After years of teasing, waiting, fawning over screenshots, and now weeks of gameplay, it feels amazing to sit down and write a Playdate review. Panic created the Playdate, you may recognise that name as the studio behind Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game, and assembled it with help from Teenage Engineering (the geniuses behind small synths like the Pocket Operator and the OP-1, if you’re reading this Teenage Engineering, I love you, let’s be friends).
With its tiny yellow form factor, crisp monochrome screen, and the trademark crank on the side, the Playdate is certainly eye-catching and a gadget that any enthusiast will love to have on their shelf. But for the price, it needs to offer much more beyond that. So, does the software and the possibilities of the Playdate impress enough? Well, let’s dive into our Playdate review to find out.
It’s hard to review a brand new console. The Playdate more than most offers an exciting look into what’s possible, with a clear ethos of expressing the joy of playing sitting front and centre in both name and its form factor. The devs behind this clearly just want people to have fun both experiencing and making these games, and it’s easy to get swept away with that as the Playdate is such a colourful bundle of joy.
