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Title: Playdate Season 2 review: Taria & Como and Black Hole Havoc

Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2025 21:00:42 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playdate-seas...

We've officially made it to the end of Playdate Season Two, and what a season
it's been. Despite having half the number of titles as Season One, this
latest round of weekly game releases has made a much stronger impression (on
me, at least). If nothing else, it's just been cool to experience the new
games in real time with other Playdate owners all at once, which the
staggered rollout of the console didn't really allow for with the first
season. In an email ahead of the final release, the team at Panic noted that
Season Two has sold 12,000 units.

It ends on a high note with Taria & Como and Black Hole Havoc, the former an
emotional physics-based platformer and the latter an action-puzzle game about
blasting black holes with black holes. While the weekly game drops may be
over, we still have several weeks left of new Blippo+ content to help fill
the void (not to mention the reruns, once it all wraps up).

Taria & Como Popseed Studio Inc/JuVee Productions

Taria & Como would surely resonate no matter when it were released, but at a
time in the US when families are being forcibly separated and access to
adequate healthcare for millions of people is under threat ΓÇö an issue that
comes on top of the many existing flaws of the system ΓÇö it hits
particularly hard. The pace of this puzzle platformer is relatively chill,
but the journey it takes you on is really moving.

You play as Taria, a girl whose parents have been kidnapped by the medtech
company and apparent authoritarian overlord, Toxtum Inc. Taria uses a couple
of mobility aids to get around, including a prosthetic leg that allows her to
jump and a flying health robot, Kit, that has a tether so she can swing. But
after a disaster one day, Taria wakes up in a Toxtum facility to find that
her younger sister Como is gone, her prosthetic leg has been taken and
replaced with one that cannot jump (the Toxtum-approved design), and her
healthbot has been swapped with one that's programmed to do everything in its
power to restrict her freedom. The subsequent adventure is Taria's quest to
find her sister, no matter what it takes.

There is a lot to love about this game, but there's one silly little thing at
the beginning that needs a shoutout: an unexpected folder in Kit's files
labeled "Ferrets." Inside that folder? Two pictures of ferrets wearing
bonnets. As a longtime ferret owner, all I have to say is hell yeah. Anyway,
the game. Taria & Como is a wonderful experience from start to finish. Each
chapter is preceded by a beautifully illustrated crank-to-scroll comic that
moves the story forward, and the game's unique mechanics overall made this a
really compelling play for me.

Since Taria can't jump post-disaster, most of the game is spent swinging (and
arguing with the new, not-cool healthbot). Moving around this way requires
some planning, as the platforms Taria can stand on are often separated by
walls and other obstacles, and some surfaces aren't safe for landing. You use
the crank to aim the bot at a grabbing point, and you can crank
forward/backward to reel Taria in and out. Swinging left and right will give
you momentum to launch yourself farther so you can cross bigger gaps, and you
can kick off of walls. I had so much fun with this, and loved how the design
of it all slowed me down and made me think a little harder.

As you progress, you'll collect pieces from Como's diary as well as Tuxtum
files and codes to hijack the healthbot in your favor. The means by which you
access these files is one of my favorite parts of the game. There are kiosks
scattered throughout the map and they all contain a single minigame, which
features a turtle wearing a top hat. Crank to make the turtle dance ΓÇö and
crank really fast, so he can't keep up, and the whole thing will glitch out
and bring you to the system files. I was perhaps too excited the first time I
encountered that, and enjoyed it every time after that too.

Over the course of her adventure, Taria runs into other people who have also
been failed by the system: someone who can no longer take the medication they
need because it isn't "company approved," someone whose has been waiting in
vain to be reunited with their wheelchair, etc. All the while, the healthbot
talks down to Taria with the most painfully infantilizing rhetoric. The
commentary here is pretty blatant, and I can't say I didn't appreciate it as
someone who has been burned by the healthcare system many times over my
lifetime of trying to manage chronic illnesses.

There were a few hiccups in my playthrough. The game seemed to lag a lot with
every chapter change, briefly making me worry each time that it was going to
crash. And my Playdate didn't always respond properly to certain actions,
like when you want to just look around to survey Taria's environment. You
need to dock the crank to do that, which in itself felt a little disruptive,
and I often found myself just launching Taria into the unknown to find out
what was down there the hard way instead. On several occasions when I did
dock the crank, my Playdate didn't register that I'd done so, especially
toward the end of the game, so I had to repeatedly dock and undock it until
it eventually worked.

These things ultimately didn't detract much from my enjoyment of the game,
though. Taria & Como is definitely one of my favorites from this season. It's
a beautiful story, and it couldn't have come at a better time.

Black Hole Havoc Cosmic Bros

Years of playing the Neopets game Faerie Bubbles has prepared me for this
moment.

The story behind Black Hole Havoc is pretty easy to glean from the title ΓÇö
black holes are popping up everywhere and threatening civilization, and you
have to stop them. Thankfully, you and your pal are equipped with just the
right equipment to generate black holes of your own, which you can fire from
a cannon at the evil black holes to cancel them out. But they have to be the
right size or they won't effectively vanquish their targets. You aim using
the D-pad and pump with the crank (or A/B) to adjust the size of your own
black holes before shooting them out. Hit a black hole with another of the
wrong size and you'll take damage.

Initially, it all seems fairly easy. You'll have aim assist for the first few
levels, which provides a clear visual indicator of the path and size of your
black holes. But after that, you're on your own to line everything up right
(you can turn aim assist back on in the settings, if need be). The further
you get, the more obstacles are thrown your way. The black holes start
growing in numbers; space tourists show up and get in the way of everything;
the ceiling starts collapsing, pushing the black holes down onto you; blocks
of ice will send black holes bouncing back your way if you hit them; weird
giant bugs. It all goes from chill to extremely unchill pretty fast.

The Story Mode is great, with 80 levels and fun cutscenes (which are
skippable if you're impatient, but they really are worth watching) to
introduce the new areas you'll have to clear. That sounds like a lot of
levels, but I was absolutely flying through them and was 40 levels deep
before I knew what was happening. There have been a few games this season
that I've found to be super addicting, but Black Hole Havoc kind of takes the
cake for me in that category. It just ticks all the right boxes. There's also
an Arcade Mode if you want to just jump right in and chase after higher and
higher scores.

From the art and animations to the music, developer Cosmic Bros really
knocked it out of the park with this one. Not a bad way to finish a fantastic
season.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playdate-seas...
black-hole-havoc-210042109.html?src=rss

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