celebrate creative games, and that makes for something you almost never see online: a wholesome gaming community.

A Community of Makers

Outside of the obvious indie developer community, there’s a separate community of makers who create accessories for the Playdate. My Playdate sits on my desk using a 3D-printed dock. It even has magnets that hold the Playdate in place using the large metal screws on the console. It has a track that holds my USB cable in place to, so I can quickly plug it in when I want to charge it or sideload apps to it. It’s handy as a developer as well, because I frequently need to sideload versions of the apps I’m working on to the Playdate.

Besides that, you can find plenty of other accessories. Handmade cases, a wheel to put over your crank so you can use it differently (great for racing games, I bet!), and even a 3-D printed dock and instructions on how to build a micro controller to use the Playdate as a little writing station! Even some companies have gotten into it. Waterfield makes an excellent little Playdate carrying case that seals magnetically, so it’s fast and easy to get to your Playdate any time. I highly recommend it. There’s even a fan zine! It’s a little device that has inspired all kinds of creativity, and I don’t see the fervor over this little pocket-sized joy machine dying down anytime soon.

Storage Space (4/10)

Let’s switch gears to a few complaints. The Playdate has too many good things going for it. That’s my first complaint. How dare they pack this much good into a small package?

But kidding aside, how dare they? There’s just not enough space for everything!

There are so many amazing games and apps for the Playdate. I can even load up an MP3 player and put music on here. But I’d want to limit the number of songs I carry over to something the size of my iPod Shuffle (it still works!), or about 1GB. There’s so many great things you’d want to put on the Playdate, but you’re limited to 4GB of storage.

Most games are just a few megabytes. I have games on here that are just a few hundred kilobytes. Some are smaller than a single animated gif! My largest game is around 94MB. Your internet connection could likely download it in its entirety in under a second. Most are in the 15-35MB range, with some as small as a few KB. These are small. That comes from those 1-bit graphics and simple textures and lightweight SDK. This is a console made to conserve battery life, processing power, and storage.

But it could still use more storage.

The Playdate has just 4GB of storage. Not enough for some of my playlists, let alone all the games I want to install! And there’s no expandable storage. You can’t just pop in an SD card with all your music, or a USB flash drive. 4GB is all you’ll get. You can use your personal computer as storage. Move your games and data over to your computer and back it up there. You can even use the Playdate catalog itself to back up and re-install your games after you’ve uninstalled them to save space. But I really wish they gave us at least 16Gb. I’m sure they were trying to cut costs and found Playdate games don’t need that much storage, but the fact is, we found far more creative ways to use the Playdate than they may of anticipated, and we could have used more storage space.

The UI 5/10

Most of the UI elements work fine. The menu button pausing your current game and bringing up both a system menu and an in-game menu is great. You can crank or use the direction keys to navigate menus and options and everything works pretty well.

Until you start filling up your home screen. I have 45 games and apps on my home screen, and I have to just scroll through them. They’re in the order you downloaded them, that’s it. Sometimes I’ll delete and re-install my own apps on it just to move them to the top of the list to work on more. Panic needs to add folders. Even if it’s something you have to do with your computer, it’s necessary. Folders and sorting would make this UI perfect. You’d be able to find a puzzle game when you’re in the mood for one, get to your accessory apps when you need some tool, or find your most recent games quickly. Perhaps it can even allow for alphabetical sorting. Just some way to organize these besides which games were the latest you installed.

Connectivity 5/10 (without BT)

Connectivity is another unfortunate downside here. But it might not be forever. First, there’s what is turned on: WiFi. Wifi seems to connect and stay connected well enough. The console can download updates and new games overnight. You can also refresh your game list and download updates at any time, but it’s nice to have it done when you’re not using your console.

The bad news, however, is two-fold. First, it does eat up some battery life. I noticed that it had used up about 20-30% of my battery life overnight once when downloading two library games. This was a dramatic drop, usually it wasn’t this much, but I was surprised when I plugged it in to transfer my own projects onto it that it was down to 50% when it had been around 70-80% the night prior.

Secondly, and this may be due to the first issue, WiFi is slow. These games take minutes to download, despite being only a few megabytes and having hundreds of megabits a second to work with on my network. I’ll save you the math (one megabyte is 8 megabits), these games are downloading far more slowly than they could. Some games that are less than 30MB may take 5 minutes to download. I also noticed that scores for high scores sometimes take long enough to populate that you might think they’re not loading. And global rankings are something I want to see because, in a few of these games, I’m actually not too shabby!

Then there’s the other connectivity option: Bluetooth. The Playdate has Bluetooth. You wouldn’t know it to use it though. Panic hasn’t enabled Bluetooth on the Playdate yet. It could be tied to a long-awaited stereo dock they haven’t released yet. Years have gone by without the release of their Bluetooth stereo dock. Are there issues with Bluetooth? Manufacturing the dock? It’s uncertain. Panic says their Playdate dock is still coming, and we can expect an update sometime this year. Perhaps once Panic releases the Stereo Dock, they’ll also release an update that enables Bluetooth. Until then, you’re stuck with wired headphones, tangles and all.

Or, you know, the speaker on the device. That’s perfectly functional and surprisingly loud. Still, if you’re looking to play a music game, or any other game that depends on stereo sound, you’re going to want headphones.

Sustainability 2.5/10

On one hand, the Playdate is easy to disassemble. On the other hand, it’s not as though Panic set up a store where you could buy replacement parts. You can ask them and they’ll ship you parts for broken items, but I’d love to have things like a backup crank on hand, in case I drop my Playdate while it’s out and break it. I’d like to know I won’t have to wait for a replacement part or a replacement Playdate to arrive. Panic had a garage sale recently, and it seemed buying replacement parts and other Playdate-related items was a key draw. Perhaps it’ll convince them to give in to the hacky nature of the Playdate community.

The packaging had a bit more plastic than I’d like. The cardboard was wrapped in it and the inside had foam. Cardboard packaging would have been preferable here, as always. If you’re going to be throwing it away, it has to be recyclable or at least biodegradable. Unfortunately, the packaging here was less than perfect.

They win a point for some ability to repair the device, but lose for not making parts easily available and packaging plastic. Some users have reported that Playdate does reuse parts from your old Playdate, but simply ships you a replacement if you have a warranty claim. So if your playdate breaks, expect to get a new one. Don’t get too attached, I suppose. This is Playdate’s first hardware product, so I’ll go easy on them, but it won’t change my rating, they could be doing better here.

Gifting

You know, I was thinking, these are so small. They’re perfect stocking stuffers. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could give it to someone pre-loaded with games? Maybe games you think they’ll like, or you know they’ll like because they played them on your Playdate (or the simulator). Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem you could do this. The Playdate has to be tied to an account, and that account has to add its own payment method in order to purchase games. You could buy games on Itch.io and sideload them, but that would still mean going through the process of starting up they’re Playdate and registering it for them.

I thought a gift card to the Playdate catalog might be a good alternative, but that also isn’t something they have yet. Panic knows the Playdate makes an excellent gift. In fact, before it was readily available for order, you could print out a papercraft version to give to someone so they knew they’d be getting a Playdate when it’s ready. It’s an adorable thought, but what I really want to do is give someone a Playdate and the ability to load it up with at least 10 games for free right off the bat.

I suppose I could just Venmo them $30 and say, “Go play?”

One thing I will say: if you buy this for yourself or someone else, buy a cover. Get the bundle with a cover. Buy two covers if you want to change up the colors on occasion. Just be sure to get a cover so you can securely carry your Playdate with you everywhere. You’re going to want to.

Who is the Playdate For?

The easy answer is “everyone!” But that doesn’t narrow things down. It’s for the people who loved games as a kid but now find most of them repetitive, unoriginal, or uninteresting. It’s for the parent who wants something better to do than scrolling Instagram or playing a “Match 3” game in their few minutes of spare time between tasks. It’s for the older generation, the grandparents, sitting around, bored, mostly wishing their family would call or visit. It’s for the hardcore gamer who wants to make their way to the top of global leaderboards. It’s for the kid who wants retro-style games, but also wants to play games that feel fresh. It’s for the people who have fond memories of playing Super Mario Bros as a kid or perhaps with their kids who now want to capture a bit of that magic once more, decades later.

The Playdate is for people looking for a challenge, looking for something better than scrolling through brain rot on TikTok or some addictive game that asks for microtransactions every 5 minutes. The Playdate for people looking for something new, original, fun, inspiring, and cool. Maybe that’s not technically everyone, but I’m sure it’s a lot of you.

Overall 10/10

Listen, I don’t do 10-out-of-10s lightly. A product doesn’t necessarily have to be perfect to get a 10/10, but it has to at least exceed expectations more than it disappoints. Every single product will have its flaws. On the Playdate, it’s:

• The screen requires decent light
• There’s only 4GB of storage
• The WiFi’s slow
• No Bluetooth (YET!)

In some devices, that might be enough to knock it down a few rating levels. However, this device has exceeded my expectations in the most important way.

Does this spark joy?

Yes.

The Playdate is the Miata of gaming consoles. Is it the fastest or most powerful? No. But it’s small, lightweight, and a ton of fun. It makes you fall in love with gaming (or driving) all over again. It reminds you that things can be wonderful.

I don’t often feel much in the way of joy or happiness. I don’t think many people do these days. Everyone just seems kind of miserable. But the Playdate has given me joy. This device is joy in a box. It’s an exciting little world to escape into. It’s the feeling of playing your first video game. It’s wonder. It’s hiking a trail for the first time and being in awe of the view at the top. This is a happiness device. I had no idea it would bring me back to playing an NES for the first time. No clue that it would have games with soundtracks so good you can buy the soundtrack. I didn’t think it could have games that made me feel strong emotions and others that would make me laugh out loud.

I love my Playdate. It’s going to become part of my everyday carry. My constant companion. A little source of joy whenever I need a pick-me-up, distraction, or just want to put a smile on my face for a bit. This little device is packed with fun, imagination, and wonder, and I don’t think I could recommend it enough. So yeah, go grab a Playdate, for yourself, for your friends, maybe for your dog if they’re getting bored of their iPad games. Just go have a little fun. You probably need it more than you realize.

 

Now, Panic, let’s talk stereo dock. When’s that coming out?