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Title: Playdate Season 2 review: The Whiteout and Wheelsprung

Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2025 13:00:14 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playdate-seas...

Panic is not messing around with Playdate's second season. After starting off
Season Two on the right foot with Dig! Dig! Dino!, Fulcrum Defender and the
surprise rollout of Blippo+, the team has followed through with another
strong pair of games for week two. The Whiteout and Wheelsprung are, like the
week one games, polar opposites of each other: a somber, narrative-heavy post-
apocalyptic adventure and a nutty dirtbike game with realistic(ish) physics.

If you're looking for any throughline between them, I've got you. It's
squirrels. You'll see. (Alright I may be reaching, but as both a journalist
and a wildlife rehabilitator who is currently raising orphaned squirrels,
just let me have this one).

This week also brought an update for the "intergalactic TV service," Blippo+,
and it looks like we'll be getting new content for some time to come. The
Season Two team wrote in an email accompanying the latest drop that "Blippo+
itself is going to update every week for eleven (!) weeks, every Thursday at
10AM PT [1PM ET]." Once it's all over, there will be reruns. We'll get a
countdown for that on week 12, the team says. Now, let's get into the new
games.

The Whiteout Scenic Route Software

Minutes into playing Scenic Route Software's The Whiteout, I became certain
that this was going to be another game that would make me cry. The narrative
tone is heavy, the atmosphere is bleak and absolutely nothing about it
suggests that anything is going to get better… ever. It feels hopeless from
the start, but you have to keep trudging along anyway. (If you've ever read
The Road, the feeling should be familiar). When I finally reached the end,
though, I wasn't in tears ΓÇö I was totally speechless, in a "mouth hanging
open, empty inside" kind of way. It's stunning.

The Whiteout is narrative driven, picking up in a barren post-apocalyptic
version of the US in which a snowstorm began one spring and never stopped.
The events are set in current times ΓÇö the onset of the snow occurred in
spring 2025 ΓÇö giving it an eerie, close to home kind of quality. Everything
about it feels like something that could happen. As you play through its five
chapters, the story is told through the playable character's musings about
the past and present. It's all beautifully written, with numerous sentimental
moments that felt genuinely heartbreaking.

It did manage to get a few smiles out of me though; the character makes
cynical quips here and there, and a nefarious bunch called The Woodpeckers
comes to be known simply as "the 'peckers," which got me every time. And the
appearance of a squirrel just kind of hanging out in the background served as
a refreshing sign of life amid the desolation. (I wondered while playing if
the squirrel was a checkpoint, but I'd have to go through it all again to
figure that out for sure.)

The gameplay entails mostly linear exploration, searching for resources,
solving puzzles and making choices about your next moves. There's not much in
the way of action, and you spend most of the game just walking with a
slowness that is at times maddening. But, while I definitely would have
appreciated the option to speed up even a little (a gentle jog, maybe?), the
lethargy helps to illustrate how hard it would be to carry on in such
conditions. Backtracking several times to get all the resources you need to
progress in some areas is painfully tedious, so the relief when you do
complete the action is real. Patience is key in this game.

I fear some people will give up on this title early because of the pace, and
I implore you not to do that. It's worth every minute. It's also worth it to
play with headphones, as recommended, to really let yourself be immersed in
the setting. I stayed up half the night playing and got up early the next
morning to finish it, and I'm still thinking about the ending I came to.
There are multiple endings according to the creators, so I'll likely dive
back in for another go once I've had more time to digest. The Whiteout is
without a doubt the most memorable game of both Playdate seasons to date.

Wheelsprung Nino van Hooff & Julie Bj├╕rnskov

So, you played The Whiteout and now you're depressed. The Playdate team seems
to have prepared for this, because the other game that dropped this week with
the second release of Season Two may as well be the antidote. Wheelsprung is
cute, charming and silly as hell. It's also a pretty challenging (and
frustrating) physics game, but I do love a game that pisses me off a little.

The art of Wheelsprung is instantly recognizable as that of Julie Bj├╕rnskov,
one of the creators of Escape the Boardgame and Escape the Arcade, which is
to say it's oozing whimsy. Bj├╕rnskov made this one with programmer Nino van
Hooff. The story is pretty simple: a family with a child who loves nuts ΓÇö
like, enough to scatter them all over the place in joy ΓÇö has briefly left
their home unattended, and you're a squirrel equipped with an absurdly
flexible dirtbike who is on a mission to collect as many nuts as possible in
their absence. There are nearly three dozen levels to complete, each of them
an obstacle course you must figure out how to navigate on the two-wheeler.
There's also a level editor to create your own tracks.

The squirrel's dirtbike is basically a Dr. Seuss contraption, and it's
capable of some pretty impressive maneuvers. Lean in either direction using
the D-pad and it can do a wheelie. Hit the down arrow and it'll instantly
turn you to face the other way. But you must always be conscious of your
balance. Allowing the squirrel's helmet to so much as tap an obstacle will
result in a run-ending wipeout, as of course will all-out crashing. This game
forces you to get extremely creative to traverse complicated tracks. There's
a leaderboard and ideally you want to finish with the fastest time possible,
but for a handful of levels my main goal at first was just figuring out how
to make it to the end at all.

I don't want to give away too many hints about how to excel in this game, but
I sure have spent a surprising amount of time driving my bike upside down
dangling from one wheel, or rocking the bike back and forth to creep forward
like an inchworm. It is absolutely ridiculous, and lots of (somewhat rage-
inducing) fun.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playdate-seas...
wheelsprung-130014285.html?src=rss

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