Digscovery
From ToadleyUnderControl, the developer that brought us Reel-istic Fishing a.k.a. “the fishing game someone finally made for Playdate after assuming everyone else would make one first because the console had a crank,” comes Digscovery, a short jam game about digging up artifacts in the desert. This one also uses a ton of crank, and in many slightly different ways.
You get to pick from twelve different “???” on the main menu, each with a size listed (small, medium, or large) and a par time between 30 seconds and 3 minutes, but no other info. Turns out each of these are one of twelve different fossils. Choose a level and you get to go through four different stages within to completely dig up and clean each fossil.
First you are presented with a blank patch of dirt. “Dig” off the top layer of dirt by cranking the shovel up and down, clearing off the dark mystery that lies beneath. “Rinse” the water spray higher or lower on the screen with the crank to clean it off. “Cut” with the A button and D-pad to get close to the final product. Then “Detail” with a tiny broom that sweeps in a circle with the crank as you aim at each bit with the D-pad. Each of these four activities is timed, and your score is saved while also being compared to the par time. Can you get each level under par?
The controls feel really good, and the slight variations in the use of the crank is interesting and precise once you get used to it. You can set the accuracy of each stage of cleaning to be very particular or very forgiving, and there’s also a “relaxed” mode that the dev added after the jam was over. Relaxed mode doesn’t show your time in between each step of the process, and only tells you your final score at the end.
There’s a nice Outer Wilds-esque banjo tune for the title screen and some encouraging, twinkly music for the actual gameplay stages, and you’re in neither spot long enough for them to get repetitive. It’s a remarkably complete game for being made in a long weekend, and it’s just a few additional levels away from being a full-sized Catalog release. This was the “winner” of PlayJam 3, and it’s easy to see why! It’s concise, complete, and makes great use of the crank mechanics. Toadly’s itch.io page says “beginner game dev” – can’t wait to see what they come up with next.
(Pay-what-you-want on Itch.io.)