playdate time travel adventure

Crankin's Time Travel Adventure

Crankin loves taking naps, but that is always the cause of more trouble. Being late to work or missing flights, and today he woke from a nap at the exact time he was supposed to meet a date. Advance or rewind Crankin's timeline. Hurry to the meeting place where your loved one, Crankette, is waiting, and apologize for being late. - Crankin's Time Travel Adventure' s game page [1]

Crankin's Time Travel Adventure is a game developed by uvula .

• 3 Mechanics
• 6 Developers [1]
• 7 References

Developers [1]

• Keita Takahashi • Ryan Mohler • Matthew Grimm • Shaun Inman

• ↑ 1.0 1.1 https://play.date/games/crankin/

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It's a new, tiny handheld game system with a bunch of brand-new games. We made Playdate just for fun.

The System.

Playdate is familiar, but unlike anything you've ever seen. It has a very special black and white screen – not backlit, but super reflective – that looks way more amazing than you're probably imagining.

It also has a peppy little processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (coming soon), and a surprisingly loud loudspeaker. And when you're not using it, the screen doesn't turn off – it becomes a very nice low-power clock!

The Design.

Thanks to our friends at Teenage Engineering , Playdate looks incredible . It's colorful. It fits in your pocket. And we worked hard to make sure buttons feel perfectly clicky and that the crank action is silky smooth.

Yes, the crank. Is it a gimmick? Nah. Does it charge Playdate's battery? Nope. Is it really fun? Yes yes yes. It's an analog controller that flips out from the side , allowing you to precisely dial in the action. Not every game uses it, but some really do, like Crankin's Time Travel Adventure, below.

The Season.

Here's the truly unique bit. Playdate isn't just an empty system. Once you set up your Playdate, you'll start to receive two brand new games... every week. For 12 weeks.

That's 24 free games, in lots of genres. Some are short. Some are long. Will you love them all? Probably not. Will you have a great time trying them? Absolutely.

• Casual Birder Diego Garcia, Music by Maxo 

• Crankin's Time Travel Adventure A short description of the game uvula Keita Takahashi & Ryan Mohler, Shaun Inman, Matthew Grimm 

• Demon Quest '85 Lawrence Bishop, Alex Ashby, Duncan Fyfe 

• Echoic Memory Samantha Kalman, Everest Pipkin, Carol Mertz, Rachelle Viola 

• Executive Golf DX davemakes
• Flipper Lifter Serenity Forge
• Forrest Byrnes: Up In Smoke Christina "castpixel" Neofotistou, Nels Anderson
• HYPER METEOR VERTEX POP
• Lost Your Marbles Sweet Baby Inc. and Friends
• Omaze Gregory Kogos
• Pick Pack Pup Nic Magnier, Arthur Hamer, Music by Logan Gabriel
• Questy Chess Dadako
• The Racheteer Shaun Inman, Matthew Grimm, Charlie Davis
• Sasquatchers Chuck Jordan, Music and sound by Jared Emerson-Johnson
• Saturday Edition Chris Makris, Sound by A Shell In The Pit
• Snak Zach Gage
• Spellcorked Jada Gibbs, Nick Splendorr, Ryan Splendorr, Tony Ghostbrite, A Shell in the Pit (Em Halberstadt)
• Whitewater Wipeout Chuhai Labs
• Zipper Bennett Foddy
• Boogie Loops May-Li Khoe, Andy Matuschak, Andres Velasquez
• Battleship Godios TPM.CO SOFT WORKS
• Inventory Hero Panic
• Star Sled Panic

Learn more about the Season One games!

The fun continues with awesome new Playdate games made by developers around the world. You can install our favorites with Catalog , a little game store right on your Playdate.

Your games?

You can also make your own Playdate games. Our SDK is free to download, no special hardware required. And with the Pulp game maker, all you need is a web browser. Plus, sideloading games onto the Playdate is easy.

Big Screen Optional.

If you ever want to play Playdate games on another screen, we've got that covered with the Playdate Mirror app. It's a desktop app that streams gameplay in real-time from your Playdate to a macOS, Windows, or Linux computer. Handy for recording your playthrough or using alternative game controllers.

All for just $199.

Includes the full Season One of games – 24 original Playdate games, delivered weekly, at no extra charge.

Does not include shipping. But you do get a very nice yellow USB-C to USB-A cable.

Also Playdate Stereo Dock

It's a quadruple threat. It charges your Playdate. It looks great on your desk. It's a stereo Bluetooth ® speaker. And it's a pen holder — with a nice pen.

And Playdate Cover

A cute, clean way to protect your Playdate. The Playdate Cover aligns with Playdate's screws and secures itself magnetically. Plus, when folded, it looks like a delicious electronic ice cream sandwich. Check it out!

• 14 days standby clock
• 8 hours active
• 168 MHz Cortex M7
• SDK supports Lua, C
• 8 KB L1 Cache
• 76 × 74 × 9 mm
• See it for yourself
• USB-C to A Cable
• 802.11bgn 2.4GHz Wi-Fi
• Built-In Mono Speaker
• Stereo Headphone Jack
• Condenser Mic + TRRS Mic In
• 400 × 240 1-bit
• Sleep + Menu
• 3-Axis Accelerometer
• Plus Taxes & Shipping

"If we made hardware, and built a tiny little game system that came with lots of surprise games, would that make people happy?"

Who Made It?

Playdate was created by Panic . Since 1999, Panic makes Mac software , and publishes video games like Firewatch , Untitled Goose Game , and Nour: Play With Your Food . Learn more about it from the first episode of the Playdate Podcast!

Stay in Touch!

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The Game Hoard

Playing Every Video Game Ever Released And Reviewing Them Along The Way

Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure (Playdate)

While the quirky little console that is the Playdate was on my radar for a while, what made me sit up and take notice of it was the confirmation that Lucas Pope, creator of such imaginative games as Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn , was developing a game for it. At the time of writing, Pope’s game is still unreleased, but he wasn’t the only auteur who seemed excited by the specific style and control method the Playdate put forward. Keita Takahashi, designer of the delightful Katamari Damacy , created a game that is included with the Playdate’s first season of included titles, but while Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure definitely puts forth a creative way to utilize the crank, it can feel like the actual game design isn’t a great fit for it.

The title Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure does not refer to an adventure through time but instead a poor fellow’s unique method of movement. Crankin appears to be a man made of toy blocks, but luckily he’s found a similarly composed lady named Crankette and managed to set up a date with her for 3 o’clock sharp. However, Crankin can’t help but sleep in, waking up at 3 on the dot and quickly sprinting out of his home to try and make it to Crankette to see if the date can be salvaged. Crankette unfortunately is none too pleased with his tardiness, which she expresses in a few different, sometimes extreme ways like suplexing him or kicking him in the groin. Despite her reactions though, she does seem to be willing to give him many more chances, the game’s 50 levels all contextualized as a new attempt at a date only for Crankin to sleep in until 3 once again. While it can seem a little rough that Crankin constantly suffers at the hands of his date, the game’s official site does say that Crankin enjoys Crankette’s violent overreactions, although each stage does have a point where even Crankette won’t abide how tardy her date is if you don’t make it to her within a reasonable time frame.

Your part in supporting Crankin’s masochistic tendencies comes in the form of the titular time travel. When you spin the Playdate’s crank forward, Crankin will begin his sprint, the speed of your turning determining how quickly he runs. However, Crankin is easily distracted by things in his path, stopping to smell flowers, sitting down for quick drinks, and leaping up to hang onto metal bars. You can’t stop him from doing these things, but in this side-scroller, such actions are not just distractions but also Crankin’s key to survival. His path to Crankette often has aggressive wildlife like birds, pigs, and butterflies as well as dangers like lightning he’ll need to watch out for, but you lack any way to control Crankin besides the crank. However, by spinning the crank backwards, Crankin’s own movements will reverse like you were rewinding him, and if you stop spinning entirely, Crankin will stay in place even if that might leave him floating in midair. As such, the way to avoid lethal collisions is by maneuvering the crank so that Crankin is in the optimal pose to avoid contact, and things like stopping to smell the flowers will cause him to bend down and allow threats like the birds to pass over harmlessly.

Crankin’s movement is the only thing impacted by the crank, the player needing to react to dangers that move in real time by finding where Crankin needs to be or how he needs to be positioned to keep him alive. Crankette’s impatience does mean you have a limited amount of time in a stage to overcome such obstacles and while at first, turning up around 4 o’clock is going to be a loss, later longer stages thankfully allow for more time despite it then becoming less clear how fast you need to be. Each minute is about a second in real time so speed is still vital, but the actual stage design is where this game concept starts to crumble into a frustrating repetitive mess. If Crankin touches an enemy or hazard with even a pixel of his deliberately tall and awkward body, you’ll immediately die and need to retry the stage. You can do so as many times as it takes, but precision with the crank is vital to avoid light brushes that lead to losing a level just because you were a millimeter off in how you position the crank. Setting Crankin’s poses up just right to let dangers pass safely is the main challenge of the game though even if it is perhaps too touchy about how spot on you need to be in order to clear some dangers, and there are some situations where clearing its exacting standards can be satisfying like a particularly difficult late game date where Crankin needs to constantly rise out of and lower himself back into chairs to avoid birds that are flying high and low in a specific rhythm.

It is the level layouts that really start to make the game’s standards grueling rather than engaging. While warning signs appear on the side of the screen to alert you to incoming enemies, they don’t indicate the exact position and the Playdate’s small screen means not only do things like stampeding pigs appear on-screen too soon for you to really react, it can also be easy to lose track of tiny foes like the slowly strolling living feces. With instant death being the punishment, many levels in Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure end up turning into memorization challenges since you can’t actually anticipate what is ahead. You’ll make it a certain distance into the level, hit the foe you couldn’t react to without the foreknowledge, and be made to replay it and hope you have an idea how to get around the danger next time. However, getting back there is complicated by the game demanding perfect positioning to survive at parts, and this gets particularly irritating in the longer stages which necessitate long strings of spot-on crank turning, periods where you have to turn it quickly but stop at just the right moment, and then even after clearing a bunch of small challenges in that stage, it will still unashamedly blindside you with something to kill you and require you to do it all again.

The movement of everything is consistent in Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure down to the exact paths Crankin takes and when enemies will trigger, but this doesn’t alleviate some other issues like the obfuscation of how Crankin will behave when you’re first figuring out a level. Sometime he will ignore flowers rather than sniffing them for example, but the more irritating inconsistencies emerge from stairs. There are many levels where Crankin will need to climb many intertwining staircases where you can’t really determine if he’ll take a turn to a new set or continue on up the one he was already on until the moment you move him forward, meaning again that you can’t determine how safe his travels are until you throw him in face first hoping that you won’t die. When you find smaller staircases in levels this can be used to some interesting effect as at least the pedestal stairs keep all relevant information on screen at once so you can figure out when to move forward or back, but it is still a trial and error experience, just one where it’s easier to gradually figure out since it’s a self-contained puzzle rather than your means of traversing the entire level. Funnily enough, the easy levels end up feeling a bit hollow when you can just overcome them with constant cranking though, some even appearing rather late in the adventure so it ends up becoming hard to find level designs to enjoy since something about them tends to always feel at least a little off. You can retry previous levels and try to earn a heart symbol next to them on the level select screen for clearing a stage rather quickly, but since it would just be throwing yourself harder at the memorization test, it’s not exactly an enticing extra incentive for sticking with Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure beyond those 50 dates.

THE VERDICT : Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure is definitely meant to test your dexterity in handling the Playdate’s crank, but while its harsh standards for perfection in positioning Crankin properly could have been a compelling challenge, the unfortunate pairing of it with instant death dangers you can’t reasonably react to when first encountered ends up making the game frustratingly hard in the wrong ways. Levels become repetitive slogs as you need to make sure your crank is turned just so only for the game to reward that devotion and precision by sloppily throwing an enemy in your face and asking you to do it all again while accounting for the new danger this time. With more screen real estate Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure could have maybe stripped away the trial and error elements and given you the room to react, but as is, this design approach means you’d have to be as much of a glutton for punishment as Crankin to enjoy this title.

And so, I give Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure for Playdate…

A TERRIBLE rating. The hand crank necessitates the Playdate as the console of choice for Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure, and yet the design where all too often something new appears on screen to cheaply kill you could be easily worked around on something with a much larger screen. Being able to plan your forward or reverse movements a little in advance would allow for you to react and better clear levels through the skill in positioning rather than repetitive memorization tests, and there would still be room to figure out things through experimentation since things like the pedestal stairs still would require you to feel out how Crankin will choose to travel up them. Instead though, you’re often denied important details until the split second before they’re relevant meaning you often need to have Crankin already positioned right to survive or else you’ll need to try the whole level over again. With so many stages asking for Crankin to take leaps where he barely avoids brushing over foes or frequent spot-on movements to overcome time sensitive enemy patterns, needing to overcome those trials only to be smacked in the face with something you couldn’t see coming makes the learning process irritating instead of entertaining. If the warning signals were a bit more accurate perhaps that would be a move in the right direction, or if there was a little more room to learn instead of frequent instant deaths, then Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure could better accommodate things instead of leaning so hard into memorization on top of movement perfection. It doesn’t necessarily even need to let you survive a hit and let you clear the level either, if there was just some way to keep moving and figure out the stage before attempting it for real then you could at least get in practice where you aren’t constantly ramming your head against new information you can’t immediately incorporate that is vital to having any success.

Keita Takahashi’s idea of a character who moves forward or back based on the crank’s positioning is one that could have worked well even within this focus on making sure you slip through enemies by maneuvering yourself just so. However, the level layouts lean the game too much towards frequent forced restarts before you even factor in player skill, the memorization sapping the satisfaction of overcoming tough sections since you can never really know if it will be for naught. An unfortunately classic case of difficult elements not having the room needed to make them work properly, Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure feels at odds with Takahashi’s usual more approachable eccentric output and what Playdate players should be introduced to with their second week’s set of gratis games.

• King Salmon: The Big Catch (Genesis/Mega Drive)
• Top Gun: Hard Lock (PS3)

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Playdate review: all it’s cranked up to be

Little, yellow, different.

By Andrew Webster , an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

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Portable gaming has always been a little, let’s say, different. While there have been some attempts at shrinking console gaming down into something that will fit in your hands, many of the best handheld experiences have been downright weird . Think of the Nintendo DS with its dual screens that helped inspire memorable games about walking dogs, doing surgery, and, well, whatever is going on in Electroplankton . There’s something about the smaller scale of these games that often invites creativity from developers.

The Playdate, from first-time hardware maker Panic — best known for its Mac software and publishing games like Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game — takes this idea to the extreme. It’s a tiny yellow square, not much bigger than a credit card, with a black-and-white screen and a crank that juts out of its side. It looks like a Game Boy from a parallel world . And, much like with the DS and its contemporaries, those limitations and distinct features have inspired a library of games unlike anything I’ve ever played: everything from a strategy game about cryptid photography and a turn-based samurai adventure to a role-playing game where all you do is manage inventory.

And, just like with the DS, the best games are ones I couldn’t imagine existing anywhere else.

First, the basics. The Playdate measures in at a scant 76 × 74 × 9mm, a square about the size of a modern smartphone cut in half. It’s probably the cutest dedicated handheld since the Game Boy Micro . About half of that space is taken up by a 400 x 240, 1-bit display capable of outputting visuals in glorious black and white. There is no backlight. Below the screen are a nice, clicky D-pad and two face buttons; a home button rests beside the display. Along the top edge is a sleep button, and the bottom has a USB-C port and headphone jack. The body is a bright yellow plastic with a nice matte texture. Inside, there’s a battery that, in my experience, gets about eight hours of playtime on a single charge. (The Playdate comes with a USB-C cable, but you have to provide your own wall charger.)

Oh yeah, and then there’s a crank on the side of it. It’s a little silver protrusion, about an inch long, that folds into the device when not in use. Basically, it’s another control option that can be used for, well, a variety of things depending on the game. Some use it to scroll through text; others make it a way to control things like spaceships or surfboards. One game utilizes the crank so you can stir up magical potions. It’s not a requirement for Playdate games, which is nice, but it does add something distinct to those that use it.

Overall, aside from the slightly flimsy handle on the crank, it’s a solid, well-made device. (For those curious, the hardware remains the same as it was when I previewed the Playdate last year .) My only real complaint is the lack of a backlight. While it’s nowhere near as bad as, say, the original Game Boy Advance, the Playdate does require decent lighting to play games comfortably. There are a handful of titles that I would’ve loved to play before bed, but it just doesn’t work with the dim display.

The flip side is that, unlike many modern devices, the Playdate works extremely well in bright sunlight. Despite the seemingly low-fi nature of the device, games look crisp and clean, and developers have managed to cram some beautiful visuals onto it — from big, detailed character portraits to dense-but-readable interfaces.

A note on shipping and availability

Panic says that, for those who pre-ordered and are in “group one,” units will start shipping on April 18th. Units for those customers will begin shipping “gradually today and in the coming weeks,” the company says. If you didn’t pre-oder early, the company says that “we’ve already filled our production capacity for 2022, but we’re ramping up to make even more Playdate systems for 2023.” Currently, Panic only has plans to ship units to the US, Canada, Japan, and a number of countries in Europe. Malaysia, where the handheld is manufactured, is not currently on the list of launch countries. You can check out the complete list here .

When it’s asleep, the Playdate displays a simple clock, and you wake it up by pressing the top button twice. The handheld’s interface is simple — it’s mostly just a list of your games along with a settings option — but there’s a certain playfulness to it. You can scroll through a list of big, animated icons using the crank or D-pad, and adjusting the volume sounds like playing a xylophone. The wake-up animation looks like two eyes opening as you press the unlock button. It’s straightforward, which makes sense because this thing is designed to do one thing: play games. And finding what you want to play is incredibly fast and simple.

Outside of its unique look and crank, the Playdate is also notable for how you get access to games. Everyone who buys the handheld will automatically get a season of games, which release over time. (Right now it’s not clear if subsequent seasons will happen.) As soon as you boot up your device and connect it to Wi-Fi, season 1 will begin, and you’ll have two games automatically downloaded to the device every week for 12 weeks.

That’s a total of 24 games, and Panic has pulled in some notable developers to craft the initial batch, including Katamari creator Keita Takahashi and Bennett Foddy, the mind behind the infamous QWOP . When new games are delivered, a white light flashes on the top of the Playdate, and you have to virtually unwrap the icon before you play it. (It’s a bit like digital games on the 3DS but more extravagant). It should also be noted that the games are tiny. The biggest one I have installed right now is just under 160MB, so it’ll likely be a long time before the handheld’s 4GB of storage is anywhere near full.

For the purposes of this review, I wasn’t able to experience the prolonged 12-week rollout. Instead, I had two games delivered every day. This meant that I haven’t been able to spend as much time with these games as I would’ve liked. But even still, I’ve been impressed by the breadth of experiences available. Here, in no particular order, are the 10 games that have stuck with me the most so far.

Inventory Hero

By james moore, neven mrgan, steven frank, jesus diaz, and aaron bell.

Inventory Hero is a bit like an idle RPG, the kind where your character acts on their own. But it’s a lot more frantic. Your hero character runs through the fantasy world of their own accord, slicing up foes, and your only job is managing their inventory as loot comes flying out of bad guys. It sounds simple but there are limited slots and items are tossed at you constantly. You’ll need to keep the hero’s health topped up with potions, constantly replace their damaged armor and weapons, and toss out junk to keep slots open for good gear and items. (Sometimes a bunny will show up in your inventory and just keep breeding until all the slots are full.) It’s a fun twist on a well-worn genre and an ideal portable game for when you only have a few minutes to play.

Sasquatchers

By chuck jordan and jared emerson-johnson.

Imagine Advance Wars , only instead of an army, you’re controlling a squad of monster-hunting influencers. Sasquatchers is a turn-based game where the goal isn’t to defeat the cryptids lurking around but instead take the perfect photo or video of them. There are units with different skills — the host who can take great selfies, the wrangler who can calm down Bigfoot, and more — and you have to manage your health and battery life while exploring dark, dangerous forests. The goal is to take photos that get lots of likes and views, which earn you money, opening up new units and maps. My favorite part is how Sasquatchers uses the crank: it serves as your camera, so you have to turn it around to nail the picture or video you’re attempting. It’s very satisfying.

By Zach Gage and Neven Mrgan

Zach Gage is best known for reinventing classic games ranging from chess to sudoku . On the Playdate, he does the same for Snake . It works a lot like it did on your old Nokia: you control a snake as it twists around a rectangular level, trying not to crash into a wall or your own overlong body. But there are a few twists. In Snak you can jump over your own body, and you earn points by eating apples that float into the level. It’s familiar but just different enough to feel fresh, and there are multiple difficulty levels that increase the speed dramatically for an extra challenge. Snak doesn’t use the crank at all, but it fits the Playdate’s retro aesthetic very well.

Saturday Edition

By chris makris, gord mcgladdery, and alfonso salinas.

Saturday Edition is, essentially, a tiny LucasArts adventure game crammed onto the Playdate’s miniature screen. You play as a man roped into a strange mystery involving dozens of missing people, and, just like in classic point-and-click adventure games, you do that by talking to lots of characters and collecting items to solve puzzles. It’s all fairly straightforward here — don’t expect any of the obscure, frustrating logic puzzles the genre is known for — but I’ve mostly been surprised by how comfortable it’s been to sit back and enjoy a game that’s almost entirely reading on such a small screen.

Questy Chess

This is a game about exploring strange places while (mostly) following the rules of chess. You start as a pawn, moving through a grid-based world that’s like a chessboard that’s been hacked. Initially, you can move one space forward at a time and only diagonally to knock enemies off the board, just like a pawn. From there, there are interesting twists, like treasure chests to refill your health or unlock new pieces (e.g., the knight) to play as for new movement options. On occasion, you’ll need to use the crank to move tiles around in order to proceed. Each level is a short, self-contained puzzle, and the game is rendered with a cryptic tone that makes it feel like you’re inside an old, broken computer.

By Gregory Kogos

If you ever played the excellent and stylish Bit Generations line of games from Nintendo, Omaze will feel familiar. It’s a seemingly basic puzzle game where you rotate a dot around the inside of a maze made up of connected spheres. It makes great use of the crank, which you use to control the dot, and it steadily throws in new concepts — like enemy dots and reversed movement — to keep things interesting. Like the best puzzle games, Omaze is a straightforward concept executed extremely well. And its minimalist visuals mean that it not only looks great but also is always clear about what you need to do.

By Bennett Foddy

Zipper combines the challenge of a turn-based strategy game with the tone of a classic samurai film. You control a samurai fighting their way through a series of rooms and gardens filled with guards. The title comes from how you move; your little samurai can zip across a grid, slashing any enemies it passes along the way. After you move, the guards act, and the challenge lies in strategically planning your movements so that you can eliminate your enemies without giving them the opportunity to strike. It’s also extremely hard thanks to its one-hit deaths: a single mistake and you have to restart the entire game.

Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure

By keita takahashi, ryan mohler, matthew grimm, and shaun inman.

Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure is probably the closest the Playdate has to a showcase game. It’s created by a big name — Keita Takahashi is best known for the seminal Katamari Damacy — and it’s a game built entirely around the crank. The premise is simple: Crankin is late for a date, and he keeps running into obstacles on his way there. These range from surprisingly strong butterflies to hordes of rushing pigs. In order to avoid these, you utilize the crank to control time, fast-forwarding or reversing to move Crankin away from danger. For instance, he always stops to smell flowers, so you can avoid flying enemies by moving him to a flower bed. It’s quirky and fun, and a game that definitely wouldn’t exist on any other platform.

Casual Birder

By diego garcia and max coburn.

Casual Birder is kind of like Pokémon meets… Pokémon Snap . It looks like a 16-bit RPG, but there are no battles or epic quests. Instead, you’re the new resident in a small town obsessed with birding, and your goal is to snap a photo of every kind of bird around. You do this by collecting info from local haunts like the café and pool hall, gathering useful items like worms, and listening for the screech or song of nearby creatures. Once you find a bird, you pull out your camera and utilize the crank to focus the picture for the perfect shot. It’s a breezy little adventure, with some Earthbound -esque silly writing and a copious amount of bird puns.

By Greg Maletic, Jesus Diaz, and Aaron Bell

My favorite use of the crank might just be Star Sled , an arcade-style, top-down spaceship game. Instead of shooting swarms of aliens, your goal is to lasso stars by quickly flying around them. It took some getting used to. (I probably played through the tutorial level a dozen times.) But once I got the handle on using the crank to pilot the ship, it felt incredible. It’s really satisfying making a daring hairpin turn while a drone tries to attack you and you narrowly avoid a dangerous cluster of floating space wreckage. It’s all the more gratifying because one hit — whether you crash into a star, enemy, or some space junk — means instant death.

What’s on offer in the initial batch of games is great, aside from a few clunkers. (There’s a surfing game that I just can’t seem to figure out the controls for.) And even if Panic doesn’t end up commissioning a second season, there’s still a chance the device will have a decently long life through sideloading. Panic has made it fairly easy for developers to make their own games through its Pulp tool and SDK, and getting those games onto your device is similarly straightforward. You can either log on to the Playdate website and upload the file to your device wirelessly or transfer the game via USB after connecting the Playdate to your computer.

I used the wireless method to add Bloom — a charming flower shop simulator developed by RNG Party Games that’s launching alongside the Playdate for $10 — and it only took a few minutes before I was playing. Panic also announced an upcoming app called Catalog where users can buy new games for the device. I’m really excited to see what happens when the Playdate is out in the wild and more people are making games for it, though it’s unclear now what the future will hold in terms of new releases.

We’re in something of a golden age for video game handhelds. The Nintendo Switch is a runaway success , Valve is off to a messy-but-interesting start with the Steam Deck , and Analogue has made classic portable games look better than they ever have . Even mobile gaming is in a good place, thanks to services like Apple Arcade and Xbox Cloud Gaming , along with add-ons like Backbone’s smartphone controllers . There probably has never been a better time to play games on the go.

But even in this crowded landscape, Playdate offers something entirely unique. It’s not a necessary device, one that will transform gaming in the long run, and I don’t expect the next Switch or iPhone will come with a crank for playing games. Instead, it’s more like a strange evolution, a handheld left in the gaming version of the Galápagos Islands to develop in its own way, apart from industry trends. If you want to get away from live service games and microtransactions and the never-ending graphical arms race, the Playdate is the place to do it. Its games are as weird as its design — and that’s what makes them so interesting.

Correction April 18th, 3:30PM ET: An earlier version of this story listed the incorrect developers for Saturday Edition .

Apple opens the App Store to retro game emulators

The playstation vita still rules, best buy geek squad employees report mass layoffs, iphone emulators are allowed now so here are some great ios controllers, elon musk says tesla will reveal its robotaxi on august 8th.

More from this stream The Playdate has been out since April 2022 — here’s how it’s going

You can finally buy a playdate without waiting for months, make a date with your playdate., spice up your playdate with a new cover., back to the future of handheld gaming..

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Crankin's Time Travel Adventure – Review

Review by suprak_the_stud.

Reviewed: 09/11/2023

Worth A Play Date (Or Two)

I was sort of at a low point with my Playdate recently. If you don’t know, the Playdate essentially comes included with 24 games, although they are staggered as part of a “Season 1” series of games for the console. They get automatically downloaded to your console at a rate of two per week, giving you new games to play each and every week for the first three months you have your console. It is a neat idea, somewhat soured by the fact that a lot of the games you get aren’t very good. I had just finished Boogie Loops , which is a game and was so bad it had me questioning if maybe the Playdate was a mistake. I was in desperate need of a good game for the little adorable console, and luckily the other week 2 release for Season 1 was just what the doctor ordered. Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure is weird and unique and fun and, perhaps most importantly, helps make the Playdate feel like a legitimate system that talented developers actually work on.

Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure is brought to us by Keita Takahashi, which might not be a name that immediately jumps out to you. He’s probably better known by the title he’s usually referred to, which is “the crazy person who brought us the original Katamari Damacy games”. And while this game isn’t Katamari Damacy , it doesn’t surprise me to find out they are essentially cousins because this has that same weird, innovative energy that really defined those early Katamari titles. You play as Crankin, a robot with a hot date and a pretty bad sleep disorder. You get a note from the lovely lady (or what passes for lovely in robot ladies) telling you that your date starts at 3:00, which is a bit of a problem because Crankin’s nap time appears to go right until 3:00 every single day. And Crankin must have some sort extra strength cologne or huge wind up crank, because despite being late, Crankin manages to get a date 50 different times. Your goal is to get that sleepy Crankin moving as fast as you can and get him to his date before “too late” because “way too late and you’ll never find love”.

The gameplay here is really unique and fully dependent on the crank. Essentially, crank forward and you’ll move Crankin along, and crank it backwards and it will rewind the movement Crankin just performed in exactly the reverse of the way he just performed it. Movement speed is tied to how fast you crank, so little movements lead to minor adjustments while rotating that crank like you’re trying to haul in a particularly stubborn fish will cause Crankin to speed through the level at full speed as fast as his little robo-feet will let him. Things around him always proceed normally regardless of what Crankin is doing, and it is your job to guide him through the level safely without running into any of the numerous obstacles. It sounds like a fairly simple set up to the gameplay, and that’s because it is. You’re doing everything with the crank and basically just moving Crankin back and forth on his set loop to try and get him to safety. However, it is really impressive all the different ways they come up to test you using this limited gameplay and it is one of those games that only does one thing but does it really, really well.

The difficult part here is making sure Crankin doesn’t bump into the numerous baddies trying to ruin his day. It is all about timing, and while enemies are on a specific cycle, you are able to move Crankin through his cycle either forward or backwards. He has little animation when he comes to certain objects, and for example when he gets to a table he will sit at it, bob his head slightly to take a drink, and then climb up and over it to leap off. So, maybe you’ll have a bird coming at you, and you need to crank until your head starts to bob and then wait for the bird to pass overhead. Or, maybe a pig will be running at the bottom of the screen, and you need to crank until you are on top of the table, and then wait for the pig to pass and then jump over. Things are moving on cycles and it is up to you to align your cycle with the obstacle’s cycle so Crankin doesn’t wind up stampeded by pigs or stepping in poo.

The basic premise here is really strong, and this is a game that feels like it actually has to exist on the Playdate. It justifies the existence of the entire console, while is a pretty remarkable thing to do. I don’t think this is the kind of game that works on another console, honestly. At times you need speed and at times you need exact precision, and the crank allows for both seamlessly without any sort of problem. And swapping back and forth between the two is both a lot of fun and pretty satisfying to pull off. You’ll be cranking like crazy to get Crankin to outrun a pack of crazy pigs, and then immediately need to go more into finesse to make sure the bird flies over your head by the smallest iota of a fraction. I don’t think this sort of gameplay would work with a standard controller, and figuring out those little finesse touches in between bouts of rapid movement is a good example of the crank working really well. The crank might feel a bit like a gimmick, but here is at least one game where it very much needs to be there for the gameplay to work.

I think the most important thing to know about Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure is that it’s fun. It helps that it is a very unique concept, and I don’t think I’ve ever played anything close to this. Moving this character back and forth through his scripted motions to avoid obstacles doesn’t have any close parallels and that’s part of what makes it fun. But at the same time, this is just a really well-made game. That mixture of rapid movement and quick, precise adjustments works really well and there are a bunch of levels here that make the most out of this very limited control scheme. Level design overall is definitely a strength, and it is impressive how they thought of a bunch of different ways to take the central concept here and turn it into something interesting. They have a lot of ways to subvert your expectations, and the game does a good job of showing you how to do a thing and then expecting you to do it perfectly the next time you do it. There is a genuine challenge here because of that, and while the game can be hard at times it never really becomes frustrating. This is a good example of taking a relatively simple concept and just iterating on it in as many clever ways as possible.

Some of the design choices here are really impressive, and this game does an excellent job of taking the limitations of the Playdate into consideration and coming up with ways to prevent them from becoming an issue. For example, the screen is quite small and that seems like it would cause issues from both a design perspective and a gameplay perspective. Aesthetics are always something that the Playdate struggles with, and yet this game feels like it is brimming with personality. Not only is it its own unique thing, but it also happens to be charming and cute and really nails just about every aspect of the design. Things might be small, but it never feels cramped and you can tell exactly what everything is. This seems like it might cause gameplay limitations because if they make things big enough to see, then obviously you’re going to be zoomed in and can’t really see what dangers are running at you. To get around this, the game puts in a bunch of cues to help clue you in. When obstacles are coming from a specific direction, you get a little warning sign on screen telling you so. And then on top of that, you get an audio cue. So the pigs will make pig noises before they show up and the little moving piles of poo make fart sounds. It might not sound like a lot, but a lot of games could learn gameplay design from stuff like this. This could’ve been really frustrating, but the game does a lot to help you be aware where dangers are coming from and what they are so you aren’t dealing with a variety of unfair or frustrating deaths.

There are some issues with the levels design that I should probably bring up before I start getting too positive here. A lot of the levels feel like they rely a bit too much on “guess and test”. There are some good indicators, sure, and those are good examples of the game being clever. But then there are other instances where the game just taps you on the shoulder and gives you a big ol’ middle finger as soon as you turn around. There are a handful of levels where you’ll get to a certain spot and suddenly someone will have fired a pig out of a cannon directly at the weakest spot of your face. There is no way to react in time, and you basically have to start cranking fast before you even get to the spot. The best way to get past this is to know what’s coming, then start cranking as fast as you can as soon as you can. This works fine on repeated attempts, but is going to end in catastrophic failure your first attempt unless you happen to be psychic in which case, why are you even reading this review? You should already know what it says. It is a lazy example of gameplay design, which is a shame because the game is typically very good at steering away from stuff like that.

The game also just falls just a smidge short in terms of content. I mean that in a couple of different ways, and one of the most notable ones is in the literal length of the game. There are only 50 levels here and while some of them will take you a little bit, I doubt this whole experience lasts much longer than 3 hours or so. It feels like it could’ve been just a bit longer, which is the other way the game feels a bit short on content. They could’ve done more here, and the game likes to reuse the same handful of obstacles and ideas a bit too much. You have the birds and the butterflies and the pigs and then the game sits and thinks for a while and sends out the birds and butterflies and pigs again. Don’t get me wrong – they do some really interesting stuff in some of the levels here and they make the most out of the obstacles. But, at the same time, there are some levels here that feel a bit phoned in and that aren’t quite as creative, and it is when I was playing these levels that I found myself wishing they had mixed things a bit more. It is a short game and a game that feels like it needed a couple of more tricks to really, truly be great.

I do really like the style of this game, and while the Playdate isn’t going to blow anyone away with its technical prowess, I feel like this game is one of the best I’ve played at really succeeding with the limitations it was saddled with. It is a small screen but it looks good, and the game has a very distinct style that it does well with. Animations are big and fluid, and the game does a good job making sure you can see what’s going on without overly cramping the screen. And the sound is actually a lot of fun here. The various sound effects for the enemies and obstacles are great, and it feels like a very competently put together game. There are a lot of games on the Playdate that feel pretty amateurish, but this one definitely has the feel of something made by someone who actually knew what they were doing.

I had some complaints about Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure , but overall this was a very satisfying experience. I feel bad complaining as much as I did here, because I did largely like this game. In fact, here’s some very high praise I’ll say as an apology: Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure was so good it restored my faith in an entire system. It feels like a game that has to be on the Playdate, and it shows off what the Playdate can do that other console can’t. I was sort of at a low point with the console with some of the other games I had played on it recently, and Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure picked me back up and dusted off my jacket before running off to get suplexed by its abusive girlfriend. This game is innovative and unique and I’m not sure I’ve ever really played a game like this before. Sure, it is too short and yes it relies too much on guessing and testing to get through levels. I’m not saying its perfect, but it is thoroughly enjoyable and full of personality. I hope the Playdate has more games like this in store, because otherwise I’m going to be relying on Crankin to turn back time and let me start the whole thing all over again.

Cranked Up (THE GOOD):

• Fantastic use of the crank and this really feels like a game that has to be on the Playdate
• Weird and unique and charming and absolutely its own thing
• The sort of precision you need to pull off a lot of the movement here is great
• Good level of challenge, and perfecting one of the tougher levels feels rewarding
• Very clever gameplay that is a surprising amount of fun
• Lots of personality, and it is one of the most impressive games on the Playdate
• Manages to overcome some of the limitations of the system and they do a really good job optimizing everything

Cranky (THE BAD):

• Pretty short, and it wraps up about half as quickly as it should
• A lot of guess and test type gameplay, and some obstacles are impossible to avoid your first time through
• Feels like it could use a handful more tricks or enemies to keep things fresh throughout
• A handful of the levels here feel like throwaways, which is a bit of an issue when there’s only fifty of them

Crunked (THE UGLY): You know, for a game called Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure , there is shockingly little time travel here. You move Crankin back and forth through the level, sure, but time keeps moving in a normal fashion no matter what you do. So, I guess, the amount of time travel here is actually zero unless you are being super literal and are counting the linear progression of time at its normal rate as technically counting as “travelling through time”. You know what, I take back all the nice things I had to say. This game is awful.

THE VERDICT: 7.25/10.00

• Rating:   7
• Product Release: Crankin's Time Travel Adventure (US, 04/25/2022)

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Crankin's Time Travel Adventure

• View history

Crankin's Time Travel Adventure is a launch title for the Playdate handheld console. [1]

• 2 Characters
• 3 Crankin's Punishments
• 6 References

Gameplay [ ]

The game utilizes the Playdate's crank design. The player controls Crankin, a robot who overslept for an important date with his girlfriend, Crankette. Crankin must now hurry to meet up with Crankette, but there are many obstacles in his path. The player must use the Playdate's crank to either advance or rewind time, so Crankin can avoid the obstacles and meet up with his girlfriend. [2]

Characters [ ]

Crankin's punishments [ ].

Listed below are all the possible ways Crankin is punished by Crankette for being late:

• Punches him
• Chews him out
• Kicks him in the groin
• Suplexes him
• Looks away from him
• Turns into a fairy and uses magic to drop the chapel bell on him (Only happens on the Last Date, and only if Crankin's late)
• Donkey kicks him, gives him a haymaker, and uppercuts him (Ending sequence)
• The clock acts more like a timer, at it moves as if the minutes are seconds (ex: "3:10 AM" means that ten seconds have passed, not minutes).
• It's literally impossible for Crankin to meet up with Crankette on time, as each level starts at 3;00 AM, the time Crankette always wishes to meet up at.
• However, the 50th level (a.k.a. "The Last Date"), is the only level where Crankin wakes up at a time earlier than 3:00 AM (2:30 AM, to be exact), thus it's the only level where it's possible to meet up with Crankette on time.
• The Last Date is the easiest level besides the very first one, as there are no obstacles or gimmicks whatsoever. The player is instead encouraged to turn the Playdate's crank as fast as possible, in order for Crankin to meet up with his girlfriend on time,
• It's hinted that Crankin oversleeps on purpose, as it's stated in his profile that he likes getting hurt by Crankette as punishment for being late.

Gallery [ ]

References [ ]

• ↑ Crankin's Time Travel Adventure on Playdate's website
• ↑ Crankin's Time Travel Adveture on Uvula's website
• 2 The Prince
• 3 The King of All Cosmos

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• Impressions

Playdate is a throwback to the simple days of Game Boy, for better and worse

Before you pre-order the Playdate, learn if it’s a good fit for you

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The Playdate isn’t the future of portable video games. Not that it wants to be .

Considering that we can run Crysis on electric cars and stream Minecraft on smart refrigerators, the Playdate is unapologetically, pleasantly, and occasionally frustratingly old-fashioned. It looks like the Game Boy, only smaller and thinner and school-bus yellow. It lacks a backlight for its screen, let alone the table stakes of modern video games like online multiplayer and achievements.

Rather than chase what’s next, the Playdate echoes and amplifies all the quirks of portable games in the early 1990s, when playing video games on the go meant lots of little compromises that would infuriate most folks raised on the many conveniences of the Nintendo Switch.

To misquote the tagline of a dead website that similarly sought to imitate the glory days of a lost time: “It’s not for everyone. But maybe it’s for you.”

What is the Playdate and how does it work?

After a couple of weeks with the device, I’m still not sure when I’d prefer to play the Playdate instead of my other options, though I’m charmed enough by its potential to watch its creators and its audience make sense of this little oddity.

It sits in your hands like a boutique toy, a sturdy slab of plastic, metal, and electronics, a little smaller than a Polaroid picture and about as thick as a pencil. Like the Game Boy, it only has two main buttons, a directional pad, and a monochrome screen. As I said, there’s no backlight, so be prepared to go outside or sit near a lamp.

With a gentle tug, a diminutive crank pops loose from its right side, allowing you to control games the way you’d reel in a fish. Even this new addition feels intentionally old school, the analog control having more in common with a jack-in-the-box than Joy-Cons. So far, I’ve found myself preferring the traditional controls of its two face buttons and directional pad, though I’ve only tried four of the 24 games that will launch over the console’s first 12 weeks.

Speaking of: Because a minimal portable game console is only as good as its minimal portable games, here are my brief impressions of the games, which fall somewhere between the cheeky microgames of WarioWare and the novelties of the original NES.

Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure lets you crank the Playdate handle to move time forward and backward in hopes of getting a robot to their date on time. Twirling the crank in one direction sends it skipping forward, while the other direction reverses its motion. The rest of the world perpetually moves forward in time and at a regular pace, so you must move the robot forward and backward to evade obstacles. It’s quite cute, like all games by its co-creator Keita Takahashi, best known for Katamari Damacy . And like many of his other games, its slow pace and repetition are an acquired taste.

Lost Your Marbles has you solve puzzles by navigating a marble across a 2D environment, using the Playdate’s crank to rotate the world, shifting the pull of gravity on the little ball. It’s visually simplistic, akin to a calculator game aesthetic. Nudging the marble across the screen is also the most fun I’ve had with the Playdate, maybe because it feels (as with so many calculator games in the 1990s) like its creators had manipulated the device to do something it wasn’t meant to. This pinch of magic has given me hope that the crank is more than a gimmick.

Saturday Edition drops you into a moody adventure game in the spirit of Maniac Mansion and the LucasArts games of the 1990s. The art style is exceptional, using close-ups of objects to make the tiny screen feel like a magnifying glass.

And lastly, we have Whitewater Wipeout , a surfing game controlled with the crank, steering the surfer left and right. A tap on the directional pad at the right moment sends the surfer dude off the crest and into the air. At first, the controls infuriated me, though I have no doubt a small group of people will devote themselves to mastering the twisty twerk, much like I put too much time into California Games because I rented it from Blockbuster for the weekend and I’d be damned if I didn’t force myself to have some fun.

The games I didn’t get to play are just as interesting as the ones I did . We’ve still yet to try the Playdate games co-created by some of our favorite designers, like Bennett Foddy, Zach Gage, Diego Garcia, and many others. That may be the real hook of the Playdate: not the system itself or even the quality of individual games, but the pleasure of receiving new games that will appear on the device across regular seasons. In the same way, we don’t expect an episode of TV to necessarily stand on its own, I have some hope that Playdate’s catalog will be more enjoyable as a complete season.

Nintendo Switch this isn’t. But the Playdate’s creators have nonetheless gotten in touch with an energy and inventiveness similar to what Nintendo has nurtured for the past 40 years. Early Nintendo hardware provided just enough power for hundreds of small games studios to make plenty of junk, many novel distractions, and even a few classics that fit comfortably on Nintendo’s infinitely more powerful modern devices. Playdate appears to be making a comparable (albeit much smaller) bet.

So no, this isn’t the future of video games, but it’s a promising historical revision of a world in which some of the world’s best game makers ignored the world of complex big-budget games and invested their time and talent into a smaller, cheaper, more accessible gizmo. Because despite what tech companies will tell you, great ideas aren’t inherently limited by raw computing power. They’re limited because they need an audience and a home. Maybe Playdate can provide both.

Playdate pre-orders will begin on July 29 at 1 p.m. EDT .

The Playdate was tested with a pre-release product provided by Panic, Inc. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here .

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crank: high voltage —

Playdate, the console with a crank, gets july preorder for $179, game details, today's news: 24 "season one" games, optional stereo, free browser-based dev kit..

Sam Machkovech - Jun 8, 2021 4:19 pm UTC

• The Playdate has an optional "stereo dock" attachment, sold at an additional cost, which charges your hardware and props it up for storage or display. And it comes with a pen, too. Panic
• I'll be honest: My interest in the Playdate as a portable game system skyrocketed when I knew it could double as an '80s-style alarm clock.
• You can let the console's monochrome display rotate through various game images while docked.
• Side view of how big the dock is. The actual hardware is much, much thinner.
• A reminder that you don't have to buy the dock to enjoy the Playdate handheld experience. Here, you can see a small tease of Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure , which will be part of the device's first season of included games.
• Size perspective, as shown by one of Playdate's team members.
• What goes better with a bright yellow portable console than a bright purple case? We're still waiting to find out; Panic declined to send this $29 cover to members of the press ahead of the system's launch, so we can't tell you how it works in practice. Panic
• Some real GameCube vibes with this choice of purple.
• Indentations to let the buttons breathe.
• Playdate's final retail box.
• Lucas Pope, creator of Papers, Please , teased his exclusive Playdate game during the presentation, dubbed Mars After Midnight . It asks players to use the crank and d-pad to operate the front door of a bar on an alien planet.
• One of Mars After Midnight 's many aliens, rendered in pseudo-3D.

On Tuesday, Playdate , the portable, one-bit gaming system with an analog crank as a primary control option, took one more step toward being a bonafide thing you can buy.

The diminutive portable system's creators at Panic (publishers of games like Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game ) hosted their first-ever Playdate Update video today (embedded below) and confirmed that the hardware will launch to paying customers "later this year," with preorders beginning "in July," starting at $179.

That price will include the system's complete "first season" of Playdate-exclusive games, and Panic had originally pledged to include 12 games in all with the purchase price. Today's presentation included a welcome surprise:  double the included games. Now, Playdate owners can expect to get two games a week as free downloads over a span of 12 weeks (which, if my calculator is correct, means 24 games in all).

Panic remains committed to its plan to "surprise" system owners with free downloads of entirely new games, so today's video didn't include lengthy game reveals. In the meantime, we've been given 21 of the Season One games' titles, along with a list of participating developers (embedded at the article's end). The indie-heavy developer list includes Keita Takahashi ( Katamari Damacy ), Nels Anderson ( Firewatch ), Giles Goddard ( 1080 Snowboarding ), Bennett Foddy ( Getting Over It ), and Zach Gage ( Spelltower ), along with tons of lesser-known devs whose work has impressed us over the years.

Preorder assurances, accessories, free online dev tools

Today's news is careful to clarify that "there will be at least a week's warning" before Playdate preorders begin in July, along with other assurances about trying to make the ordering process a "pleasant" experience. "Surely, something will go wrong," Panic's Cabel Sasser said, "so thanks in advance for your patience with whatever that thing is." (This is clearly a reference to various hellish product sellouts over the past year-plus, particularly the retro-minded portable console Analogue Pocket .)

Preorders will include add-on options for two accessories that are as boldly colored and designed as Playdate itself: a folding, Gamecube-purple cover ($29.99 as a standalone purchase or $20 as bundled with hardware) and a stereo-speaker attachment, which Playdate slots into so that it resembles an '80s-style alarm clock. This "stereo dock" doesn't have a price yet, but it will ship with a preinstalled online radio option, dubbed Poolsuite FM, that Panic says will include "expertly curated Soundcloud playlists that will transport you to a magical, sun-kissed musical zone between the past and the present." (Or just connect it via Bluetooth to your phone if you'd rather curate your own hipster jam sesh.)

The hardware's future may very well live beyond an included Season One of games, as Panic announced a list of supporting developers (including Lucas Pope of Papers, Please fame) and a plan to let them sell their games independently for the sake of sideloading onto the hardware. Panic wasn't ready to announce its own integrated storefront but hinted that such a shop could come "at a later date."

• Pulp's graphical editor.
• Pulp's raw code editor, with shortcut snippets to grab in the column.
• Pulp's music and sound editor.
• Another visual theme for the code editor if you prefer purple over green or yellow.

And if you'd like to join the Playdate development fray, Panic will make that easy for you with Pulp, a Playdate dev kit that works entirely via your web browser. Panic said that this toolset, which includes tools for coding, graphics, and music, will go live for free at an undetermined date. The above gallery includes a hint of how the tools will look in action.

We've previously written at length about where Playdate may land as a device  and that we appreciate how it does not resemble market failures like the Ouya. You may not be a fan of Playdate's intentionally limited processing power, monochrome palette, 2.7-inch 400×240 resolution panel, or analog crank (which apparently will not be used in all of Playdate's games). But in an era full of GPU-buying panic and next-gen console sellouts, there's certainly something to be said about Playdate's unique approach.

As soon as Panic lets us go crank-on with a Playdate of our own, we'll return to tell you whether the portable system lives up to its very weird promise.

Playdate’s announced “Season One” game/developer list

• Playdate is holding its games' details very close to its chest, so we only have these intriguing game names and title screens to work with for now.
• Whitewater Wipeout lets you control a surfboard with the analog crank and will be packed into every console.
• Crankin's Time Travel Adventure .
• Lost Your Marbles , which includes an active pinball-bouncing mode
• Saturday Edition .

● Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure , developed by uvula (Keita Takahashi, Ryan Mohler), Matthew Grimm, and Shaun Inman ● Battleship Godios , developed by TPM.CO SOFT WORKS ● Boogie Loops , developed by May-Li Khoe and Andy Matuschak ● Casual Birder , developed by Diego Garcia; music/sound by Max Coburn ● DemonQuest 85 , developed by Alex Ashby, Lawrence Bishop, Duncan Fyfe, Belinda Leung, and Jared Emerson-Johnson ● Echoic Memory , developed by Samantha Kalman, Everest Pipkin, Carol Mertz, and Rachelle Viola ● Executive Golf DX , developed by davemakes ● Flipper Lifter , developed by Serenity Forge ● Forrest Byrnes: Up in Smoke , developed by Nels Anderson and Christina “castpixel” Neofotistou ● Hyper Meteor , developed by Vertex Pop ● Lost Your Marbles , developed by Sweet Baby Inc. & Friends ● Omaze , developed by Gregory Kogos. ● Pick Pack Pup , developed by Nic Magnier and Arthur Hamer; music by Logan Gabriel ● Questy Chess , developed by Dadako ● Ratcheteer , developed by Shaun Inman, Matthew Grimm, and Charlie Davis ● Sasquatchers , developed by Chuck Jordan; music/sound by Jared Emerson-Johnson ● Snak , developed by Zach Gage; art by Neven Mrgan ● Spellcorked! , developed by Jada Gibbs, Nick Splendorr, Ryan Splendorr, and Tony Ghostbrite; music by A Shell in the Pit (Em Halberstadt) ● Zipper , developed by Bennett Foddy ● Saturday Edition , developed by Chris Makris; music by A Shell in the Pit (Gord McGladdery, Alfonso Salinas) ● Whitewater Wipeout , developed by Chuhai Labs

Listing image by Panic

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Playdate is a magical indie game machine

I haven't been this excited by a handheld since the vita..

Playdate shouldn't be able to do the things it does. It’s tiny enough to fit in the too-tight front pockets of my skinny jeans, it’s lighter than a deck of cards and it has a 1-bit black-and-white screen. It feels like a relic of the '90s, at least until you power it on – Playdate supports smooth, densely pixelated animations, it connects to Wi-Fi and it has a library of exclusive games from top-tier indie developers, all available for free. The small crank attached to its side is the icing on the yellow cake, adding a layer of sweet innovation to every experience on the system.

Playdate is my favorite handheld device since the Vita . It’s a love letter to indie games and creativity, and I think it’s exactly what the industry needs right now.

Playdate is the brainchild of Panic, the Mac developer and publisher behind Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game , with hardware crafted by Teenage Engineering. Its specs are appropriately adorable, with 16MB of RAM and 4GB of flash storage, an accelerometer for motion-based input, a 400 x 240 1-bit display, a built-in mono speaker, condenser mic and stereo headphone jack, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities. The Bluetooth function wasn’t available to test for review, but connecting to Wi-Fi was a painless, and even cute, process.

Admittedly, most things about Playdate are cute: Its size, the crank, the audio cues, the way each game is presented as a little gift to unwrap and how the screen looks like a winky face when you wake it up. There’s so much personality packed into Playdate’s monochromatic screen that even interacting with the Settings page is enjoyable. Of course, playing games on it is even better.

Playdate comes with a lineup of free games, each one made exclusively for the system and most of them taking full advantage of the crank mechanic. These are automatically added to the library in batches – once a Playdate is activated, it’ll receive two fresh games each week for 12 weeks, for a total of 24 titles in the device’s first season. There are plans to offer games for purchase on Playdate down the line.

Some are definitely more replayable than others, but I haven’t found a bad game on Playdate yet. They span genres and lengths, capping out at a few hours, but there’s at least one moment of pure delight in each experience. Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure , for instance, is a sidescroller starring a hopeless romantic who’s just trying to meet his date on time, and his movements are controlled entirely by the crank, steps reversing and accelerating depending on the direction of the rotation. It’s a simple concept with a singular input method, but the crank makes it challenging in a way I’ve never experienced before, and it’s instantly addictive.

Spellcorked is my favorite game on Playdate so far, largely because it so cleanly captures everything the device has to offer. It’s a potion-making game with a romantic subplot and a sassy cat, and every time I boot it up I’m impressed by the amount of fine detail that fills the screen. It has dialogue, character icons, an email interface, and environments filled with spiderwebs and nicknacks, but nothing gets lost visually. Each frame is crisp and the actual potion-making process involves every input method Playdate offers: pressing buttons while turning the crank to grind ingredients, lining up a blade with the crank and chopping in a back-and-forth motion, and tilting the entire device to the side to pour a finished potion into a vial. Each new mechanic is so delightful, so initially surprising, that it adds an extra layer of magic to an already spell-heavy game.

The Playdate crank isn’t a gimmick. It’s a fundamental aspect of the system, transforming it from a revamped Gameboy into something entirely new, a mobile device with a peculiar and joyful edge. The crank, much like the lo-fi restrictions of the hardware, is an invitation for developers to think deeper about the way they develop games, to try new things and to innovate on old ideas. Playdate’s first season is already filled with fresh concepts; I haven’t felt this spark of intrigue from a handheld since my fingers brushed the back of the Vita for the first time.

I believe the ideas generated by Playdate games won’t be trapped in a crank-only bubble, either. This kind of creative thinking naturally bleeds into the wider game development cycle, with designers testing out weird mechanics on the handheld and then transferring these concepts to traditional consoles, PCs and phones. The Vita eventually transformed into the DualSense, after all, and developers of all sizes regularly find wells of inspiration in new input mechanics . As ridiculous as it may seem, the Playdate crank can be a boon for the entire industry. All hail the crank. Amen.

There are few downsides to the Playdate. It’s small enough to be unobtrusive but unique enough to be a conversation starter; it’s packed with exclusive games from amazing indie developers; its battery easily lasts two days with intermittent play; it costs a reasonable $180 and it has a crank. My one complaint would be screen brightness – it’s not backlit, but instead uses a super-reflective system that requires light in the room to play, and at times the screen appears dull. It’s not unplayable, but I’ve caught myself squinting a few times, particularly in direct light.

It’s also very, very small, which works just fine for my hands , but people with large mitts might have issues with the size. But hey, if you can use a Joy-Con, you should be able to handle a Playdate. Plus, with the Playdate mirror app , you're able to stream the device's screen in real-time to a PC or Mac and play with traditional gamepads. This also helps anyone who wants to go live with Playdate games on Twitch or YouTube, and should be useful for developers.

Playdate looks like a cross between a Game Boy and a business card, but it feels like a modern system. Part of that is the speedy-enough processor and feather-light feel, but it’s also the sense of innovation built into the hardware. There are plenty of devices out there promising gorgeous graphics and outrageous processing power, but Playdate is a glaring reminder that there’s more magic to a good game than bleeding-edge performance. This is something indie developers have known for decades, and Playdate distills this philosophy into a cute-as-hell package, complete with a crank.

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Crank up the feel good

On paper, Panic's Playdate doesn't have a lot to do with PC. It's a standalone handheld console that fits into the palm of your hand (yes, even palms as small as mine), and is controlled via a d-pad, two face buttons and its unique, standout feature, the crank. But inside this dinky yellow wafer, the spirit of PC gaming has never been stronger. It's there in its eclectic first season of indie games, a series of 24 titles that not only delight in the minutiae of its hardware but are delivered weekly for free in batches of two direct to your console over Wi-Fi. It's there in the openness of the Playdate ecosystem, too, where you can make your own Playdate games in its browser-based Pulp creation tool, download the source code, share it with friends (or sell it) and sideload it onto your Playdate all in a matter of minutes. Heck, Panic have even added the ability to stream from it, capture video and screenshots from it, and hook it up to an external monitor, keyboard or controller via its Playdate Mirror app.

It's a surprisingly versatile bit of kit, the Playdate, and one I feel will enchant and enthral anyone who has a deep and inherent love of all things games. Sure, there's every possibility it may end up as another Ouya-style disaster show, but if you've ever longed for something like Lexaloffle's Pico-8 platform to be more than just a 'fantasy console', then the Playdate is exactly what you've been waiting for.

Before we dig into the nitty gritty of the hardware itself, there is just a distinct thrill of having new games appear in your library. My review unit had a slightly accelerated version of its Season One roll-out, with those 24 games arriving over the course of 12 days rather than weeks, but seeing that flashing purple light on its lock button and little note on the homescreen everyday never got old. It doesn't stop there, either. You get to unwrap each one individually in the main menu with a joyous flourish of confetti and ribbon tearing that makes each new arrival feel special and exciting. It starts from when you first turn on your Playdate, too, so anyone still waiting for their pre-order to arrive won't miss out on all the fun - an important consideration when those buying one now won't be getting theirs until sometime in 2023.

Hopefully by then we'll also have a better idea of whether the Playdate will ever get a second season of games, but even if its fate is to be nothing more than a one-hit wonder, it's still a lovely and incredible little thing to own and experience. Of its 24 launch games, there are plenty of standouts to be found here, although some are naturally more throwaway than others. I'll talk more about my personal highlights as we go on, but the important thing is that they all feel like they couldn't happen anywhere else - and it's all down to that delicious little crank poking out the side.

I must admit, when the Playdate's first round of previews started appearing in the middle of last year, I was a little worried. There were concerns over its cheap-feeling, plasticky build quality, its long-term comfort, and whether its 1-bit display's lack of backlight would prove unusable in low lighting conditions. I never saw or held those early preview units, but after tinkering with a final consumer version of the Playdate for the past couple of weeks, many of those early fears have been allayed. Admittedly, no backlight does still feel a bit antiquated in this day and age. It's been so long since I've had to tilt the screen to get the best angle on a device that it cast me back to the days of playing my old original Game Boy as a kid - albeit without the accompanying magnifier and twirly, attachable light that plugged into its link cable port.

Luckily, the Playdate's display has the kind of contrast and deep, pin-sharp blacks that the Game Boy could only dream about, making it much easier on the eyes in everyday use. The screen is also super reflective, meaning it really catches the light regardless of whether you're playing it in bright sunshine or cosied up under your duvet next to a bedside table lamp. Yes, this isn't a console for playing in the dead of night or (as was often the case when playing my old Game Boy) while you're driving through tunnels in the backseat of the car, but if you can get over those limitations, then the Playdate really is a stunning thing to behold.

At $179 (around £140), the Playdate isn't what I'd call a premium console (it's roughly half the price of a Nintendo Switch OLED and $20 less than a Switch Lite, for a point of comparison), but its plastic chassis doesn't feel nearly as cheap as I was expecting. It's the good kind of plastic, you know? The kind that feels ever so slightly soft-touch under the thumbs, but whose matt finish isn't instantly spoiled by greasy fingerprints and the like. It's got a decent heft to it, too, like it's a solid all the way through. There's no flex, and none of the flimsy, airy nonsense found in a lot of today's highly coveted mini retro consoles, either. Even better, it's all accompanied by the clickiest, most tactile buttons I've possibly ever seen. And that egg yolk yellow, man alive, what a glorious colour. More PC peripherals should offer yolk options, I'm telling you now.

What's more, if I had any concerns about the build quality of the crank, they were instantly dispelled the moment I had to furiously wind it round and round to escape a herd of boars in Crankin's Time Travel Adventure. Developed in part by Keita Takahashi of Katamari and Wattam fame, this game sees you use the crank to propel a perpetually late, sleepy robot toward his toe-tapping girlfriend, the catch being you'll need to rewind and fast forward his movements in order to avoid various (often very daft) obstacles along the way. Easily one of the best games from the first season, it's also a brilliant showcase for just how sturdy this little console can be.

Easily one of the best games from the first season, Crankin's Time Travel Adventure is also a brilliant showcase for just how sturdy this little console can be.

Yes, the Playdate's hard edges aren't necessarily built for hours and hours of play, but then neither are most of its games. For the most part, the Playdate was comfortable to hold for the 30-odd minute sessions I tended to play for, but I also have smaller hands than most. Indeed, there were moments when even I found myself adjusting my grip or rearranging my fingers slightly so they weren't pressing quite so hard against its corners. As such, folks with bigger hands may have some problems here. Instead of harking back to the days of the Game Boy, you may end up with flashbacks to the dreaded PSP Monster Hunter claw instead.

Thankfully, any comfort, or indeed sight, issues are largely mitigated by the Playdate Mirror app I mentioned earlier. This lets you hook your Playdate up to your PC via its bundled (also yolk-coloured) USB cable, and all you need to do is download and open the Mirror app, unlock your Playdate by pressing its top button twice (as you would to turn it on normally), and voila: instant, big screen Playdate. At time of writing, Mirror only opens in windowed mode, mind, but you can zoom in to make the window bigger using the View menu - and cor, even on a 4K monitor those pixels never lose their sharpness or clarity.

Obviously, bringing another control scheme into the mix does mean you lose that joyous little crank motion somewhat. Twirling an analog stick on a controller just doesn't offer quite the same level of precision or fine motor control as the Playdate's native crank, for example, and in the version of Mirror I was using for review there wasn't an option to assign the crank function to anything on my keyboard either (not even my mouse wheel), rendering many of the games unplayable with that particular input. I should note that Mirror is still in development at the moment, so this kind of functionality may well exist further down the line. And, of course, you can still just use the default Playdate controls if you prefer, even when it's plugged into your PC.

One thing that is a bit further along is Playdate's game creator tool, Pulp. Inspired by Bitsy, the whole thing runs inside your web browser and can be accessed absolutely anyone. It even lets you write games in Lua, which is the same coding tool as Pico-8. Now, I may not have the know-how to assess what Pulp is like as a game-making tool, but the process of getting new games onto your Playdate that aren't officially part of Season One is surprisingly simple considering there's no built-in storefront. The closest comparison is probably the way we currently manage and play Itch games, for example. All it requires is for Pulp makers to export the game as a PDX file, which can then be sold or shared with players. Once you've got the PDX file, it's then simply a matter of uploading it to Playdate's website through your account settings' Sideload option, and then popping into the Games tab of your Playdate's Settings menu to automatically start downloading it.

To demonstrate this, press were provided with the PDX file for a game called Bloom, a real-time life sim in the vein of Animal Crossing that's all about growing plants on an apartment rooftop. The whole process, from downloading the source file to getting it on my Playdate, took maybe about five minutes, internet speeds notwithstanding, and once there it appeared under a separate 'My Games' tab to what’s included in Season One. Easy peasy. All that's really missing is some kind of central, Itch-like repository where people can browse, download and buy these non-Season One games, because current methods such as wading through its dev forum or chancing across things on Twitter cannot be the way forward.

As I mentioned earlier, though, even if the Playdate's wider indie scene doesn't end up materialising, the first season of games alone offers a strong argument for the price of admission - and I say this as someone who's currently only had around half of those 24 games actually delivered to her Playdate. I was a bit late turning on my review unit, you see (whoops), so I've only seen and played 14 of them rather than the whole set. I have, however, played those 14 games in the same order they'll arrive on your own Playdate, and at least half of them are games I want to return to and play more of.

On the face of it, there's a rough pattern for each pairing: there's what I'd deem a substantial, more story-driven game, accompanied by a time attack or high score chaser that's fine in short bursts, but are often games I struggle to really get into. Your mileage may vary, of course, but here are some of my early highlights so far. As well as Crankin's Time Travel Adventure, I was also very taken with Flipper Lifter, a game about transporting penguins with a crank-powered elevator (a neat twist being that the more penguins you cram in, the heavier the lift becomes to move up and down), and Pick Pack Pup, a match-three-style puzzler with Chicory -esque animal characters that sees you packing up warehouse items by shifting them around with the d-pad. Casual Birder also scratched the same photography itch that Toem did at the end of last year, using the crank to bring its Earthbound-like world into focus on your camera lens, while Bennett Foddy's Zipper is a kind of crank-powered successor to Ninja Gaiden. Echoic Memory, meanwhile, is a neat musical memory game that tasks you with turning dials to match snippets of sound, and my most recent favourite Questy Chess is a role-playing chess simulator where you're using chess pieces in an old computer program to eradicate signs of an incoming update.

There's still a bit of work to be done, but if you love indie games and what they stand for, I think you'll find a lot to love in Panic's Playdate.

Under normal circumstances, that's just under two months' worth of interesting curios to dig into, which, when you really get down and think about it, is arguably a much higher hit-rate than your average new console launch. Heck, I don't think there are even eight PS5 games to even buy right now (and I mean proper exclusive PS5 games, not upgraded PS4 ones) although maybe that's an unfair comparison. Instead, perhaps a better way to think about it is like an upfront, ultra indie version of Game Pass, only you get to keep these games forever and add new ones to the mix whenever you like.

So, if you enjoy the thrill of seeing what comes down the digital pipes and are willing to approach said games with an open mind, then the Playdate is an easy (if mildly indulgent) no brainer. Both the hardware and its surrounding ecosystem seem sound and well-supported, and I'm confident the foundations are there to hopefully support this strange yellow square well into the future. It will be a shame if it flops, but even if it does, what a mad, lovable little experiment it's been all the same. I for one am now a full-on crank convert, and I will eat my hat if its impact doesn't eventually ripple out into other spheres of game development. It's the closest a handheld has come to capturing the same kind of magic that comes so effortlessly to Nintendo consoles, and the fact it works so beautifully with PC is just an added bonus. There's still a bit of work to be done, to be sure, but if you love indie games and what they stand for, I think you'll find a lot to love in Panic's Playdate.

Crankin Presents: Time Travel Adventure

Images & screenshots.

Crankin Presents: Time Travel Adventure News

Passing Thru Travel

The Top 15 Caribbean Gems to Explore in 2024: Embark on an Island Adventure

Posted: February 20, 2024 | Last updated: February 20, 2024

Island hopping in the Caribbean is an opportunity to experience a variety of unique islands, each offering its own distinctive blend of natural beauty, culture, and adventure. This guide provides practical information for exploring some of the Caribbean’s most captivating destinations, from the Bahamas to Bonaire. You’ll find tips on the best time to visit each island, insider suggestions to enhance your experience, and essential travel details to help you plan your journey.

The Bahamas

You’ll find a balance of relaxation and adventure in the Bahamas. This destination is ideal for those looking to explore underwater wonders through snorkeling, with its clear waters and vibrant marine life. Alternatively, the pink sands of Harbour Island offer a more laid-back experience, perfect for unwinding and enjoying the serene beach environment. The Bahamas caters to various interests, whether you’re seeking an active adventure or a peaceful retreat by the sea.

Insider’s Tip: Visit the Exumas to swim with pigs.

Travel Details: Fly into Nassau International Airport; inter-island flights and ferries are available for island hopping.

Best Time To Travel: Mid-December to mid-April.

In Barbados, you’ll experience a unique combination of rich cultural heritage and stunning natural beauty. The island is home to fascinating attractions like Harrison’s Cave, an underground cave system where you can see stalactites, stalagmites, and flowing streams. St. Lawrence Gap is a must-visit for those interested in vibrant nightlife, offering a lively mix of bars, clubs, and restaurants that showcase the island’s energetic spirit.

Barbados also boasts beautiful beaches and lush landscapes, making it a great destination for both exploration and relaxation. Whether you’re delving into the island’s natural wonders or immersing yourself in its lively cultural scene, Barbados presents a diverse array of experiences for every traveler.

Insider’s Tip: Try local rum at one of the island’s historic distilleries.

Travel Details: Grantley Adams International Airport is the main gateway, with taxi services available to explore the island.

Best Time To Travel: Travel between December and April for ideal weather.

Jamaica’s allure lies in its diverse landscape and vibrant culture. The island perfectly blends picturesque beaches and lush mountainous terrain, complemented by a dynamic music scene deeply rooted in its history. For nature enthusiasts, the Blue Mountains offer breathtaking views and hiking trails that lead through coffee plantations and rainforests.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for relaxation, the beaches of Negril provide a serene escape with their clear waters and long stretches of white sand. This contrast between the tranquility of the beaches and the rugged beauty of the mountains, coupled with the rhythmic beats of reggae music that often fill the air, makes Jamaica a unique destination that caters to a variety of interests and activities.

Insider’s Tip: Experience authentic reggae at a local beach bar.

Travel Details: Major airports include Kingston and Montego Bay, with local buses and taxis for transportation.

Best Time To Travel: Best visited from mid-December to April.

Puerto Rico

You’ll find a captivating mix of natural and historical attractions in Puerto Rico. The island boasts beautiful beaches where you can relax or engage in water sports, while the lush El Yunque National Forest invites you to explore its rich biodiversity through hiking trails and waterfalls.

For a taste of history, the city of San Juan offers a journey into the past with its well-preserved Spanish colonial architecture and historic forts. This blend of pristine natural environments and rich cultural heritage makes Puerto Rico a diverse destination, suitable for those who seek both adventure in nature and a deeper understanding of the island’s historical significance.

Insider’s Tip: Try local street food in Piñones.

Travel Details: Fly into Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, with car rentals for island exploration.

Best Time To Travel: Mid-December to April.

The Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is renowned for its stunning beaches, luxurious resorts, and excellent golf courses, attracting visitors seeking relaxation and recreation. In areas like Punta Cana, you can indulge in the comfort of all-inclusive resorts with their pristine private beaches, world-class amenities, and golf courses designed by renowned architects.

The Samaná Peninsula offers a different kind of allure for nature enthusiasts. It is particularly famous for its whale-watching opportunities. Between January and March, the bay becomes a prime spot to observe humpback whales, a truly remarkable experience. The Dominican Republic’s diverse offerings, from the leisurely allure of its resorts and golf courses to the natural wonder of its marine life, make it a versatile destination for a wide range of travelers.

Insider’s Tip: Explore the hidden beaches of Bahía de las Águilas.

Travel Details: Punta Cana International Airport is the most popular, with taxis and buses for transport.

Best Time To Travel: Travel from December to April.

Saint Lucia

Saint Lucia is a Caribbean gem known for its dramatic landscapes, including the iconic Pitons, lush rainforests, and unique volcanic beaches. The island invites adventure and relaxation in equal measure. For the active traveler, hiking the majestic Pitons offers breathtaking views and a rewarding challenge, while the island’s rainforests provide a chance to explore rich biodiversity and serene natural beauty.

The beaches, with their distinctive dark volcanic sands, offer a unique seaside experience, ideal for sunbathing and snorkeling in clear waters teeming with marine life. Additionally, Sulphur Springs, known as the Caribbean’s only drive-in volcano, offers a chance to bathe in mineral-rich waters, believed to have therapeutic properties. Saint Lucia’s combination of natural wonders and engaging activities makes it a destination that caters to a variety of tastes and interests.

Insider’s Tip: Visit the local cocoa plantations.

Travel Details: Hewanorra International Airport has taxis and local buses available.

Antigua and Barbuda

Antigua and Barbuda, renowned for having 365 beaches, one for each day of the year, offer diverse coastal experiences. These islands are a beach lover’s paradise, providing endless opportunities to explore different stretches of sand and sea, from secluded coves to lively beachfront.

Beyond the beaches, attractions like Nelson’s Dockyard in Antigua, a beautifully restored Georgian-era marina and a UNESCO World Heritage site offer a glimpse into the island’s rich naval history. For a unique marine experience, Stingray City allows visitors to interact with and feed friendly stingrays in their natural habitat. This activity appeals to both adults and children alike. The combination of historical sites, unique wildlife interactions, and abundant beaches make Antigua and Barbuda a multifaceted destination.

Insider’s Tip: Attend a local cricket match for a true island experience.

Travel Details: V.C. Bird International Airport, with taxis and rental cars for transport.

Grenada, often called the ‘Island of Spice’, presents a rich tapestry of experiences for its visitors. The island is famous for its fragrant spice estates, where you can learn about and sample local spices like nutmeg and cinnamon. The natural beauty of Grenada is just as compelling, with stunning beaches such as Grand Anse Beach providing a perfect setting for relaxation or water sports.

In addition, the island’s lush rainforests offer opportunities for hiking and exploring diverse flora and fauna. A unique attraction not to be missed is the underwater sculpture park, a collection of ecological underwater contemporary art that also serves as an artificial reef. This blend of cultural, natural, and adventurous experiences makes Grenada an intriguing destination for travelers.

Insider’s Tip: Try the local nutmeg ice cream.

Travel Details: Maurice Bishop International Airport has local transportation options available.

Best Time To Travel: Best visited from January to May.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

St. Vincent and the Grenadines, known for their less crowded and more intimate atmosphere, present an ideal destination for travelers seeking tranquility amidst natural beauty. These islands boast picturesque landscapes, ranging from pristine beaches to lush green hills.

A highlight is the Tobago Cays, a group of small, uninhabited islands surrounded by clear turquoise waters and vibrant coral reefs, making it a premier spot for snorkeling and diving enthusiasts. Here, you can immerse yourself in an underwater world teeming with colorful marine life, offering a serene escape from the bustling tourist spots. The tranquility of these islands, combined with their natural beauty, makes them a perfect retreat for those looking to unwind and connect with nature in a more secluded setting.

Insider’s Tip: Explore the Vermont Nature Trail.

Travel Details: Fly into Argyle International Airport, with ferries between islands.

Best Time To Travel: May to June, November to mid-December.

Aruba is celebrated for its stunning beaches and unique desert landscapes, providing diverse natural attractions. The island’s Eagle Beach is famed for its soft white sands and clear blue waters, making it an ideal spot for sunbathing, swimming, and water sports. Beyond the beach, Aruba’s interior offers a different experience in Arikok National Park, where visitors can explore a rugged terrain of cacti, rock formations, and indigenous wildlife.

This contrast between the idyllic beaches and the intriguing desert environment provides visitors with a varied and enriching experience, catering to those seeking relaxation by the sea and adventure enthusiasts eager to explore the island’s natural wonders.

Insider’s Tip: Try windsurfing or kitesurfing.

Travel Details: Queen Beatrix International Airport, with taxis and buses for island travel.

Best Time To Travel: April to August.

Curaçao stands out with its vibrant architecture, excellent diving spots, and secluded coves. It offers a rich blend of cultural and natural attractions. The capital city, Willemstad, is renowned for its colorful Dutch colonial buildings, which create a picturesque and lively urban landscape. This UNESCO World Heritage site is a feast for the eyes and a hub of cultural activity, from museums to bustling markets.

For nature enthusiasts, Curaçao’s clear waters are a paradise for divers, offering a chance to explore diverse marine life and coral reefs. Another notable attraction is the Hato Caves, a network of limestone caves that provide an intriguing glimpse into the island’s geological and cultural history. These caves feature ancient rock formations and carvings that date back centuries. Whether wandering through the charming streets of Willemstad or exploring the natural wonders underwater and underground, Curaçao offers every visitor a unique and engaging experience.

Insider’s Tip: Visit Shete Boka National Park.

Travel Details: Fly into Curaçao International Airport, with car rentals available.

Best Time To Travel: Ideal to visit between May and November.

Martinique, an island rich in cultural heritage, uniquely blends French and West Indian influences, offering a distinctive experience to its visitors. This fusion is evident in everything from the island’s cuisine to architecture and language. The beaches of Les Salines are among the most beautiful on the island, with white sands and crystal-clear waters that provide a perfect setting for relaxation and water sports.

Inland, the Balata Gardens offer different beauty, with lush greenery and vibrant tropical flowers, showcasing the island’s diverse flora. These gardens also offer panoramic views of the island, making them a must-visit for nature lovers. Martinique’s dual heritage creates a diverse and enriching experience, blending the sophistication of French culture with the vibrant spirit of the Caribbean.

Insider’s Tip: Try local Creole cuisine.

Travel Details: Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport has a network of buses and taxis.

The Cayman Islands

The Cayman Islands are celebrated for their crystal-clear waters and abundant marine life, making them a premier destination for underwater exploration and beach relaxation. A standout attraction is Stingray City, where you can interact with and feed friendly stingrays in shallow waters, a unique and memorable experience that draws visitors from around the world.

The renowned Seven Mile Beach also offers a picturesque stretch of soft, white sand and calm, turquoise waters ideal for swimming and sunbathing. The beach’s clear waters also provide excellent conditions for snorkeling, allowing visitors to observe the vibrant underwater life up close. These two attractions epitomize the natural beauty and aquatic allure of the Cayman Islands, offering experiences that range from peaceful beach lounging to exciting marine encounters.

Insider’s Tip: Dive or snorkel at the Kittiwake shipwreck.

Travel Details: Fly into Owen Roberts International Airport, with various island transportation options.

Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago are known for their rich biodiversity and vibrant carnival, offering a unique combination of natural and cultural experiences. The Asa Wright Nature Centre, located in Trinidad, is a haven for nature lovers, allowing them to explore the lush rainforest and observe a wide variety of bird species in their natural habitat. This nature sanctuary offers guided walks, fully allowing visitors to appreciate the island’s diverse flora and fauna.

Additionally, Maracas Beach in Trinidad is a popular destination, renowned for its scenic beauty and the famous local delicacy, bake and shark. The beach’s fine sand and clear waters make it ideal for swimming and relaxation. These destinations and the island’s famous carnival, a spectacle of music, dance, and colorful costumes provide a dynamic and varied experience that captures the essence of Trinidad and Tobago’s vibrant culture and natural beauty.

Insider’s Tip: Experience the local carnival if you’re visiting in February.

Travel Details: Piarco International Airport in Trinidad and A.N.R. Robinson International Airport in Tobago, with ferries between the islands.

Best Time To Travel: Ideal travel time is January to May.

Bonaire is a paradise for divers and snorkelers, celebrated for its exceptionally preserved coral reefs and rich marine biodiversity. The island’s commitment to marine conservation is evident in the Bonaire National Marine Park, encompassing the island’s entire coastline. This protected area offers some of the best diving and snorkeling experiences in the Caribbean, with clear waters and abundant sea life, including tropical fish, sea turtles, and various coral species.

The park’s well-managed dive sites cater to all experience levels, from beginners to advanced divers, ensuring a safe and unforgettable underwater adventure. Bonaire’s dedication to preserving its natural underwater treasures makes it an ideal destination for those who want to explore vibrant marine ecosystems sustainably and environmentally conscious.

Insider’s Tip: Try windsurfing at Lac Bay.

Travel Details: Fly into Flamingo International Airport, with car rentals available for island exploration.

Best Time To Travel: Best visited from April to November.

The Bottom Line

Island hopping in the Caribbean offers an adventure through a mosaic of distinct islands, each with its own unique charm and attractions. From Jamaica’s vibrant culture to Antigua’s serene beaches, the Caribbean provides an array of experiences suited for every type of traveler. Remember to check each destination’s latest travel advisories and requirements to ensure a smooth and enjoyable journey.

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The post The Top 15 Caribbean Gems to Explore in 2024: Embark on an Island Adventure republished on Passing Thru with permission from The Green Voyage .

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock / Alexey Stiop.

For transparency, this content was partly developed with AI assistance and carefully curated by an experienced editor to be informative and ensure accuracy.

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