While they seemed to have slowed down now, there was a time where LEGO games based on popular IPs were all the rage. Despite being a fan of the films they were based on, the only one I ever really got into was the LEGO Star Wars series, of which I've played quite a few of their titles. I decided to remedy this by playing LEGO Lord of the Rings, based off of the popular film trilogy. Given that this tile is about a decade newer than the LEGO Star Wars games I was familiar with, it has a number of improvements over that title. The story levels each have a sizable party of characters to switch between depending on the scene, always at least two but sometimes up to nine. Each character typically has an ability that only they can perform, and thus the level design is typically based around a single character moving ahead with their skill, then filling in the path behind them for the others. It's a good enough system, although some of the characters have a lot more utility than others. Samwise and LEGOlas in particular felt much more useful than the rest of the Fellowship. There is also a large open world to join the levels together, with optional secrets and sidequests to perform. I was quite impressed with this at the beginning of the game, as areas like the Shire and Bree are pretty fleshed out. However, not all areas get the same treatment. Minas Tirith and Rohan are surprisingly devoid of interesting landmarks. Being a LEGO game, the gameplay itself is very easy. There are no lives or game overs, the only penalty for death is the loss of currency. If you don't care about this (and I can't say that I did) it can feel like you're just going through the motions. The levels themselves are pretty well thought out, if abridged, versions of what is shown in the films. I didn't care for the boss fights though. Most of them require you to just stand around waiting for the boss to make themselves vulnerable, without any indication of when or where that might be. Pretty much all of them fell flat for me. Overall though, an enjoyable game. I liked the humor and the use of voice clips from the film to provide extra gravitas to the game, although I'm not sure it's unique enough to make me want to jump to another LEGO game soon.

A short and sweet experience, I can't help but compare Donut County to Katamari Damacy... but in reverse. Rather than roll an entire city into a ball, Donut County has you play as a movable hole, growing with every item that falls into it, as you completely consume a scene. It's more of a puzzle game than anything, as the only challenge to this game is recognizing which items can fit in the current size of your hole. Unlike Katamari though, there's no freeform aspect to the game at all. Replaying any of the levels would more or less play out the exact same way. This greatly reduces replayablility, which could be a problem in a game that I was able to finish in one sitting, but I think the gameplay is therapeutic enough to still be fun even in the future. The plot of this game is surprisingly well-written. It has a lot of "Gen Z" humor in the character's motivations and responses to each other, but I found this to be a really fresh and humorous experience. Overall, it's a fun game that executes its premise well. Sure, it's on the shorter side, but I'm not sure there's too much more they could really go with the concept, unless they wanted to really increase the scope.

Now that I'm (mostly) done with the first season of Playdate games, it's time to branch out and see what the rest of the platform has on offer. First up is Binairo, a Sudoku-esque game that isn't available from the Playdate catalog, it instead must be downloaded from Itch.io and sideloaded. Similar to Sudoku, you have either a 6x6 or 8x8 grid of cells that must be filled. These can only be filled with a 0 or a 1, and there are a few simple rules to govern how these can be positioned. This includes things like not having three in a row of any symbol, all rows and columns must be unique, and there must be a matching number of 0s and 1s in every row and column. The game auto-populates enough cells to make the puzzle solvable and off you go. It takes a bit of time to get used to, but I found myself really addicted to this game. There are only a few modes -- easy or hard on either 6x6 or 8x8 sizes -- but it was enough diversity to keep me coming back, even though all the levels are randomly generated. It's a game that is suited very well for the Playdate, and this version is very well implemented. I was particularly impressed with the hint system, which is intelligent enough to always provide the next cell to fill, as well as an explanation as to why that was the next correct move. It's a great implementation of a system that really helps the player get better at the game. There are a few visual bugs, and not all randomly generated puzzle is equal in difficulty, but these are minor complaints for what I think is one of the best puzzle games I've played on the platform to date. It's marginally more annoying to install over downloading a catalog title, but I would recommend this to all Playdate owners, you can't beat free.