Small screen.
Big opinions.Turn the crank
Unofficial overviews of games for the Playdate handheld. A scored review appears only after the editor has played the game.
Game overviews
No games match these filters.
Three seasons, on this site.
Casual Birder
Move to Bird Town, pull out your camera, crank to focus. A breezy snap-'em-all adventure about cut-throat hobby bird photography. Overview only. No score.
Whitewater Wipeout
Ride a breaking wave and spin the crank for 360s, 720s and beyond before the crest swallows you. Season One's opening score chaser. Overview only. No score.
Boogie Loops
A panda, a bunny, a cactus and a pizza need a beat. Make loops, write a melody and choreograph their dance. A music toy rather than a game. Overview only. No score.
Crankin's Time Travel Adventure
Crankin overslept for his date again. Wind time forwards and backwards with the crank to get him past every hazard. From the creator of Katamari Damacy. Overview only. No score.
Lost Your Marbles
Help Prota find her lost dog Minty, but every choice goes through a buggy marble machine. Tilt it with the crank to steer the ball into an answer. Overview only. No score.
Pick Pack Pup
Pup's first job is at a fulfillment centre. Make matches, box them up, and ship everything at once in a match-3 game where nothing disappears. Overview only. No score.
HYPER METEOR
All weapons are down. Steer with the crank and ram meteors on their white side only. Season One's sharpest arcade game. Overview only. No score.
Zipper
A ridiculously swift swordsman storms a castle. Every dash lets the enemies move too, so preview their response with the crank before you commit. Overview only. No score.
Echoic Memory
Listen, remember, match. A Simon-like sound puzzle where you tune boomboxes with the crank, wrapped in a story about memory and AI assistants. Overview only. No score.
Flipper Lifter
Run the only elevator in the building and crank impatient penguins to their floors, through hotels, mines and outer space, while dodging hungry eagles. Overview only. No score.
Demon Quest '85
An ordinary kid, an ordinary high school, and a book for summoning demons from Hell. Match the right food, music and classmates to each demon. Overview only. No score.
Omaze
An ode to circles. Crank a tiny dot around rotating rings, hop between them, and reach the goal on each single-screen maze. Overview only. No score.
Executive Golf DX
Golf your way up a procedurally generated office tower. Corporate satire meets a side-on golf game that's notably tough. Overview only. No score.
Questy Chess
You're chess program v1, and a software update is coming to overwrite you. Move by chess rules through an RPG-style computer world. Overview only. No score.
Saturday Edition
Ten years after he claimed aliens took him, John Kornfield is back in the news as people vanish under strange lights. A slow, atmospheric adventure. Overview only. No score.
Star Sled
Loop your laser lariat around Sparks, steer clear of Trion Sentries, and take on the Trion Emperor. A vector arcade throwback from Panic. Overview only. No score.
Sasquatchers
Advance Wars meets Pokémon Snap: lead a team of scientist-influencers through creepy woods and line up the perfect cryptid photo with the crank. Overview only. No score.
Snak
Snake plus jump. Hop over your own tail, and bite off the apples that latch onto your back before they reach your head. Overview only. No score.
Inventory Hero
The hero handles the fighting. You handle the backpack: drop the trash, equip the good stuff, save potions, and watch out for rabbits. Overview only. No score.
Spellcorked
Fresh out of witch school, you take potion orders online. Chop, crush and stir with the crank and chase five-star reviews. Overview only. No score.
Battleship Godios
A short, hard shmup where your limited shots bounce back and you have to catch them, and the crank rewinds time when you die. Overview only. No score.
Forrest Byrnes: Up in Smoke
Firewatch's fire-safety mascot races a forest fire, rescuing campers in a randomly assembled side-scroller with a shovel bounce. Overview only. No score.
b360
Breakout turned all the way round: spin your paddle around the whole screen with the crank and guide starship b360 home through space debris. Overview only. No score.
Ratcheteer
An apprentice mechanic searches frozen tunnels for a missing master. A top-down action-adventure where a crank-lit lantern changes how monsters behave. Overview only. No score.
Dig Dig Dino!
Dig up dinosaur bones with no clock and no stress. Upgrade your shovel, drill and radar, and piece together a weirder prehistory than you'd expect. Overview only. No score.
Fulcrum Defender
From the makers of FTL and Into the Breach: crank a turret at the centre of the screen, pick upgrades, and survive the shapes closing in. Overview only. No score.
The Whiteout
In spring 2025 it started snowing and never stopped. A slow, branching survival story in five chapters, with multiple endings. Overview only. No score.
Wheelsprung
A squirrel, a springy dirt bike and a house full of nuts. Thirty-four physics-driven obstacle courses, leaderboards and a level editor. Overview only. No score.
Long Puppy
Your owner has terrible aim. Steer a dachshund's head with the crank, eat to grow longer, and stretch to the ball before the ghost dog arrives. Overview only. No score.
Otto’s Galactic Groove!!
Help a space sea slug find music for an alien producer. A rhythm game where you steer the catch zone with the crank, with 16 original songs and plenty of assist options. Overview only. No score.
CatchaDiablos
Catch demons by drawing chalk circles around them with the crank. The catch: drawing the circle is also the only way you can move. Overview only. No score.
Shadowgate PD
The 1987 castle-of-death adventure, remade for Playdate with new art and music. Expect tricky puzzles, a hungry torch and many, many ways to die. Overview only. No score.
Chance's Lucky Escape
Chance, "the luckiest dog in the world", lurches from car chase to sewer to sinking chair. A short, silly point-and-click that uses the crank, mic and tilt. Overview only. No score.
Tiny Turnip
A turnip makes a wish, sprouts arms and climbs for the sky, hand over hand on the crank. A big, secret-packed metroidvania. Overview only. No score.
Black Hole Havoc
Fight black holes with black holes. Match their size, aim the cannon and fire, across 80 story levels and a score-chasing arcade mode. Overview only. No score.
Taria & Como
Taria can't jump with her "approved" prosthetic, so she swings. A crank-aimed grappling platformer about rescuing her sister from Toxtum Inc. Overview only. No score.
Blippo+
A whole alien TV network in your Playdate: channel-surf Planet Blip's soaps, news and talk shows. Live-action, 1-bit and very strange. Overview only. No score.
Gloom Gate
A knight fights one-on-one duels through a cursed castle. Parry, dodge and level up in a soulslike dungeon crawler with startlingly smooth pre-rendered monsters. Overview only. No score.
Soggy Froggy
Stir the pot with the crank to keep a bathing frog at just the right temperature. From the makers of Root Bear. Overview only. No score.
Bonkhope
A befuddled knight wakes in a coffin deep in a dungeon. A turn-based roguelike from the maker of Long Puppy. Overview only. No score.
houm
Treasure hunters, a vanished owner and a mansion full of bizarre puzzles. A point-and-click adventure in the spirit of the classic MacVentures. Overview only. No score.
Cross Words
Two crossing words on a 5x5 board, scrambled. Slide whole rows and columns to unscramble them inside a target number of moves. Overview only. No score.
Sound Mind
Two siblings, one haunted study, a fortune in doubloons. Take turns hiding, trapping and listening in a pass-the-Playdate game where your rival hears everything. Overview only. No score.
Chance's Lucky Escape 2
Chance is still on the run. A new set of point-and-click chapters, with a secret collectible in each one, from the makers of Chance's Lucky Escape. Overview only. No score.
HELLEVATOR
Ride the HELLEVATOR down through procedurally generated caverns, gathering relics, brewing potions and fighting your way to the source of the tremors. Overview only. No score.
The Crank Index
Buttons only. The crank stays docked.
Optional flourishes and menus.
Core verbs live on the crank.
Built around the crank.