Playdate Pulp is out in beta, letting you make your own Playdate games

Create your own cranky adventure

The Playdate, Panic’s boutique handheld with a crank, is still on its way. But while you’re waiting, Panic has put out a public beta for its Playdate Pulp tools, letting anyone who wants to make a Playdate game in a free, browser-based environment.

Pulp was one of many features teased for the Playdate in its first Update stream last year. The idea is that Pulp will allow anyone, whether you’ve made a game before or not, to experiment in the development sandbox. Panic says that Pulp can scale from “goofing around to building a full Playdate game.”

Playdate Pulp is now available in public beta!! Pulp is a super fun (and free!) game making tool for Playdate. With a few clicks, anyone can turn a game idea into Playdate reality. https://t.co/cWPGcxFDhi pic.twitter.com/C1qtbJpgGd

— Playdate (@playdate) January 19, 2022

As a development studio, Pulp has a lot of features available. There are drawing and animation tools, a level editor, chiptune and sound tools, and even a code editor. Even though the Playdate still hasn’t shipped as of this writing due to supply issues, anything you make is also preview-able in browser, and you can easily download the source code for your project, either to share or, eventually, play on a Playdate.

Our internal Pulp Game Jam has ended, giving us six great games that push the limits of what we thought Pulp was capable of. Let's take a look.

Remember, Pulp is our browser-based game making tool, coming in January, an easy, approachable, fun way for anyone make Playdate games. pic.twitter.com/E2ce9qRwwL

— Playdate (@playdate) December 2, 2021

For budding game developers, or even those who just want to mess around with some tools, this seems pretty neat. Playdate Pulp seems to be a pretty well-rounded set of game-making tools that’s also available for free. It’s hard to beat that price tag. And while the earliest Playdate handhelds are still currently set to ship sometime in early 2022, it looks like you can still check out what you’ve made in your browser. Sharing your Pulp creations still seems pretty reasonable to do.

We’ve already seen some pretty impressive prototypes and previews of what’s to come with the Playdate. So if you’re keen to try your own hand at making a crank-based minigame, Playdate Pulp gives you that chance. You can find it on the Playdate site here.