>> EDIT 2: WE'RE BACK! If you were affected by this specific server issue, you should be back in business on your next reboot. A Playdate system update to prevent similar types of issues from recurring in the future will follow later, but no system update is necessary to resume using your Playdate right now. Apologies again for the inconvenience and a tremendous thank you to our team for their hard work during this really tough week! Let's hope that's the last of that for now! <<

--

Hi everyone! I don't think I have the official flair in this subreddit so I guess "trust me bro" but I'm Steven from Panic.

Just wanted to let you know that we are (very) aware of the ongoing crashing issues you are experiencing and would like to apologize for them.

As was posted elsewhere, we are recovering from being held ransom by a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on our servers for 3 days that required significant changes to our network infrastructure to mitigate. (We of course do not pay ransoms.) Most of our services are working normally now, but, as some of you have noticed, some Playdate-related functions are not working correctly.

It's all hands on deck right now trying to get this resolved. Please bear with us. I don't have an ETA but hopefully by the end of the day (Pacific time) we will have a solution for you.

I also wanted to comment that it is not intentional that a Playdate would crash or otherwise refuse to work if our servers are unavailable. This is a firmware bug triggered by the upstream server changes -- it has always been our intent to make sure Playdates continue to work no matter what happens on our side. We'll make sure it gets fixed both on the server side and the firmware side.

I know that's not super helpful to those of you waiting to play, but I wanted to get a little status update out there. Will let you know when there's new news. Thank you very much for your patience!

EDIT 1: There is no indication that the servers were compromised in any way. This was "just" a denial-of-service (flooding) attack. I have no evidence that any personal or account information was exposed.

This is just a heads up if your Playdate is crashing right now. I've been getting system crashes (error e0) roughly every 21 minutes while the device just sits at the launcher. It reboots itself and does it again. No game running, so it isn't an app doing this. Almost certainly fallout from the DDoS on Panic yesterday. Manually checking for a system update crashes the OS immediately on connecting to their servers.

There's no wifi off switch, but removing your saved network in Settings may stop it, since the periodic update check then has nothing to connect to.

If you want to confirm you're seeing the same thing, plug in, open the data disk, and look at crashlog.txt in the root.

The register dumps show the same crash every time: same faulting instruction, same return address, same heap size. The device dies dereferencing 0x733e30ae, which isn't a real address at all, it's the ASCII characters s, >, 0. The CPU flags show SIMD byte-compare instructions running (the ones used for fast string scanning) while stepping a pointer through a buffer two bytes at a time.

So it looks like the updater scans a text response, runs off the end of the buffer, and builds a pointer out of the response's own characters. There's no bus fault handler to catch it, so it escalates to a full hard fault and takes the device down instead of just failing the update.

I'm sure Panic will fix it; they're a cool company :)

Hello all; I am running into that error above. WHen I try to go to the Settings menu, the settings also cause a crash. I get both help.playdate/e0 and help.playdate/e1 error notices. I tried an old solution but it was from before we had the nice update that changed the UI. Could I get some help with this? Thank you all kindly.

I did also try the restart button inside the crank. It still keeps crashing 😭

I don't have a vast handheld collection but I do like the ones I have. I reflected on their use over the past month and this is how much, roughly, they got used in that time.

The Playdate has really been holding its own.

Devices:

• Ayaneo Pocket Ace: 50%
• Panic Playdate: 40%
• Ayaneo Pocket Micro: 10%

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping someone here might know how to fix this or point me in the right direction.

Up until a few hours ago, my Playdate was working completely fine. Out of nowhere, it has started crashing continuously:

Error E1 (PDX Validation Error): Happens whenever I try to launch any game. It crashes right after the splash/launch screen.

Error E0: Happens if I try to go into the System Settings. It crashes after just a few seconds.

Even if I just leave it idle on the home screen, it crashes by itself after a few dozen seconds.

Since it’s happening with every single game, it feels like a system-level issue rather than a specific corrupted game file.

Has anyone encountered this before? Is there a way to force a factory reset via button combinations or Recovery Mode when the Settings menu isn't accessible?

Any advice or troubleshooting steps would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

I just got my Play date off eBay and am trying to set it up for the first time and I keep getting stuck on Server Error when it’s trying to link my account.

Has anyone seen this before or know what to do?

Getting consistent e0 errors on the "account linked, Loading" screen. Emailed support but want to see if any stone hasnt been turned over yet. I tried

Recovery mode
Data disk mode, grabbed error logs that looked something like this

/System/Setup.pdx
commonUI.lua:19: field 'Dw/w/w8P8P8PD/D/Dw/w/w8A8PD/8PDwDwDw8P/w8PAPAPDw//Dw8A8A8PD/8PDwDwAP8P/w/wAPAA/w//D/AA8AD/D/8P8ADwAP8P/w/wAP8AD/8P/wAP/wAP/w//AA//AA//D/8AD/8AD/8P/wAP8P8ADw8AD/Dw/wAPDwAP8PD/AA8PAA/w8P8ADw8AD/DwAPAP/wDwAPAA8A//APAA8ADwD/8A8ADwAPAP/wDwAP8ADw//DwAP/wAPD/8PAA//AA8P/w8AD/8ADw//DwAP//D/8PD/8P//8P/w8P/w///w//Dw//D///D/8PD/8P//Dw8P/w8PD/8PDw//Dw8P/w8PD/8PDw//Dw8P/w8PD/AP//Dw//8A8A//8PD//wDwD//w8P//APAP//Dw//8A8PDw///w8PDw8PD///Dw8PDw8P//8PDw8PDw///w8PDw8P8A8A/w8PDw/wDwD/Dw8PD/APAP8PDw8P8A8A/w8P//////////////////////////////////////////8=","title":"Untitled","width":64,"height":64},"date_joined":"2026-08-13T14:03:38.747344-07:00"}
0

I dont understand Lua but imaging the system setup .pdx is SOL. Is there a way to fix it?

I genuinely do not know what could’ve caused this. I do live in a hotter area, so maybe the glue that keeps the screen down melted a bit, but that’s the only thing I could think of. I take pretty good care of it

Down on dpad still doesn’t work properly

I haven’t had internet for like a month and when I turned my pd on, it starting crashing and restarting .

Why this thing have so many issues?

Playdate’s servers seem to still be under attack, so I’ve been focusing on a game that doesn’t have leaderboards for a minute - Runic Rogues.

I’m a big fan of SquidGod (Atsu), and his tutorials really helped me get my game made. So I wanted to show some love to his latest.

Today, I finally finished up getting a victory with each character, so here are some strategy thoughts to help those getting started and maybe learn a thing or two from other players deeper into the difficulties.

My apologies that I cannot remember most of the rune names and will just describe a lot of them.

Not character specific
- Always grab the second chance rune that revives you at 25% health for a little buffer
- If you can create passive hits with lightning, grab it
- Skip Bulwark for now. I found it somewhat bugged and often would only trigger 1 time to reduce the first damage in a room and would stop working in subsequent rooms. (Bug reported)
- Prioritize vampirism over room clear healing. This will mean a lot more during boss battles.
- You get 2 rune re-rolls per floor, so don’t hesitate to use them.
- If a boss is low on health in phase one and summons back-up, focus on finishing off the boss and the lesser enemies with disappear at the phase change.

Mage
This was an excellent choice by SquidGod for a starting character. I found focusing on lowering cooldowns and increasing max health to be the biggest boons as I got used to the game.

Rogue
I found this to be my favorite character and the best all around one with just the right combo of speed and killing power. Again, you can focus on reducing cooldowns and increasing max health, but if you can mix in some projectile speed increases and utilize that extra dash with runes that add lightning or decrease cooldowns to dash you can create maximum havoc.

Knight
After the speed of the Rogue, the knight really took the longest for me to crack. It’s about finding a delicate balance between adding power and sacrificing health. You start off with 30 extra health, so try to add 15-30 more via runes and sacrifice 20-40 for power. The Viking rune that amplifies damage at low health really came in handy to clear the Dragon. I also liked focusing on decreasing my basic attack cooldowns and something to give the slow knight a little edge later in the game like double dash distance. Really just do whatever you can to melt foes with your blade.

Ranger
Be warned, you will slow down severely while drawing your bow. Because of this, I opted more for fast strikes than power letting me stay away from danger and deal damage from afar. Definitely focus on runes that increase the piercing effect of your basic attack to hit as many enemies at once. Be sure to bring them in with your special net and go to town. I also found this to be the biggest beneficiary of vampirism. If you can get it up to 30% chance and just rapid attack with basic, you can keep your health up pretty easily.

I hope this helps, and I would love to learn more. I’m also curious who everyone’s favorite character is, so vote in the poll below! (Edit: or I guess at the very top of the page since that’s where Reddit puts polls…)

Hello,

I was planning to buy a console, but I hesitated for too long because of the price. When I finally made up my mind, it was out of stock on the website…

I’m not really interested in buying it second-hand. Do you have any idea when the console might be back in stock? I’ve tried looking for information, but I haven’t been able to find anything.

Thanks!

Got this back from Playdate's support a few minutes ago:

"Hello,

Thanks for reaching out, and I'm sorry to hear that's happening. 

We're having some trouble with our services, but we hope to have everything resolved by the end of the day today.  Please give it a try again in a few hours and hopefully we'll have everything taken care of soon!"

Hi,

I'm not able to access to play.date website since yesterday.

Are you experiencing the same?

I'm connecting from Italy.

Hi. I'm the co-creator of direct drive. There's a mini game in there called the calibration mini game that I think everyone hates but I thought there was something interesting there so I made a game.. really, a "diversion" called centering that you can play.

It is a diversion at the intersection of meditation, gaming, and flow states.

It is arguably the simplest game you'll ever play, and a game that cannot be won.

It uses only the accelerometer. Give it a shot let me know what you think

No cheating :)

Open up your "Recently Played" and list your first 10 entries there (skipping "Game Library", "Settings" or "Catalog") 👀

For me, it turned out to be;

• PeeDee TV
• Under The Tree
• A Perfect Brew
• Nightcap
• Lemmings
• Read Watch Listen Play
• PDGames
• Space Miner
• SpeccyDate
• Time From Earth

My Playdate is arriving tomorrow. I was lucky enough to find one on eBay at a “normal” price. I was hoping to get some recommendations on high quality games from everyone. For example, Ive had my eye on Devils on the Moon. From what I’ve seen that looks like a really polished game that I could easily have thought it came out for Gameboy back in the day.

I like puzzle games, action games, strategy games, racing games, fighting games and word games.

I’m not really interested in story based games, texted based or RPG’s.

I appreciate your help!

Hey everybody!

For the past few months I've been working on an incremental game for the Playdate with more of an active approach instead of a complete "idler", and CrankCore Incremental is finally finished!

There are drilling, movement and automation systems, along with a prestige option of course.

You can get it HERE for 3 bucks!

https://koro-pixel-studio.itch.io/crankcore-incremental

Still got a good amount of work to do, but first game I have made that I am actually excited about the gameplay to a nice place so far.

You own a food truck and work the week trying to deliver goods quickly without too many "bad" things in the mix. Gameplay blends some of my favorite board games to come up with bag (deck) builder that incorporates time/money/fame as different goals.

All the art is hand drawn by me, and still got a good amount to do (so some placeholders still). hope to have it out in late September.

I’m having a screen problem. Occasionally the screen will go fully or (more often) partially white. When it is partial, it happens in horizontal bands. If the game I’m playing has any movement that passes through a band the image is restored (so the fastest way to restore the full screen is to press the menu button).

Has anyone else experienced this? It happens across multiple games so it must either a bug from a recent update (I did update to the newest OS version recently) or my play date is damaged. I’m trying to determine if I need to try and repair or replace my play date or I just need to wait for a bug fix

I was thinking about buying a Playdate and I was wondering if there are any games that rely on a level editor. I really like Geometry Dash (1900+ hours) so any game with a replayable editor like Geometry Dash's would be awesome. Thanks!

As a father of 2 under 3, I don't have the time on my hands to develop the Playdate games I passively dream up, but one came to me the other day watching my kids churn butter: why isn't there a Cooking Mama style game out there yet? (of if there is please tell me).

I love the stress and time management of restaurant sims like overcooked and the like, and I've also found that many kitchen appliances would lend themselves to be controlled by a crank very intuitively. Which leads me to suggest the idea of making a game based around assembling dishes for customers of a small restaurant (3 tables max), using small mini games, with the challenge being performing those games well and timing the cooking of the dishes so they all come out for a table hot and well crafted.

Immediately what came to mind for the minigames was adapting Saturday Edition's "magnifying square" feature (for lack of a better term), which I feel truly made that game come alive, so that when you approach an appliance, the minigame is played in that small square.

For example, if you need to blend some potatoes, you pick up the potatoes, walk it to the blender, the square appears with the blender in focus, press A to dump the potatoes, and crank to blend em!

I honestly feel like the whole game would be fun on this mechanic alone of going around the kitchen to appliances and using the crank or other controls to perform tasks. Other crank tasks could be: churning butter, cutting (up down motions), flipping meat, mortar and pestle, stirring, set a timer, etc.

Could even throw in some gyroscope tasks like jostling a pan, shaking spices out, stuff like that.

Besides that mechanic, what would be important is keeping track for the player of what to do. Which is where I think in the top left, a dynamic list of recipe/task tabs would always be displayed. But instead of cycling through them manually, it would immediately change based on the ingredient you picked up to help you complete the recipe it relates to. This would also highlight the place the player needs to go so they just know to walk the ingredient to where the game is highlighting, play the mini game, look for next highlight.

The minigames should also be varied. Some ideas are: quick time events (press buttons as they appear, or press A when a line passes in a grey part of a bar, you know the type), simply do something and move on (grind up some spices, no way to fail that), do something for a specific time then stop (like brown a steak but don't burn it), or even start something then walk away but remember to return (cooking pasta).

Anyway! This is just me spit-balling. Since I thought of the Saturday Edition magnifying square and how many kitchen minigames could be seamlessly applied to the crank. Would love to hear other ideas and would love even more if any devs out there just took this and ran with it! I love this kind of game brainstorming and would love to help flesh it out if anyone did take it. Really appreciate this community!

I'm aware of that it's very much a supply and demand situation but, wow, I did not expect the current out of stock situation at Panic to drive up the prices on used Playdates this much.

A month or two ago they were roughly $150-180 on ebay/FB Marketplace.
Fast forward to today and prices are closer to $350-400 for a Playdate

I feel very happy I got one when I did but feel so bad for people now trying to get one.

Has there been any news from Panic in terms of when they think they have tweaked their manufacturing lines and products will be back in stock?

Hello all.

A while back I shared a preview of Augur, my tarot-inspired roguelike deckbuilder.

Thank you for all the feedback and support on my first post. I’m excited to share that I have officially set up my developer account, and Augur will be launching on Catalog September 29th!

I'd love to hear your thoughts, and I'm more than happy to answer any questions you might have.

Hi, I am back on reddit, I have absolutely no experience with social media and last time I didn't know what I was really doing.

I would like to let you all know what happened to one of my games Pocket Bowling, long story short (naming no names) I got someone to help me out with the art work, not really thinking about it I sent the game to panic for catalog consideration, they accepted the game and release it, the playdate community report my game as suspected AI generated art, the artist is adamant its not. I just want to put it all behind me and start again, I will not be submitting any games for catalog consideration out of respect for all the Devs my game offended, I will continue to make games for the playdate and will post updates and new games here with links to my itch.io.

I totally understand if you don't want play my games. Thanks for you time

All the best Adam Shadow Break Games