The humble Playdate has become one of gaming’s best deals

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The handheld’s new season 3 makes an excellent library of games even better.

The handheld’s new season 3 makes an excellent library of games even better.

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The Playdate, Panic’s tiny yellow handheld that launched in 2022, has slowly but surely become a great deal — which is a good thing, because everything else in gaming has only gotten more expensive. Despite being a weird device with a black-and-white screen and a crank jutting out the side, the Playdate has managed to cultivate a strong and constantly growing library of games. And with the handheld’s new season 3 of games, the deal has only gotten better.

Playdate’s “seasons” are basically curated collections of games that are released over a short period of time. For season 3, there are eight games in total, with two launching weekly over the span of four weeks. The whole thing costs $39, and the season is off to a pretty good start with two games that are indicative of what the overall Playdate experience is like.

One is called Soggy Froggy, and it’s an arcade game about giving a frog a bath. The little guy sits in a cauldron over a fire, and your job is to keep the water at just the right temperature to keep him warm and cozy. Do nothing and the water quickly heats up, but turn the crank and you can cool things down. If the water gets too hot, well, the poor little froggy boils to death. The goal is to keep him alive for as long as possible, making it a game about chasing a high score that’s both cute and morbid. I can’t stop playing.

The other new release is a dungeon-crawling RPG called Gloom Gate. Here the goal is to traverse a sprawling castle, defeating all kinds of monsters and gathering gear and experience points to get stronger. What’s most notable about the game, though, is its 3D graphics, which feel like they shouldn’t be possible on the underpowered Playdate. In each battle you enter into a small arena with an enemy, and you have to dodge, parry, and attack while keeping a close eye on your stamina, which depletes with every action you take. It’s kind of like a stripped-down version of Dark Souls (there are even

The full lineup for season 3 hasn’t been revealed yet, but it’ll also include a word game, hide-and-seek for two players on the same handheld, and a classic Mac-style point-and-click adventure (a trend I can really get behind). It seems like there’s going to be quite a bit of variety, and that really captures what the first few years of the Playdate have been like so far. Between its seasons and the Catalog store, as well as the ability to sideload games from platforms like Itch.io, the handheld has built up a very strong lineup that covers just about every genre you can think of: daily puzzle