Multiplayer With 1 Playdate

We just released "Two Swords" - a concept game showing one way to make multiplayer games for the Playdate! There are some great resources out there for using unofficial APIs to enable multiplayer Playdate games, but we took the challenge of trying to make a compelling experience with nothing more than the D-pad, A- and B-buttons, and the crank, and think we've come up with something here!

The Playdate probably needs no introduction, but this game was our introduction to Playdate game dev (and, indeed, Lua), so we went with a simple premise - a non-scrolling, single-screen game where 2 characters/players fight off a swarm of enemies to score points. "P1" - named Hipparchus - moves around with the crank, and thrusts his sword with the A-button,  while "P2" - named Descartes - moves around with the D-pad and thrusts his sword with the B-button.

Ok, so the controls for Descartes make sense, but what about this Hipparchus moving around with just the crank? This is a top-down, Zelda-style game after all, how does that work? Well, in a sense it's a tad tricky, but with a bit of practice, we think what we've come up with works just fine! The angle of the crank determines the angle that Hipparchus will move, and if the crank is moved at all during frames, Hipparchus will move in that direction (it's not enough to just let the crank sit at an angle - otherwise Hipparchus would always be moving!). This means that to move in a single direction, you can simply "wiggle" the crank in that direction - this works pretty well - but it might feel more comfortable to get used to using sinusoidal movements to make Hipparchus traverse the screen.

Ok, so that works, but it is a tad awkward. What makes up for it a bit is the control that you get when Hipparchus engages his sword - when the sword is out, you can use the crank to fluidly swing it in any direction, 360 degrees around Hipparchus! This feels really good,  is a slight advantage over Descartes, and it's a pleasure to take down enemies this way. This sword-play informed a couple of game-design decisions too - in order to not have sword-swinging also result in wonky movement, we've made it such that you cannot engage the sword and move at the same time (this limitation applied to Descartes too, to keep the gameplay as symmetrical as possible). Further, in order to prevent you from simply flailing the sword endlessly, killing infinite enemies as they come to you, we've made it such that when you do hit an enemy, your sword disengages, and you have to engage again.

We aren't pro game designers or anything, but feel pretty happy with the choices made here.

Finally, while it is fun to try to play this strictly with 1 Playdate device, there is a much more ideal setup which makes the experience much more comfortable! Hook the Playdate up to a computer, use Playdate Mirror, and plug an external controller into the computer! Use the Playdate with the crank to control Hipparchus, and the separate controller to control Descartes! See the diagram below for an illustration.

Ok, so this ended up being a rather long-winded devlog, but we were just very excited to share this concept! We already have 2 other such multiplayer Playdate concept games in the work, so stay tuned for more!