Quick Dev Insights #07 - Developing for the Playdate - Ollie Coe

Welcome to Quick Dev Insights. A series of bite-sized interviews with people who work in and around the games industry, from indie to AAA. A full list of these interviews can be found here and you can follow my Twitter to find out when new ones are released!

DEVELOPING FOR THE PLAYDATE

With Ollie Coe

Ollie Coe holding the playdate console with his game 'Time From Earth'

Introduce yourself

Hello! I am Ollie and I have been in and around the games industry for 14 years. Starting at Ubisoft as a PR intern I have worked in various PR, marketing and brand roles for Ubi, Nintendo & The LEGO Group. Back in 2022 I decided that I wanted to start learning how to make my own games and through the Playdate started releasing some small games both on Playdate and then subsequently remade some for Gameboy. I now have 9 launches under my belt and I am currently working on the official remake of Shadowgate for Playdate whilst freelancing for The LEGO Group's creative agency.

What is the Playdate console and how did you get into making games for it?

The Playdate is a little 1-bit handheld console with a crank. It's created by Panic and has become a beacon for interesting and original small games. Personally, I love handhelds and am a sucker for new tech so I started following the progress of the Playdate from the announcement in 2019, literally obsessing over every detail until I could pre-order one (There's a great story about the rollercoaster of developing a physical console on the Official Playdate Podcast). During the time in between the Playdate launching and me getting mine, I managed to ship two games onto the console before even holding one and am still totally obsessed with this little console and everything it means for the games industry.

What do you use to develop for the Playdate?

You'll forgive me if I get some technical information a little wrong but to develop for Playdate you have a few options...You can use their SDK/Lua, you can use Swift OR you can use Panic's custom web-based development platform "Pulp" which very transparently takes inspiration from bitsy by Adam Le Doux. Pulp combined with some great tutorials from the community provided the best platform for me to go from idea to release without having to spend years learning to code etc. Pulp does contain a custom coding language but it's very forgiving (You can also edit pixel art, music, sound etc all in the editor, it's really neat!).

What design considerations are there when developing for the Playdate?

First I will say that I am a complete coward and have not figured out how to program the use of the crank yet but yes, that's a big differentiator. For me though, design by limitation is something that I have thoroughly enjoyed. In the most part, using Pulp you need to design tiles with 8x8, 1-bit pixel art which forces you to be imaginative and bring your creations to life in an almost puzzle-like way as you have no access to colour either. The console has two main buttons plus the crank, so inputs are also completely stripped back. This designing by limitation means that the console's store is full of neat little creative games that present simple and clever ideas in fairly straightforward ways and this is really what I love about the console.

How does distribution work for Playdate games?

When you first buy a Playdate, you get access to 24 games which are automatically uploaded to your console at a cadence of 2 per week. This idea is to have an almost book club style of games delivered to you, so you can discover cool new stuff with your friends weekly. On top of these inbuilt games, you can also sideload games from Itch (It's incredibly user-friendly) and buy games directly from Panic's Catalog store online or on the console directly which contains all the games that Panic love the most. There are now over 1000 games on Itch so the community is really thriving!

Where can people find out more about the Playdate and developing games for it?

Here's where the Playdate community really shines! Firstly, come and hang out on the Playdate Squad Discord, where you'll meet new friends, have access to testing and development help, find out about new games etc. Then you've got the Devstaurant which is Xania's place for loads of awesome projects around the Playdate (Calendars, awards shows, an unofficial magazine etc). There are some great beginner tutorials by SquidGodDev on YouTube (Which I always cite as helping me get started). You also have Playdate: The Unofficial Website, Hello Playdate podcast, Playdate Player on YouTube and lots of other resources for learning about new games.

Where to find more about what you are working on?

The best place to see everything together is on my Linktree where you can find my games on itch, Catalog, some ramblings on Reddit, my efforts at trailers on YouTube and an overview of what I do on my website.