The Panic Playdate is a little handheld gaming device that comes with a crank. The design of the Playdate was guided by Teenage Engineering, a well-respected design firm that makes their own unique devices that you may have seen in a social network feed of an electronic musician.

Games are available from either the curated and authorized Catalog on Panic’s servers or through the process of “sideloading,” which can be synchronized via Panic’s storage space for sideloaded games or through a direct connection between a device and computer via USB-C. Some sideloaded games are even capable of being played on the Web, useful for trying out what the games are like before sending them to the Playdate. The majority of games sold outside of the Catalog can be found on itch.io.

Playdates can be hard to get because Panic often sells out of them. If you’re willing to potentially wait months (or you could manage to get the timing right) you can get a Playdate on Panic’s website. If the shipping wait time is unacceptable, used copies are available on eBay or in community-run Playdate Discord channels.

Each Playdate comes with a “Season One” list of free 24 games that are filled with superb examples of what the Playdate can do. Because these are all free and included by default I have not listed them here, but I definitely recommend checking out each of those games.

🕹️ Get your own Playdate

The list of games below is not an exhaustive selection because there are so many that I’ve purchased and haven’t gotten around to playing. I will update this list whenever I come across another game that I think should be played by others.

⚠️ This list was last updated January 1, 2025.

Available in the Playdate Catalog

Purchasing games on the Catalog offers automatic game updates and leaderboard support. Panic curates the list and takes a small cut of each purchase.

• Cranky Bird — Use the crank to make a bird fly around various hazards to finish each level that exists on a single screen
• DirectDrive — Keep a song playing at the right speed on a record player by adjusting crank speed
• EYELAND — A cozy narrative adventure
• Icy Dungeon — Puzzle game where walking produces a path of ice behind the player, limiting future movement in that space
• The Keyper — An impressive inventive narrative in a small package
• Quest for the X — A fun knight at night adventure
• Recommendation Dog — A charming match game that requires some quick thinking
• Reel Steal — An obvious use of the crank — a fishing reel — in an inventive wrapper
• Root Bear — Fill a root beer cup to the right amount or risk disappointing the bear
• Shift — Match four game with a twist
• Snoik! — A surprisingly difficult snake-based game
• Word Trip — Match two four-letter words by changing an intermediate word one letter at a time

Available on itch.io

Games on this platform are not evaluated by Panic staff and may be prone to crashing, but itch.io is where early development and experimental games are released to the public. Many games eventually get accepted into the Catalog, but plenty others are exclusive to itch.io.

• Bobby — Collect coins and travel through mazes this port of a Web-based game
• Capy Spa — Serve customers at a spa
• Close Approach — Line up scanners on various objects in space
• Gatecrasher — Use the crank to pilot a blip between arcs without crashing
• Spin Cross — Crank either direction to dodge a target along a circular path
• Worddate — A World clone for the Playdate
• Wurds — A word-based Mastermind clone for the Playdate

The weird stuff

These are great examples of what the Playdate can do and the silliness the control system promotes. Some of these aren’t games or are extremely limited in scope but are still particularly delightful.

• A Joke That’s Worth $0.99 — Bounce a character on a virtual Playdate crank handle while listening to a long-winded joke
• Backyard Rain — A rain noise generator
• Bouncing DVD — Get the DVD logo to hit the corner of a TV
• BubbleWrap+ — Pop bubble wrap
• Crankulator — A calculator for the Playdate
• figma on playdate — A quick joke app pretending to run Figma
• Flowchart Adventure — A flowchart-based adventure game
• France Horn — Use the crank to slide up or down the octaves of a pseudo-French horn instrument
• Hurdy Gurdy PD — Play a remarkably complex Hurdy Gurdy on a Playdate
• Personal SAM-Y — A clock with the mascot from the game Shift
• Playdice — Includes various dice games and a dice roller for board games
• Playorama — A video player
• Playtime Clocks — A series of odd and potentially unintuitive clocks for the Playdate
• Play Timer : Stopwatch and Timer for the Playdate — A simple stopwatch and timer
• Poem Clock for Playdate — Displays a small poem that describes the time
• polytonic — A spinning visualizer
• Pomodoro. — A simple Pomodoro timer
• Pomo Post — A complex and charming Pomodoro timer that turns the Playdate into a mailbox
• Puppy — The Rabbit r1 on a Playdate
• Rickroll for PD — An application that pretends to be a game but then “Rickrolls” the user
• Sunrise Clock – A clock that displays the position of the sun on the horizon
• Touch Egg — Use the crank to continuously touch an egg while the owner sleeps