We’ve officially made it to the end of Playdate Season Two, and what a season it’s been. Despite having half the number of titles as Season One, this latest round of weekly game releases has made a much stronger impression (on me, at least). If nothing else, it’s just been cool to experience the new games in real time with other Playdate owners all at once, which the staggered rollout of the console didn’t really allow for with the first season. In an email ahead of the final release, the team at Panic noted that Season Two has sold 12,000 units.
It ends on a high note with Taria & Como and Black Hole Havoc, the former an emotional physics-based platformer and the latter an action-puzzle game about blasting black holes with black holes. While the weekly game drops may be over, we still have several weeks left of new Blippo+ content to help fill the void (not to mention the reruns, once it all wraps up).
Taria & Como
Taria & Como would surely resonate no matter when it were released, but at a time in the US when families are being forcibly separated and access to adequate healthcare for millions of people is under threat — an issue that comes on top of the many existing flaws of the system — it hits particularly hard. The pace of this puzzle platformer is relatively chill, but the journey it takes you on is really moving.
You play as Taria, a girl whose parents have been kidnapped by the medtech company and apparent authoritarian overlord, Toxtum Inc. Taria uses a couple of mobility aids to get around, including a prosthetic leg that allows her to jump and a flying health robot, Kit, that has a tether so she can swing. But after a disaster one day, Taria wakes up in a Toxtum facility to find that her younger sister Como is gone, her prosthetic leg has been taken and replaced with one that cannot jump (the Toxtum-approved design), and her healthbot has been swapped with one that’s programmed to do everything in its power to restrict her freedom. The subsequent adventure is Taria’s quest to find her sister, no matter what it takes.
There is a lot to love about this game, but there’s one silly little thing at the beginning that needs a shoutout: an unexpected folder in Kit’s files labeled “Ferrets.” Inside that folder? Two pictures of ferrets wearing bonnets. As a longtime ferret owner, all I have to say is hell yeah. Anyway, the game. Taria & Como is a wonderful experience from start to finish. Each chapter is…