Play Dates #1 | From Goose Chaos to Crank Games: Panic’s Journey to Playdate
Welcome to Play Dates a series about all things Playdate from the hardware, software, games, and interviews with developers. This issue #1 will introduce you to the format and the next installment.
Welcome to this new series, Play Dates, where I will curate a list of Playdate games for Panic’s wonderful little 1-bit handheld, the Playdate. This first issue will talk about the little yellow device with a crank, the games released in its first year, and what’s coming up in Season 2. This is an introduction post, and you will see more in-depth interviews and game trailers in future issues.
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Playdate | The 1-Bit Handheld Console
Panic, which was founded in 1997, was best known for releasing software primarily for macOS and iOS. It was nearly a decade later in 2016 that they began publishing video games — the first of which was Firewatch, a fantastic narrative adventure game that, since its release, has been referenced in many indie gaming circles as one of the best games.
This put Panic on the map in the indie gaming world and introduced me to them, considering I wasn’t a big macOS program aficionado. Firewatch released on macOS, and for someone who didn’t have a PC at the time, it was amazing to see it available on Mac at launch — without waiting many years later. I was obsessed with the visual style and voice acting in the game. It’s still to this day one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had and gave me a glimpse into the more cinematic world of video games.
It was only in 2019, when they published Untitled Goose Game, that we could see the full direction Panic Publishing would take. This hilarious game — where you play as a goose causing a ruckus around town — went viral across the internet. Between these first two games, we could see the pendulum swing from deep and thoughtful narrative-driven experiences to a goose making an absolute ass out of a farmer.
This approach was evident in later published games like ARCO and Thank Goodness You’re Here, which balance drama and humility — a thread that continues in the small-scale titles on releasing on the Playdate today. I plan to go a bit more in-depth with the hardware in the next installment, but for now — and with Season Two now available — I’ll be focusing more on the games themselves.
🎮 Firewatch | Steam
🎮 Untitled Goose Game | Steam
Games | Season 1 + Season 2 & Catalog
When you buy a Playdate, you get a full season consisting of 24 games across many genres. You can become a casual bird watcher, arrive late to a date and time travel, or become an inventory management hero. Panic even developed three of the games released in Season One.
One standout title was Casual Birder, made by my buddy Diego Garcia — a bird-watching game with a bit of a twist (or should I say crank). Diego and I met back during the days of Mr. GIF and Tumblr’s rise to fame, making GIFs and revelling in the likes and follows of a generation of GIF-obsessed teens. Diego now teaches intro to 2D animation for games at NYU and has released many games — Sunburn, a gravity puzzle game, Swap Sword, an addicting puzzle game — and you may be familiar with the show The Bear, where he designed the totally real/not real game Ballbreaker.
We were also treated to Crankin Presents Time Travel Adventures, the first game released by Uvula LLC, the studio created by Keita Takahashi (of Katamari fame) and Ryan Mohler. Speaking of which, you can see Crankin in their latest release I just reviewed, titled to a T.
With established and well-known developers, it made for a jam-packed season full of creative uses of the Playdate’s crank.
🎮 Playdate | Season One
Season Two kicked off on May 29, 2025, and over the next months will feature 12 games from many indie developers. They had an update about Season 2 in April 2025 that teased a few of the games, and now we know the whole line-up — which you can see on their website. I wanted to shout out a fellow Substacker
who created Surmount, a mountain-climbing adventure I’m currently playing and loving which was my intro into his work and he also has an ongoing comic, .He has a new game, Long Puppy, coming to Playdate Season Two. We've only seen logo and title designs so far — no spoilers yet — but you know I’ll share anything that comes my way.
As of this post, two releases have dropped: Dig Dig Dino! by Dom2D (Flinthook) & Fáyer (ARCO), and Fulcrum Defender by Subset Games (FTL, Into The Breach). I’ll make longer-form posts about each Season Two game, so be sure to subscribe!
🎮 Playdate | Season Two
Catalog is a highly curated store of Panic’s personal favorites. Developers can submit their game or app to be featured on the main page — but this isn’t the only way to reach Playdate owners. Panic allows sideloading, so you can sell on itch.io or any web store.
Still, getting your game into Catalog often leads to better visibility and higher sales. I spoke to Bumbleborn, whose journey with the Playdate I’ve been following on socials and Discord. It's been amazing to see how he’s stayed humble, even after taking the crown for Playdate Game of the Year at last year’s Playdate Community Awards for his no-combat metroidvania Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll.
Here’s what he had to say about being featured on Catalog and the Playdate:
It's been really good to be on Catalog, I didn't know what to expect but I was hoping to sell 100 copies overall since it was my first real game release. It sold over 300 in the first week and blew past my expectations, it's now at around 3800 copies on Catalog and about 60 copies on Itch.I don't really have the words to express how the experience has been, other than life changing, which I know sounds a bit dramatic but it's changed a lot.
My plan was to hopefully be a full-time indie by 35 and I've been able to start much earlier, in terms of net rev after taxes it's made about $16k which if I'm frugal I can last on for a year so it should cover the next game.
Panic made a great console with the Playdate but making Catalog in the way they have means the little yellow box with a crank will be around for a lot longer than I think anyone expected. - Bumbleborn
🎮 Echo: The Oracle's Scroll | Playdate
You can just see how this little handheld is achieving big dreams for developers. What I love about Panic is how much they want people to create games — they haven’t gatekept developers. They openly discuss how they wholeheartedly allow releases on itch.io or porting to Steam.
I’m no game developer, and my knowledge of coding goes as far as some light editing using HTML, but when I first tried their web browser development tool Pulp, I was blown away. It gives you the opportunity to experiment with Playdate development without paying a fee. In fact, many games in Catalog — and even the curated Seasons — have been developed right in this tool. I will get into Pulp and my limited work with it in the next issue.
Thanks for joining me in this first issue of Play Dates! Next time, I’ll dive a little deeper into the hardware, the official Playdate Podcast, and the latest releases from Season Two. Make sure to subscribe below to be notified when Issue Two drops — and to check out indie game reviews and the weekly gaming newsletter.
I love my play date! It’s fun to just pick up the odd title here and there and have a short session
Really looking forward to more of this series! My partner has desperately been wanting a PlayDate and I've been interested in reading more about their games.