Lukas

Showed and demoed Owlet's Embrace in Hamburg. Had a lot of fun watching other people play the game and chat about their experience, a really eye-opening perspective shift.

Let the number of authentifications in a row determine the time you'll stay logged in.

Of course a single sign-in is weak so you only get 30 seconds with your account. You better proof that it's *really* you and stack them.

A Link to the Past

Metrics the program could automatically calculate:
- errors, like for the state shown on the right
- the critical path through the game
- how "open" a game is by the number of new edges at any point, over time as a graph
- density of rewards over time

Theorycrafting a game's level flow logic.

Got hit by an idea for a graph-based level logic flow software. You could assign keys to nodes and (complex) conditions to edges.

You would be able to logically and visually step through the world, and the program would derive all kinds of metrics for for any given state.

This gotta exist already?

3 Years Later, Playdate Is Still Gaming's Best-Kept Secret With almost laughably low power, a monochrome screen, and unique controls, niche-micro console Playdate shouldn't make any sense in a world of modern gaming. Yet, it's near impossible not to love it.

With almost laughably low power, a monochrome screen, and unique controls, niche-micro console Playdate shouldn't make any sense in a world of modern gaming. Yet, it's near impossible not to love it. www.wired.com/story/three-...

Equally excited and TERRIFIED to finally do this.

Games journalism is in a rough state, so we've decided to get involved to highlight games that we think pave a positive future for the industry.

And we named the outlet the best/dumbest thing possible.

welcome to noclip_2

And... they’ve done it again. Setting a price lower than most titles of comparable quality, complexity, and scope. While it’s certainly generous for players, which is honestly nice, it also raises the bar in a way that can be truly challenging for other indie devs to match.

silksong, honey...... a 80 hour game does not belong in the $20 price category......
us indies with 20 hour games really need that space for healthy expectations...

Key art of herdling. A painting with a herd of fantastical mountain animals called calicorns in the center. A mountain behind them and a girl in a red hoodie in front of them.

I’d like to talk a little bit about my process of creating the key art for Herdling
(thread: 1/10)

Exclusively working with 1-bit pixel art for over two years now.

The duality of black and white is fascinating: the lack of color makes it seem a bit dull at first but at the same time it's a neutral canvas for your mind to interpret and fill in the gaps i.e. color, tone and emotions.

People don't realize how fast their computers could be. It's a shame.

You can just do stuff, you know?

The thin flip cover's connection already is prone to failure after a good amount of use. The pen is charged 24/7 if stored inside the device so its battery will give up faster (better store it externally). You can't change the device's battery because everything is glued up.

Expensive lesson...

Embracing my inner nerd and going for a Thinkpad T/X 2-in-1 as my new portable machine.

Read great things about the durability/repairability of these models which became important to me after the poor quality of MS - keyboard and pen died after 2, battery and thus full device died after 3.5 years.

Webdev always seems like a special kind of hell to me.

Any particular reason to go with these libraries instead of plain html, css and js first? Afaik all of the libraries build on top of those. Looking to get into webdev at some point, too.

Hey! check out this article written by Ricardo Gallegos at @butwhytho.net about us! and our game CatchaDiablos! :D

A 1-Bit game on the Playdate handheld. A knight is standing battle ready across a giant stone monster

I'm going to present my current Playdate-project next Monday at @indietreff.bsky.social in Hamburg.

It's called

🛡️G l o o m G a t e⚔️

and it's an action RPG with reaction based fights, a node based overworld, Souls-Like elements and still looooots of missing features. But I'm getting there😅

Just by the looks of it you've won already. Amazing, and I can only imagine how it would play like. Promising!

The speedrunner ZeroCounts holding up a yellow Playdate console.

Birds - casual.
Runner - present.
Playdate - crank?!
Join @zerocounts.bsky.social as he winds through Casual Birder🐦 #SGDQ2025

Looking so forward! Name of the podcast is spot-on for this episode.

Our next chat is with @play.date and Panic Studios co-creator, @cabel.panic.com.

Cabel is a designer, developer, and co-founder involved with publishing standout indie games such as Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game, and the Playdate handheld.

Subscribe to stay in the loop: bit.ly/43RMgx9

1-bit cover art of Owlet's Embrace

Excited to release a demo of Owlet's Embrace!

If you own a Playdate, download it over here:
strupf.itch.io/owlets-embrace

I'm also moving the full release into 2026. This is allows me to realize my full vision of the game - nonlinear world, replayability, multiple bosses, fleshed out narrative!

Swapping between (B) to grapple and (B) to attack. The companion's position indicates which mode is active.

What initially started as a workaround for the Playdate's constraints became a natural, intentional and smoothly integrated part of the gameplay.

Photo of the Owlet's Embrace snow area on the Playdate

Mockup for the snow area including subtle parallax foreground elements.

The "bad part" about getting better at making assets is that eventually you redo them not only once but sometimes twice just because you improve so much and the old assets don't hold up against the new ones anymore...

I’m gonna allow myself a moment of pride in my workplace here and note that we are currently on the front page of The Verge with a game we’re publishing (Big Walk) and a handheld console we make (Playdate).

Panic is a company of 30. We don’t have investors. We’ve been around for 28 years 🙂

"The Playdate might be more of a Nintendo console than Nintendo’s own console.

…and at half the price 😉

www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/play...

My favourite picture I took this year in spring so far.

Making sound effects from scratch for the first time is humbling.

What should that action sound like? I mean, exactly, in detail? And how to arrive there? Slowly getting the hang of it.

But the only thing I can focus on in daily life is how all the stuff sounds like.

Usually it makes me think it's like a lesser version of the game being referenced! I prefer genre descriptions, ie "Roguelike-Puzzle Game W/ an Architectural Twist! - Blue Prince" or something like that