Steven Frank on Playdate

From the Playdate Twitter account:

When Playdate shipped, Panic co-founder Steven wrote a little about what it meant to him. And in the spirit of doing things differently, posted it to a Gopher (!) site.

If you’re up for it, find it here: gopher://stevenf.com:70/0/journal/2022/04/18/first-playdates-shipping.txt

I took a guess that curl could handle a gopher URL, and I was right. From Frank’s piece:

  • It’s OK to take risks with design. In a world of metal and glass slabs, a console that vaguely resembles a slice of Velveeta (R) can’t help but catch your eye. I know everything is kind of depressing recently, but color is OK, shapes are OK, and joyfulness can be a feature.

  • Limitations like monochrome displays and a minimum of buttons and controls are not only rocket fuel for developer creativity, but also broaden Playdate’s appeal to people who may find modern games intimidating or out of reach due to their complexity. Which is not to say that all Playdate games need to be simplistic, but rather that variety is good.

So happy to see Playdates shipping. I’m even happier to see that they’re building such an enthusiastic and clever developer community.

★ Friday, 6 May 2022