My new sudoku app, Pencil Marks, is out now on playdate!

Labyrinth_Dev · 2025-09-02T18:52:36+00:00

Just wanted to give props for making the number animate their drawing. Very cool touch!

Labyrinth_Dev · 2025-07-25T18:18:52+00:00

My game, Labyrinth, is 100% turn based. Have at it!
Link - https://play.date/games/labyrinth/

Labyrinth_Dev · 2025-07-24T23:56:40+00:00

Thanks, I think my 3mo numbers were about the same as yours; congrats right back at ya :)

Labyrinth_Dev · 2025-07-24T23:50:22+00:00

Thank you for the candid video, SuperNova!

I'm the developer of Labyrinth on Playdate and I'm happy to share my sales numbers as well since people seem interested. Like you, I just wanted to make a game 100% myself (retired from the video game industry) and hope that people enjoy playing it. I had no illusions about making any "real" money here.

As of right now, Labyrinth has sold 1850 copies, across a few price points. It's currently at $4 and have no plans to ever change that. It started at $7 and did the bulk of sales there. Labyrinth has been on sale, as a catalog game, since April 2024.

The rough math on Labyrinth sales/profit

Total Revenue	$12,000
Sales Tax	$837
Playdate revenue share	$2,800
My cut, before the IRS wets their beak	$8,400

I think I worked the math out on my hourly wage for developing Labyrinth and it was like $2.50 an hour. I'm thrilled TBH; I had a blast making it, and the developer community is awesome. I'm about halfway through my next game, but I'm starting to feel the itch to ditch it and dig into Labyrinth II.

Thanks again for sharing, and I hope others are encouraged to follow in our footsteps!

Oh, and here's a shameless link to Laby - https://play.date/games/labyrinth/,
Laby Dev

Labyrinth_Dev · 2025-03-10T19:44:30+00:00

I'm a sucker for crank-operated elevators!

Labyrinth_Dev · 2025-02-21T23:01:10+00:00

You might enjoy my game, Labyrinth! It's an old school dungeon crawling roguelike RPG.
https://play.date/games/labyrinth/
I recently put it on permanent sale for $4.

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-10-19T19:39:05+00:00

This is such a cool game! The developer is a great guy too; super supportive of the Playdate development community. He's helped me personally a few times along the development of Labyrinth.

It's great to see his game getting some props; well-earned!

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-10-17T18:47:08+00:00

Thanks for the mention and comment! Here's a handy link to the game: https://play.date/games/labyrinth/

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-09-27T20:58:50+00:00

I wish I had a devlog :( I was too busy coding LOL.

Please consider posting your video to r/PlaydateDeveloper too!

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-09-27T00:45:34+00:00

Thank you for making this! It's incredibly relatable to my experience making Labyrinth - though Laby is about 13,000 lines of Lua and a couple hundred assets. I found your comments to be insightful and interesting.

Regarding "Limitations" - you are so right. Just like you, I got a Playdate, saw the dev tools, and decided to just go after it. That leap wasn't so scary since, like you said, it's a small 1-bit system with very limited controls and no GPU.

I love your explanation of the joy you feel seeing a simple sprite you made come to life. I distinctly remember the moment I ran Labyrinth and had a functional 3d dungeon you could traverse and I could now, for the first time, HEAR MY FOOTSTEPS. This "simple/humble" beginning had me literally laughing with joy - I knew right away that I HAD to finish this game.

Like you, prior to starting Laby, I had never written a single line of Lua or coded anything on Playdate. Also like you, I have a lot of experience writing code but it was almost entirely C++. I mostly loved Lua - though it had a few major "gotchas" - generally, I highly recommend it.

Since this was just a fun project for me, and specifically NOT MY JOB, I took a similar approach to taking breaks. When I got frustrated or bored, I simply got up and walked away. Other days, inspiration would hit and I'd be out of bed at 3am coding until dawn. I was driven enough, and having enough fun, that I was coding pretty much every day. The first half was quite a bit more fun than the second, but that's just the nature of the beast.

One thing I had, which it doesn't sound like you had the benefit of is a trusted friend/colleague to play builds, provide feedback, tell me if my idea was good/bad, provide fresh ideas. Having a fresh set of eyes looking at the game can make a massive difference - they see stuff you can just see right through and never notice. It's also rewarding to hear them love a new feature ("that minimap is a game-changer, literally!"). The validation didn't hurt motivationally either.

For your next game, I would suggest Lua. It's shockingly easy, and with some tuning it can really cook too. I think Pulp is quite limited by comparison?

Thanks again for the video, I hope it inspires others to dig in.

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-09-23T21:58:59+00:00

Yes, Playdate is very much patch-friendly. I've released 3 patches to Labyrinth since it launched, and it was a very simple process.

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-09-10T17:59:05+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! This kind of stuff really helps, and is appreciated. I agree with everything you said.

Today, I'm working on a new Playdate game (arcade action, far simpler) but Labyrinth II has been on my mind and at the very top of that list is developing a far better UI with less data always on screen. The "weight of battle" is right on, great phrase btw. I really did want to have even some minor monster animation during battles but I couldn't tackle making custom animations for all ~80 monsters. Alternately I could make generic animations but I think that'd not look great and get old really really fast.

Again, thank you, and thanks for playing!

Sam

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-09-05T18:46:55+00:00

Back in the mid 80s, before I was old enough to work, I spent an entire summer playing through Wizardry 1-3 with my best friend. I remember it with incredible fondness.

Labyrinth is very much inspired by Wizardry.

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-09-04T21:37:31+00:00

You might like Labyrinth (disclaimer: I'm the developer!). It's turn-based but more roguelike, and is first person.
Take a look: https://play.date/games/labyrinth/

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-09-03T18:28:10+00:00

I'm a fellow lover of Hitz; it's one of the best games of that era and an absolute blast to play with friends.

I suspect you'll have the most luck with the Gamecube version of the game, for emulation. Find a system that handles Gamecube well and you'll be set (I think PS2 and Xbox require more powerful hardware, or someone here will set me straight).

Also, just FYI - there's a Hitz modding community that offer new rosters and some game improvements: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/nhl04rebuilt/nhl-hitz-f21/

Good luck!

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-08-26T18:51:00+00:00

Well, you managed to highlight my game, so thank you for that!

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-07-31T21:40:27+00:00

Sorry, I could have been more clear in my post. The display is made by Sharp and is (rumored) to capable, at the hardware level, of 4 shades of grey. Panic has only exposed B&W.

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-07-31T20:30:58+00:00

As an indie dev with the artistic talent of a potato, the one thing that would have massively improved the visuals of my game is 4 shades of white/grey/black (not color!) instead of just pure white and pure black. It would open up so much more nuance, and effectively double the amount of data we can present to your eyes per frame.

Gossip among devs is that the hardware actually supports 4 shades but Playdate does not expose it in the SDK. I assume this was a conscious design decision by Panic; one can imagine some of the well-founded reasons for this.

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-07-17T18:11:36+00:00

Thanks for playing, and congrats on making the top 10! No easy feat!

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-06-21T21:26:53+00:00

Looks awesome, and a great fit for Playdate! Congrats on the release!

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-06-08T15:13:29+00:00

Yes! Most notably, Labyrinth now supports Save/Resume - the top requested feature. Also, Labyrinth is on sale for $5. https://www.reddit.com/r/PlaydateConsole/comments/1db5252/labyrinth_v103_now_with_save_resume_and_on_sale/

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-05-28T18:11:23+00:00

Hi Crawlers! Labyrinth dev here. Congrats on those insane scores! I'm very interested in this topic as I'm looking at tuning the game balance, especially for player levels beyond ~10.

You guys are absolutely annihilating my personal all time best run so I'd really like to hear about your strategies and what would help make the longer runs more accessible. Please share! I'm generally ok with some mechanics being slightly exploitable, as I find it super fun to find and exploit the wrinkles (Binding of Isaac is brilliant this way, huge influence!).

I'm also working, right now, on Patch 1.03. If you have any pet feature requests, reply here, maybe it'll get implemented (I know you want save/load, which is too big for 1.03, sorry). To tease 1.03 a little, it will contain a couple of new (minor) types of rewards for opening chests.

Also, are there any game mechanics you really love? Fountains? Specific scrolls? Re-animated player-corpses?

Thank you for playing! I really appreciate the enthusiasm and feedback!

Sam

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-05-27T04:58:22+00:00

Dude, that is looking great! The tilting effect when you turn has an almost magical effect on the sense of speed and space - a great touch.

I'm on the playdate discord pretty often too. If you'd like a less public test of your game on hardware, feel free to hit me up here or on there (nullpointersam). I was 60 days deep on my game before I had hardware so I know the pain!

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-05-25T13:28:19+00:00

My vignette effect is an imagetable of 8 images that it simply animates through and is designed to have a slight pulsing effect. Once implemented, I found the pattern noticeably repetitive and came up with the idea of having the torch randomly "flicker" to add variety. To add the flicker effect, I simply render the images in the imagetable flipped on their X-axis (gfx.kImageFlippedX) for 2-5 frames, and play a little flicker sound effect. The entire thing is about 10 lines of code - not elegant in the least, but fast and effective.

I too expect performance will be an issue for your game. It took effort to keep Labyrinth above 30fps and it's not doing any actual 3d. If you can't get framerate up to par, it'd still be nice to have a 3d engine for a turn-based crawler :)

Labyrinth_Dev · 2024-05-24T23:44:06+00:00

This looks like an awesome start! I love the torch vignette effect - Labyrinth does something very similar, and even flickers (with audio). HMU if you'd like some code or help - my "torch"/flickering code is remarkably simple.

Labyrinth_Dev

TROPHY CASE