💾 Archived View for gemini.ctrl-c.club › ~lori › playdate › s1 › w1.gmi captured on 2022-07-16 at 15:55:27. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-06-03)
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Casual Birder is a story-based game about bird photography. You play as a young man who has moved to a new town where everyone photographs birds, and a trio of young punks has been harassing and intimidating all the other bird photographers in town. Your job is to stop the mean kids and try to win the local bird photography contest by snapping pics of a legendary bird.
Gameplay in this game is reminiscent of Pokemon Snap in some ways. Progression consists of taking photos of birds, then gaining new gear that will allow you to take new photos of birds that were previously unaccessible. However, instead of an on-rails shooter setup like Pokemon Snap, it's more of a 2D RPG layout. You walk between screens in and around town, then can pull your camera out, pan around the screen using your d-pad, use the crank to get your camera into focus, then take photos. You can take photos of any object on the screen, not just birds--which will come into play in some parts of the game, as there's also a bit of light puzzle solving outside of your regular bird photography.
The graphics in this game are very cute, the dialogue is fun and sweet without getting too far into twee territory, and the soundtrack is excellent (as well as available for purchase on their website). The game is fairly substantial in length compared to most Playdate titles out so far. I didn't particularly rush through the game, so I'd say I spent about 6 hours completing the main story, and would like to go back and get every type of bird.
So far Casual Birder has been my favorite Playdate experience, and I'm glad it's available as a week 1 game. Especially with there being so many arcadey or short games for the Playdate in this early stage, it is nice to see something a little more substantial to show what other kinds of games can exist on the Playdate. I'd love to see some kind of update or sequel to this game as well, I find myself wishing I could spend more time with it.
I'm going to be honest, I don't have a lot to say about Whitewater Wipeout and I doubt I will. Whitewater Wipeout is an oldschool arcade surfing game that takes most of its cues from the surfing in California Games (1987)--except controlled with the crank. This game seems perfectly well designed, but it's very much just the exact type of arcadey surfing game you expect it to be. I don't actually think this is a problem, it's just not a type of game that appeals to me personally. I think it's well executed, and not a bad demo for the crank, but this is a "it's not you it's me" situation, I just don't care for this kind of game even if it's done well. So definitely check it out yourself, after all if you have a Playdate you have this game right out of the box!
(posted 05-09-22)