An extremely cute little puzzler by the legend Lucas Pope.
It essentially interpolates a simple version of 'paper's please' with a neat crank mechanic and some cleaning/organizing mechanics.

The story is minimal but portrays character nonetheless.

It's clear Pope wanted to keep it minimal but did so with his usual charm and subtle depth.

There's certainly room to apply difficulty if he really wanted to, ultimately the game is extremely easy and there's nothing wrong with that.

a neat take on asteroids that feels great on playdate, had I not come here to review it I'd have lived blissfully with the delusion that it was a true playdate title.
You can decide for yourself if this matters to you, but it does to me.
the fact this was ported elsewhere takes a little something away from it for me...

That said, it's one of the games I find myself coming back to more than any other.

Foddy has long held that he feels "it’s a worthwhile exercise for any game designer to make a chess variant, a dice variant and a Pong variant."

I'd almost call 'Zipper' his soulslike.
Maybe an overstatement, but it is certainly in that realm of risk and repeat, callous brutality, etc... (I know it's a stretch but it felt right so idk)

Zipper is a retro computer era inspired action puzzler that has the player control a samurai on his quest to assassinate a nobleman of sorts.

You move in one of four directions at a time for as many spaces as can be achieved in a straight line. Enemies get as many 'moves' as you do for the most part. You can use the crank to visualize what will happen ahead of committing to a move, every mistake is your fault since you can literally SEE what's about to happen.

After some trial and error you'll easily master this game and see it through.

Zipper is not truly on the scale of 'getting over it' but it's certainly another masterclass in simple game design.

This game kept me coming back until I felt I had it beat, and then i still came back to see if I could do it any better.

Omaze feels like the gold standard of Playdate puzzle games.
This is the Portal of my yellow crank machine.

Genuinely tho, the style and sound design are excellent, the mechanics are just deep enough to be engaging and the game is just long enough to show them off.

Like the original Portal, this game is only long enough to demonstrate and test its ideas, strung together by excellent art design to keep you engaged and make it memorable.

I almost wish they hadn't given me pick-pack-pup before this. That way the 'return the crank' mechanic would have blown my mind. (tbh it still kinda did)

usually i just avoid VNs, they're not my thing, i do not attempt to play them and therefore never have to review them.

but as this was given to me as part of the playdate system itself, i tried it.

probably made it worse that I wasn't aware it was a VN till it was painfully too late.

allegedly this has gameplay, I never got there, I was so wildly frustrated with the boring and gratingly twee dialogue to even reach a 'level'

oh well.

probably a game for fans of steven universe, i have no idea why i think that.