A Secret Game Reveal & A Magical Prototype
I've got another prototype for you all to try! And I've got a game in Playdate Season 2
Hallå pals!
Jonas here with another issue of Indie Notebook to get some ideas out of my noggin, and to inspire you to do the same.
My parents are coming over tomorrow, they’ll be staying for a week. So I thought I’d write this week’s issue in advance so I wouldn’t have to do anything tomorrow. But now I’m too excited to keep this scheduled for Wednesday! When I could just send it right away!
Today I’ve got a sneak peek to share of my next upcoming game, which is coming out on Playdate soon. I’ve got a new playable prototype, featuring wizards(!). And some small Space Deer stuff made its way in here, even though I’m on a break from that.
I’m pretty hyped to send out this one!
Partial reveal of my Secret Game
The first piece of news is a first glimpse of a secret game project I’ve been working on (which I hinted at here a few months ago). It’s called Long Puppy. It’s coming to Playdate as part of the hottly anticipated Season 2.
“Playdate” and “Season 2” might not make much sense to some of you. So I’ll give you a quick explanation of what that means.
The Playdate is a gameboy-like console with a crank (the crank is not used to charge it, it uses a cable for that). The crank is used for input, it can be used for simple things like scrolling through lists or crazy stuff like simulating a fishing rod!
The console has a few other quirks as well. The screen lacks a backlight, and it’s black and white. So it feels retro. But at the same time it feels modern because it has wifi and something called Catalog, which is basically an AppStore. It hosts about 200 games right now. And there are over 800 on itch.io.
And what does “Season 2” mean?
With every Playdate a first season of games is included for free. Season 1 contained 24 games in total, they were delivered to you two games per week. A little light on the console will tell you when a new game has been downloaded and is ready to be played. You don’t know ahead what the game will be, so it’s a neat surprise where you get to unwrap the game on the console (there’s a satisfying animation for that) and discover what the game is about.
And now they’re doing this again with Season 2!
You can watch a Nintendo Direct style video presentation about 4 of the games that will be part of it right here.
Season 2 has a total of 12 games and can be pre-ordered for $39 right now. I will be playing the games along with everyone else on May 29 when it starts.
I wish I could but I won’t be saying anything else about Long Puppy until people have actually gotten the chance to play it. I don’t wanna spoil the surprise!
Its been such a pleasure to work on this game. It’s so fun and simple to develop for this little console, and to have the support of Panic throughout it made it even better. Knowing people would get to experience it through S2, along with so many other great games was also a huge honor and motivation.
Consider preordering Season 2 if you own a Playdate!
Bibbidi - a roguelike deckbuilder prototype!
Me and Daan have continued to develop another game idea, and we’ve got another prototype for you to try today.
Last time it was sweet and wholesome forest spirits cleaning up trash. This time we delve into a dark and moody dungeon full of nasty monsters.
Game description: Bibidi Bibidi is a wizardcore roguelike deckbuilder where you combine cards in your spellbook to cast unique and powerful spells. Crawl through twisting tunnels and fight maddening monsters to find the perfect build for your wizard!
This time it’s playable in your web browser, so you won’t even have to download anything to try it!
Hint: Don't underestimate drawing cards!
We would love to hear any and all your thoughts on it. But if you need some inspiration, this is the main feedback we’re looking for.
Do you usually enjoy roguelike deckbuilders? (E.g. Slay the Spire, Monster Train or even something like Slice & Dice)
If you do, do you feel like this game's mechanics (the spellbook) set it apart from other games in the genre?
Did you figure out how the spellbook and card attributes (Boon, School, Force) work?
Did you want to try again as soon as you finished a session?
You can share your feedback in the comments or reply to this email!
I’ve also got a discord server where I share updates about prototypes more frequently.
Maybe this will sound a little obvious but the success of deckbuilders like this depend heavily on their game balance and replayability. The only way we can get that right is through lots of playtesting, feedback and iteration. What I’m getting at here is, if you’re not into this type of game, maybe you know someone else who likes deckbuilders? 🙏🏻
That’s my gentle plead for help lol. I’m just asking like this cause I feel like this one has lots of potential and we wanna make this something great.
Mini Notes
🍋 Games - Some of my favorite Playdate games
To go with todays theme of Playdate stuff, I’ve got some recs.
Dig Dig Dino (coming up in S2)
Would love to hear if you have any recommendations too!
🎵 Music - Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying
Just throwing in a random song I love here.
Panel of the week
(from Space Deer)
No panel this week, and there won’t be for a good while since Space Deer is on hold!
But I did write a long summary about what it’s been like to publish this webcomic for an entire year.
Oh, and there’s still a sale of Space Deer PDFs going on! 11 days left to pick it up, this is your last reminder. Thank you to everyone who picked it up! ❤️
There are now over 300 subscribers to this silly lil newsletter about my popcorn brain trying to say interesting stuff about making weird stuff. That kinda blows me away!
Thank you all for reading Indie Notebook!
Take care and have a creative week.
So excited that Long Puppy is getting a release! And it changed its diet from apples to meat it looks like. Awesome stuff!