Bona Fido

If there is one game on Playdate that really captures the feel of the arcade original, non-Super version of Mario Bros., it’s Bona Fido by rae. It’s a single screen action game. There’s jumping, and platforms, and you go off the right side to arrive on the left, and vice-versa. Enemies like turtles and big bugs drop from the top of the screen and kill you with one hit. Instead of bonking them from beneath like in Mario Bros., though, you bark to defeat them. This is because you play as a dog skeleton, of course. Bark enough enemies to death and get to the next stage, where the enemies get faster, the platforms fewer, and the dangers greater.

You only have three barks, though, before you need to recharge your voice. You do this by digging up (with the crank! while enemies are closing in!) a randomly appearing dirt mound. Run out of barks and it provides a refill on your bark ammo. If you have some barks still available, then you’ll instead dig up something either beneficial or dangerous: an extra life, bonus points, or it’ll SUBTRACT some points if you’re really unlucky. Never going to make it onto the leaderboard that way!

Bona Fido started life as the runner-up winner in PlayJam 6, and the eventual Catalog release is a lot harder, with a cap on extra lives, a re-working of the bark refill mechanic, and increased difficulty across the board. And of course: there’s online leaderboards in the Catalog release. See you there!

(Demo released as part of PlayJam 6 on October 14, 2024. Full release on Catalog on January 28, 2025. Copy provided by developer.)