[Review] Playdate Season 2: Week 1 kicks off with digging, defending and bizarre TV

The first round of Playdate’s Season 2 launches with two games and the Blippo+ video service

The Playdate console is an easy recommendation to any gamer. Its simple design and interfaces put the focus squarely on the innovation of the developers within it. With Season 2 of Playdate’s game delivery subscription fans are treated to some fun — and bizarre — concepts.

Dig Dig Dino! is a casual archaelogy game in which we’re tasked with scouting a fossil-filled area and digging away. Initially we can find some bones and items (and even trash to sell) here and there, but the game really picks up once we advance our toolsets, allowing us to dig deeper and blast through rocks. It’s a simple idea, but it feels like a perfect bite-size experience for the collect-a-holic in all of us.

Fulcrum Defender brings a weapon defense idea to the Playdate. Using the crank, we turn our defense systems, take out incoming missiles, and try and last as long as possible. And, that’s the core of the experience: how long can we go? As we get deeper into the onslaughts of enemies we can start to build up our weapons, allowing us to launch bombs, targeted projectiles, and more. It is very much a classic late-70s arcade experience, but it’s great on the little screen.

Blippo+ is hard to explain, but very easy to get sucked into. It’s essentially a companion app to the season, but it carries with it a lot of mystery to solve and experiences that will leave us happily scratching our heads. It’s organized as sort of a television with “channels” where turning the Playdate’s crank will switch to the next station. It may be mundane, it may be an old movie or commercial, or it may be a meditation or a strange quiz — or more. It’s kind of engrossing, in a new type of adventure game way.

This review is based on Playdate Season 2 access sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. Images and video courtesy publisher. It originally appeared on The SideQuest for June 3, 2025.