Awesome job Matt and congrats!
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I've added 5 more items to my "Prototypes for Playdate" collection.
Free for existing owners, for new buyers price has and will continue to increase +$1 per playable
- Boing (jump & ground pound)
- Cranxious (cut areas off; broken)
- Heno-Heno (Gunpey clone: d-pad to move, a to swap; no removal)
- Parabowl (move ball around)
- Soccer (tech demo: dither/zoom/scroll)
Another blog post
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New blog post from me. I'm trying to keep sales momentum going in my recent Catalog games, but it's very difficult.
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Another week, another project.
Dev log blog post
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This was lovely to click through. Very enjoyable! Thanks for putting this together!
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My game YOYOZO has received a GOTY (Game of the Year) accolade from long-standing technology publication Ars Technica! 
They list my game alongside three masterpieces by my heroes Nintendo! To say I'm humbled to be mentioned in the same breath as Mario, Pikmin and Zelda is an understatement. And to then be compared with such timeless classics as Super Hexagon and Geometry Wars... well... I think I've got something in my eye 
It feels odd writing this in a thread called "Matt's Prototypes" but that was the beginning of my Playdate journey, so I won't be changing it
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This is amazing! Well done and awesome work!
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Awesome stuff! Well deserved 
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Using https://github.com/risolvipro/playdate-mode7 I've been playing with the possibility of a Pilotwings type of game.
Rocket Man
A = low thrust
B = high thrust
D-pad = move/steer
Playable prototype at https://discord.com/channels/675983554655551509/1195449995529293974
8 Likes
One of my games hits Catalog in a couple days time, on 2024-02-27
Super ICARUS started as a game jam entry, and I've refined and improved it since.
Score points by flying close to the edge, but not too close! Colliding will drop mines & make things more difficult. Fly through the centre area to regain energy and generate power-ups.
Check it out!
Promo art
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A look back at the last year of me making stuff for Playdate. What did I finish? What did I abandon? What is still to come?
- 22 projects
- 10 of which were released
- 5 are still to come
- 3 accolades
...I’m pretty happy with that!
https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2024/03/07/a-year-in-the-life-of-a-playdate-game-developer/
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You are prolific! Quite inspiring. Meanwhile, I’ve worked on one little side project off-and-on which, with any luck, I’ll actually release after another year or so of development and tinkering. 
I’m curious…do you track how long you spend on each of your projects?
This is really interesting to see! I wasn't even aware of some of these releases. Great work!
Thank you. It's my main focus, for sure.
Since Sparrow Solitaire, I try to.
Mostly just using git commits and folder dates. I used to use a couple of time tracking apps (Timesink macOS records all apps, Wakatime editor plugin records only coding) but didn't find their output as useful as I'd hoped. I will revisit Wakatime.
Daily Driver turned into such a long drawn out project I stopped tracking it when I moved on to other things. I'd have to check but that was about 6 months work?
For YOYOZO, the first game of my current era, I produced a detailed timeline. Note that they don't all come together as quickly and easily as this one! https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/11/21/yoyozo-how-i-made-a-playdate-game-in-39kb/#timeline
With Fore! Track, I detailed the first half of development with a diary. https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/06/26/ball-und-panzer-golf-making-a-playdate-game-in-a-week/
Most prototypes are a day, or two at most. If it isn't working it's abandoned. If it's still not working after a week then it's either put on hold or abandoned.
I set the scope and feature list when I begin and I'm quite strict about sticking to the plan these days.
For Catalog release I always add scoreboards and do another round of polishing and quality of life features.
Sparrow Solitaire was a huge protect developed in two stretches on of about 6 months and the other of a month or two. I think? And that was two people. So easily over a person-year of time.
If you have any specific questions please let me know!
Thanks! Discovery and marketing is an unsolved problem for me.
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I just installed self-hosted wakapi and imported my old wakatime data, so i'll be using this more actively from now on.
and my frozen-in-time, outdated tracking using TimeSink (started mid-way through Daily Driver, so only representative of a middle section of the development)
...422 hours
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Latest from me
a Peggle type game
Work in progress
https://discord.com/channels/675983554655551509/1219023747105685544
3 Likes
Got sidetracked (welcome to my life) and am making a 1-bit plugin for Figma.
it works currently using keyboard and standard Figma UI, but I want to add a slider and some custom pattern selection UI before I submit/launch it.
So I did some experimenting to figure out the best widths for the dither shade slider.
On twitter there was some interest in these gradients, and because they are all generated in code (63 steps + black + white) here it is
gfx = playdate.graphics
local max = 64
local step = 1/max
local width = 4
-- local width = 6
-- local width = 8
local height = 16
local gradient = gfx.image.new(width*(max+1),height)
gfx.lockFocus(gradient)
for i=0,max do
local dither = 1 - (i*step)
print(string.format("%1.2f", dither))
gfx.setDitherPattern(dither, gfx.image.kDitherTypeBayer8x8)
gfx.fillRect(i*width,0,width,height)
end
gfx.unlockFocus()
-- playdate.datastore.writeImage(gradient, "gradient.gif")
function playdate.update()
gradient:draw(1,1)
end
source: gradient.zip (2.0 KB)
My inspirations are the pattern and shade selectors in such classic Macintosh apps as Deneba Systems' Canvas/artWORKS/UltraPaint which really got everything so right back in 1987, and to a lesser extent Macromedia FreeHand and Claris MacDraw. Whilst these patterns were used as far back as LisaGraph, and in more well-known apps like MacPaint and HyperCard, nobody did the UI as well as Deneba Systems.
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Saw a game on socials called Reflectile that I felt would be a good fit for Playdate. Got permission from the creator to try it as a prototype.
Crank to adjust arrow direction, press A to move in that direction, collect the powerups.
free download: https://gingerbeardman.itch.io/prototypes-for-playdate
Today I made a creative little toy and technical proof of concept for the current Uncrank'd Jam.
Secret feature to be announced just before the end of the jam.
1 Like