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Title: Playdate Season 2 review: Fulcrum Defender, Dig! Dig! Dino! and
Blippo+

Date: Sat, 31 May 2025 14:00:36 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playdate-seas...

Playdate Season Two is here, bringing with it two new games for the quirky
yellow handheld every week until July 3. And if the first two titles are any
indication of what this season will be like, it's sure to be a great one.
Season Two kicked off on May 29 with the arcade action game Fulcrum Defender
ΓÇö from the studio behind FTL: Faster Than Light and Into the Breach ΓÇö and
the delightfully chill Dig! Dig! Dino!. The two games couldn't be more
different from each other, but they're both bangers in their own right.

Panic also released Blippo+, which can only be described as a fever dream of
cable TV, with the first drop of Season Two, and it is amazingly bizarre.

Fulcrum Defender Subset Games

"Survive for 10min!" sounded almost like a threat when I first started
reading through Fulcrum Defender's How To Play guide. Between all the on-
screen information you need to pay attention to, the many different types of
enemies that'll be attacking and the various weapon upgrades you can earn
over the course of a run, there's a lot to take in, and I braced myself for a
tense and complicated playing experience. But, while that may be closer to
the case on Hard Mode, I found that Fulcrum Defender wasn't all that
punishing of a shooter on Normal Mode. It's a challenge, for sure, but one
with a surprisingly achievable goal that I was able to enjoy without losing
my mind. At least, not until crossing the 10-minute mark. After that, all
hell breaks loose.

In Fulcrum Defender, you're positioned at the center of a circular arena and
have to fend off a continuous swarm of enemies. Your shield will take damage
any time an enemy collides with it, and once enough have breached that zone,
it's game over. To avoid that, you need to shoot them down one by one, using
the crank to aim your weapon and the D-pad to shoot. Some enemies can be
taken out in one shot, but others ΓÇö distinguished by their filled-in
appearance ΓÇö require multiple shots. Over time, you'll earn weapon upgrades
to build out a more powerful defense system, with options like large, guided
projectiles and a flail that can knock out several enemies in one sweep.

It's unexpectedly addicting. The music is beautiful and calming, giving the
whole thing a pleasant atmosphere despite the fact that you're surrounded by
enemies at any given moment and trying not to die. Once I realized it was
absolutely possible to survive 10 minutes and even go beyond that, I got
sucked into the loop of trying over and over to beat my high scores. I'd love
to see a global leaderboard for this game at some point, because I just know
I'd be floored by how long some players will be able to last.

If you liked this one and want to know a little more about the making of it,
be sure to check out our interview with Jay Ma, the co-founder of Fulcrum
Defender developer Subset Games.

Dig! Dig! Dino! Dom2D & Fáyer

I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing right now than pretending to be
a paleontologist and casually digging for bones. No thoughts, just dig.
That's exactly what Dig! Dig! Dino! has going on, and it's awesome.

You're working as part of a crew (made up entirely of anthropomorphic
animals) at the site of some really unusual dinosaur fossils, and it's your
job to dig up new bones and artifacts. Once you've got the entire skeleton of
a particular dinosaur, you can scan it in the lab to reveal what it was like
when it was alive. That information, coupled with the peculiar artifacts
scattered around the site, paints a picture of some pretty strange activities
that went on there long ago. For example, some of these dinosaurs seem to
have had crystals growing out of their bodies, and it looks like they were
warned about the asteroid extinction event. Fishy!

The gameplay is extremely low stakes ΓÇö this is one for when you just want
to zone out playing something that'll keep your hands busy. You're equipped
with a shovel, a drill and a radar gadget for detecting items beneath the
surface, and have no time-sensitive goals to hit. You only have so much
energy, though, which will be consumed with each use of your tools. When you
run out, the round is over. But you can visit each site as many times as you
need to in order to find all of the dinosaur pieces hidden there, so it can
be a really casual undertaking if you want it to be.

It's a really nice time, with a fun story to tie it all together. You'll get
a solid few hours of playtime out of this, too, and the simplicity of it all
means you can put it down and come back to it later without having to rack
your memory to figure out where you left off. I loved this one.

Blippo+ Panic

What can one even say about Blippo+? This bizarre "1-bit television"
experience came as a bonus with the first Season Two games, and it is
something. Panic first teased it back in December 2024 as a Steam title, but
here it is for the Playdate now, complete with a roster of channels playing
hallucinatory programs and Femtofax, an interactive message board of sorts
where you can find affirmations, neighborhood drama, chatter among amateur
astronomers and more. Panic describes it as being "comparable to an old
episode of The Twilight Zone," but it's more like an old episode of The
Twilight Zone if it were made by Tim & Eric and aired after midnight on Adult
Swim. I think I am obsessed with it?

I'm really interested to see where this goes. It'll keep getting new content
alongside the rest of the Season Two releases, with new episodes every week
for 12 weeks. I would totally park my Playdate in a dock (but not the Stereo
Dock </3) on my desk and leave Blippo+ running in the background all day if
it has enough fresh material to sustain it. The song playing alongside the
endlessly scrolling Blippo+ TV guide screen is already stuck in my head, and
I don't hate it. The program guide with this week's schedule is online, if
you're curious about what's going on right now.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playdate-seas...
dig-dino-and-blippo-140036697.html?src=rss

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