Five free Playdate games from the Uncrank'd Cozy Autumn Jam

The Uncrank'd Cozy Playdate Autumn Jam, hosted on itch.io by XaniaLasagna of Uncrank'd, ran from 1 to 18 October (07:00 UTC). It's billed as "vibes over victory": no voting, no rankings. The themes were NIGHTMARE or YIN-YANG, with an optional challenge to make the game playable with only two inputs. The rules also banned AI-generated assets. Five games had been entered when we checked on 19 October, and every one is a free download for Playdate (two are name-your-price).

Dead Water (BitCaliberGames) is the biggest of the five. It's a 1-bit submarine game where you dive for treasure by day, harpoon it and tow it home on a rope. At night the water goes black, machines come out of the wrecks, and night cargo "pays double". There are 16 missions, four dive sites down to 180 metres, and upgrades for armour, gun, harpoon, engine and lamp. Name your own price, 3.3 MB. When we checked it was #3 in itch.io's Playdate top sellers.

Toybox Terror (fifty-leven: Dylan Kleven, Wilson Diebold, music by Nikku4211 and River347) is a tough shoot 'em up. Jimmy's toys come to life in a nightmare and he fights back with his toy spaceship. The developers say it's under 1 MB thanks to the Playdate's built-in synth and a modified Pocketmod.

ORBITOM (toaster, music by AJ Booker) is a space arcade game: you push and pull asteroids towards yourself to rack up points, using the D-pad to move and A to switch between push and pull.

You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the spirit of other dead. (mama) calls itself "a sort of non narrative choose your own adventure ambient loop thing". You tune bagpipe drones against each other during "nightmare time", with dithered VHS-C footage of a Glasgow cemetery. It takes the two-input challenge: the crank and any button. Name your own price, 16 MB.

Nightmare Scenario (Matt A.) is a tiny 59 kB adventure made in Pulp.

All five pages say no generative AI was used. They're sideloads, so you'll need to download the file from itch.io and upload it at play.date/account/sideload. Some also run in the free Playdate Simulator.