Star Sled is a Playdate space game where you control a spaceship and attempt to encircle all the targets while avoiding obstacles. I'm beginning to realize that the Playdate games I enjoy the most are the ones with discrete levels and an obtainable objective, rather than just arcade style. Star Sled is a good example of this, featuring 30 or so levels where your ship steadily gains new abilities as the game progresses. It has a very clear and well done art style, and is simple to pick up and understand. My one criticism is the controls. This game uses the crank to steer the ship, with two optional settings -- "absolute" mode where the ship always points in the same direction as the crank, or "relative" mode, where the ship turns as a multiple of how much the crank has been turned. Having this option is nice, but neither one really jelled well for me. Since the goal of the game is to constantly encircle things, the turning radius never felt as precise as I would like, but I think that's less a criticism of the game and more a criticism of using a crank as a control scheme. Still, even with somewhat loose controls I quite enjoyed this game and think it's one of the stronger Playdate titles to date.

I think this is the strongest title I've played on playdate so far. It's simple, but makes great use of the crank and offers a compelling arcade experience that when paired with the right(as in 'poor') lighting, you can have a nostalgic glimpse into the past where you're playing Kirby tilt and tumble on the original game boy in between street lights at 9pm. It felt as intuitive as that and with that enjoyable of a mechanic, and i think that was better than the game alone could have been. The inconvenience for something you love, while spinning your goofy crank, tilting your body in an awkward way to catch light.

'Endless' games don't always gel with me so I was pleased when this turned out to be mission focused. I think they could have been slightly longer but it was nice having mechanics chop and change continuously to keep things interesting. Most levels felt pretty fair as well, even if you have to occasionally deal with enemies suddenly spawning just off-screen directly in front of you, giving you very little time to react due to the screen size.

The crank here steers your ship in a similar way to Hyper Meteor (direction dependent on the exact crank position), but there's also an option to change this to be relative to the ship's position on screen.

Star Sled feels quite competent. It didn't ever really click with me, but I'm hesitant to blame the game - it may just be a bad fit for me. I didn't find the controls satisfying to use, they were quite floaty and imprecise in a frustrating way.

The mechanics seemingly change every few minutes, and they drop in and out depending on the mission so I found it quite difficult to get into a groove.. as one minute I am boosting with B, then next the B button is for warping back to my path, then it's for hitting enemies. The aiming felt quite fiddly considering how quickly you have to react at times.

I did manage to finish all the main missions, and one of the "hidden" ones I'd unlocked, but I didn't find compelled to go back and find the rest.