playdate | The Virtual Moose

Developer: Cosmic Bros
Publisher: Panic
Year: 2025
Genre: Puzzle

gif of a cannon shooting black holes at black holes in the sky

Black Hole Havoc is a puzzle arcade game created for Playdate’s Season 2. Black holes have opened up in the sky and it is up to you to close them by creating black holes of equal size and shooting them into the holes to close them. You do this across a series of 80 levels, with animated cutscenes regularly appearing between levels.

The core gameplay loop of creating black holes and shooting them is great. The crank is used very well to grow and shrink the size of the black holes before you shoot them. There’s a combo system you can take advantage of for more points if you shoot faster, which I didn’t really use too much, but I’m glad it was there. The game introduces so many variations in the levels as you play so the game never felt like it got tiring for me. I saw one or too criticisms, probably on backloggd, that each mechanic wasn’t used more but I loved that. I feel like a lot of games overuse a new mechanic once it’s introduced and this game often only sticks with them for a few levels or at least rotates through it. The game ends with a boss level, which I didn’t really care for but it’s pretty quick and when 79/80 levels in a game are good, I can’t really complain. I know games are often tempted to add a big finale like that but it often doesn’t work for me. There’s an arcade mode too. It’s fine! It’s what it says it is but I felt very satisfied after playing through all the levels once.

I’m always surprised at how good games can sound and look on the Playdate and I was really impressed by the animation in this game. The animation style reminded me a lot of flash cartoons from the 00’s. In fact, my only real complaint about this game is that it feels like internet humor from the late 00s in how the characters talk. I didn’t really care for it and felt dated with the jokes about people posting too much on social media or taking selfies, but it was harmless and unlike the actual humor from that era, it wasn’t obnoxious or trying to be edgy.

It was nice to see Season 2 end on a high note. I wasn’t familiar with these devs at all so this game was a very pleasant surprise.

Black Hole Havoc is available as part of Playdate’s Season 2.

Developer: Goloso Games & Julia Minamata
Publisher: Panic
Year: 2025
Genre: Adventure

I’m attempting to get caught up with all the games coming out each week as a part of the Playdate Season 2 package and saw that Goloso Games and Julia Minamata, two folks I’m a fan of, made a new point-and-click adventure for the system. This season surprisingly has a lot of adventure games (and also a FMV game) and I’m not sure why. I’m definitely not upset about it but I suspect Panic just happens to be big adventure game fans since they’ve published a few of them outside of the Playdate too.

an animated gif of a dog sitting next to a car with a flat tire and a mouse cursor moving to the car

You play as the dog Chance as you are called to help out a criminal mastermind but are delayed by a flat tire. What starts off as a simple tire change puzzle leads to a series of events where you are bailed out by Chance’s extremely good luck.

I loved this one. It’s just a really nice adventure game that lasts about 30 minutes and occasionally uses the Playdate’s built-in features as puzzle solving gimmicks. There’s maybe one chapter where using the crank felt a little clunky but this only stood out because it works most of the time and the game moves at a really nice pace. The game is divided into six chapter and each one is about 5 minutes long. I felt very satisfied doing the puzzles but they weren’t too difficult either. For the most part, the use of the Playdate’s crank and microphone were fun ways to add some variety to the puzzles.

As expected, Julia Minamata’s art is fantastic. It manages to cram in a lot of nice little animations on such a small screen but everything is very readable. The game is very funny too. I really love absurdist humor and the situations in each chapter get more ridiculous as you move from one puzzle to the next.

I also loved the music! It has this nice jazzy soundtrack you would expect from old noir films and Philip Aldous does a great job with that. I’m always surprised at how good the games on the Playdate sound since it’s so tiny and I guess my expectations are low?

Anyway, great stuff. If folks like this one then they should check out other games by the developers. Julia worked on the free Playdate game Recommendation Dog and created the excellent mystery adventure game The Crimson Diamond. Goloso Games made Spike II: The Great Emu War (Itch.io/Playdate store) for the Playdate and Inspector Waffles (Steam/Itch.io).

Chance’s Lucky Escape is available as part of Playdate’s Season 2.