Here’s a beautiful Playdate game with impressive technical mastery of the diddy handheld. This is by indie developer Zachary Snyder and he’s very possibly created the most advanced game on the system.
Complete with 3D puzzle solving and immersive mini-arenas to indulge in, Diora offers a large world to explore with crank-based arena twisting and the like. Plenty to enjoy, then.
A Monochrome World of Possibilities in Diora
The main thing to remember about the yellow Playdate handheld is it’s designed to be antiquated. The purpose was to have a retro-styled console where games face deliberate technological limitations.
Indie devs are very clever and have worked some magic on the system, but Diora reaches a new high here. Players take control of a little character and guide them across a world, manipulating structures and the like, all to save each area from devious forces.
It’s the Playdate’s very own version of the Monument Valley series for mobiles. And whilst not as colourful as those games, Diora is incredible with its monochromatic artistic achievement. Plus, it’s a fun little game as well.
As always, the handheld’s crank is central to gameplay. You twist the stages around by twisting the crank.
Around that cranking concept you get the puzzle solving, which involves moving blocks around, manipulating objects, there’s a big boulder at one point etc.
From Zachary Snyder’s devlog, it appears he’s a college student and completing the game has been quite the battle for him:
“I have spoken a lot about burnout already, but I never felt that I didn’t want to work on Diora, it was just hard to get back into it. My last year of college took a toll on my ability to focus on Diora. There was always something I should’ve been doing instead, usually homework or studying. I also felt pressured when playing games or working on other projects in my free time. After graduating and starting my full time job, I was finally able to get back into Diora, albeit slowly. With a full time job, I could finally ignore that stress when I was off the clock.”
It took him over two years to develop the game. A lot of indie devs work like this, completing these projects bit by bit around their day jobs or studying.
The work is hard and there’s no guarantee of major sales at the end of it all. But we’ve had our Playdate for two years now and can confidently say Diora it’s one of the best games on the system.
There’s a moody score to go with that by composer EmberNova. It sets the chillout vibes pretty high and really suits the game’s black and white motif.
A lot to like, then, and a further demonstration of how this retro-styled gaming technology can impress. It likely won’t appeal to mainstream gamers after AAA stuff, but for us this is indie creativity at its finest.
